1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.8
6 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
7 now complete on file names.
9 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
10 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
11 For instance, consider:
13 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
14 # struct example variable;
17 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
18 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
23 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
26 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
27 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
28 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
30 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
32 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
33 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
34 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
36 * The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
39 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
40 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
42 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
43 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
44 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
46 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
47 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
49 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
51 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
52 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
54 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
55 list of section offsets.
57 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
58 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
61 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
63 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
64 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
66 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
67 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
68 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
70 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
71 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
75 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
76 available is determined at configure time.
80 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
82 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
84 maint set python print-stack
85 maint show python print-stack
86 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
89 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
91 set print symbol-loading
92 show print symbol-loading
93 Control printing of symbol loading messages.
97 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
102 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
104 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
105 show multiple-symbols
106 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
107 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
108 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
110 set breakpoint always-inserted
111 show breakpoint always-inserted
112 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
113 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
114 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
116 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
117 show arm fallback-mode
118 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
120 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
121 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
122 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
123 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
125 set disable-randomization
126 show disable-randomization
127 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
128 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
129 multiple debugging sessions.
133 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
138 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
141 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
143 * New native configurations
145 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
146 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
150 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
151 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
153 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
155 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
156 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
157 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
158 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
160 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
161 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
163 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
166 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
167 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
168 and in inlined functions.
170 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
171 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
172 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
174 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
176 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
177 registers on PowerPC targets.
179 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
180 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
182 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
183 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
185 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
186 extended-remote mode.
188 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
189 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
190 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
191 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
193 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
194 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
195 target architectures.
197 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
198 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
199 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
200 stored in two consecutive float registers.
202 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
205 * Improved support for debugging Ada
206 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
208 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
209 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
210 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
211 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
213 - Improved command completion in Ada
216 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
221 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
222 show print frame-arguments
223 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
224 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
229 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
236 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
245 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
248 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
252 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
254 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
256 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
257 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
258 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
260 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
261 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
262 -Bsymbolic linker option.
264 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
265 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
268 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
269 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
271 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
272 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
274 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
276 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
277 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
278 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
280 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
281 automatically displayed as character or string data.
283 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
284 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
287 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
288 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
289 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
291 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
294 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
295 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
296 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
298 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
300 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
302 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
303 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
304 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
306 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
307 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
309 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
310 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
311 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
312 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
313 Windows and SymbianOS).
315 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
316 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
318 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
319 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
325 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
326 when debugging using remote targets.
328 set mem inaccessible-by-default
329 show mem inaccessible-by-default
330 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
331 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
332 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
333 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
334 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
336 set breakpoint auto-hw
337 show breakpoint auto-hw
338 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
339 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
340 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
341 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
342 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
343 including "next" and "finish".
346 catch exception unhandled
347 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
350 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
354 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
355 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
356 an alias to "set sysroot".
359 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
360 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
363 * New native configurations
365 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
370 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
371 not query the target for its built-in description.
375 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
376 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
377 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
382 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
383 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
386 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
391 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
392 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
394 qXfer:libraries:read:
395 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
396 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
397 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
398 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
402 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
411 i[34567]86-*-netware*
412 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
413 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
415 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
418 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
419 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
428 * Other removed features
435 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
442 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
447 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
448 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
453 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
454 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
456 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
458 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
459 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
460 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
461 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
465 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
466 in debugging information.
470 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
471 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
473 set mips stack-arg-size
474 set mips saved-gpreg-size
476 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
478 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
483 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
485 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
486 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
487 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
489 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
490 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
493 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
494 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
496 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
497 stub provides the required support.
499 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
500 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
505 unset substitute-path
507 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
508 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
509 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
510 between compilation and debugging.
514 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
515 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
516 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
520 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
522 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
523 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
525 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
530 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
531 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
532 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
533 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
537 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
538 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
540 qXfer:memory-map:read:
541 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
542 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
547 Erase and program a flash memory device.
549 * Removed remote packets
552 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
553 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
555 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
559 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
561 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
565 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
566 only if it doesn't already have a value.
568 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
570 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
572 restart <n> Return the program state to a
573 previously saved state.
575 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
577 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
579 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
580 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
582 info forks List forks of the user program that
583 are available to be debugged.
585 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
586 forks of the user program that are
587 available to be debugged.
589 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
590 that are available to be debugged (and
591 kill the forked process).
593 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
594 that are available to be debugged (and
595 allow the process to continue).
599 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
601 * Improved Windows host support
603 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
604 native console support, and remote communications using either
605 network sockets or serial ports.
607 * Improved Modula-2 language support
609 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
610 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
611 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
612 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
613 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
614 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
618 The ARM rdi-share module.
620 The Netware NLM debug server.
622 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
624 * New native configurations
626 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
627 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
631 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
633 * New command line options
635 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
636 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
637 the child (debugged) program exited with.
638 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
639 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
640 specified multiple times and in conjunction
641 with the --command (-x) option.
643 * Deprecated commands removed
645 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
649 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
650 othernames set arm disassembler
651 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
652 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
653 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
656 * New BSD user-level threads support
658 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
659 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
662 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
663 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
664 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
666 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
667 are not yet supported.
669 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
670 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
672 * REMOVED configurations and files
674 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
675 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
676 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
678 * New "set print array-indexes" command
680 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
681 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
684 * VAX floating point support
686 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
688 * User-defined command support
690 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
691 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
692 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
694 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
696 * New command line option
698 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
701 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
703 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
704 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
705 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
706 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
707 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
709 * Internationalization
711 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
712 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
713 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
717 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
718 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
719 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
721 * New native configurations
723 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
727 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
728 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
730 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
732 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
733 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
734 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
737 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
738 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
739 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
751 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
752 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
754 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
756 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
757 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
758 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
768 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
770 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
772 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
773 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
776 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
778 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
779 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
780 IRIX long double values).
784 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
785 command. This problem has been fixed.
787 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
789 * Fix for ``many threads''
791 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
792 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
795 ptrace: No such process.
796 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
798 This problem has been fixed.
800 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
802 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
805 * New ``start'' command.
807 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
809 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
811 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
812 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
813 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
815 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
816 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
817 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
818 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
819 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
820 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
821 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
822 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
823 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
825 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
827 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
828 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
829 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
830 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
831 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
833 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
834 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
835 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
837 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
839 * New native configurations
841 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
842 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
843 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
844 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
845 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
846 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
847 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
849 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
851 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
852 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
853 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
854 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
855 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
856 work, was also included.
858 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
859 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
869 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
870 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
872 * REMOVED configurations and files
874 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
875 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
876 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
877 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
878 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
879 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
880 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
881 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
882 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
884 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
886 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
888 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
890 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
891 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
892 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
893 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
896 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
898 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
899 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
900 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
901 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
902 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
903 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
906 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
908 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
910 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
911 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
912 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
914 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
916 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
917 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
919 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
921 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
922 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
923 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
925 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
927 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
928 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
930 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
932 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
933 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
934 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
936 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
938 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
939 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
940 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
942 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
944 * Removed --with-mmalloc
946 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
947 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
949 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
951 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
952 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
953 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
954 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
956 * Revised SPARC target
958 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
959 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
960 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
961 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
962 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
966 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
967 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
968 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
971 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
973 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
974 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
977 * C++ nested types and namespaces
979 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
980 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
981 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
982 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
983 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
984 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
985 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
986 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
987 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
989 * New native configurations
991 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
992 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
993 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
994 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
995 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
997 * New debugging protocols
999 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1001 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1003 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1004 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1005 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1007 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1009 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1010 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1011 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1012 permanently REMOVED.
1014 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1015 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1016 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1017 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1018 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1019 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1020 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1021 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1022 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1023 sonymips mips-sony-*
1024 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1026 * REMOVED configurations and files
1028 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1029 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1030 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1031 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1032 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1033 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1034 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1035 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1036 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1037 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
1038 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1039 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1040 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1041 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1042 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
1043 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1044 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1046 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1050 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1051 integrated into GDB.
1053 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1055 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1056 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1057 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1060 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1061 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1062 DWARF 2 CFI support.
1066 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1067 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1068 remote protocol documentation for details.
1070 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
1072 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1073 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1074 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1077 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1079 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1080 per-thread variables.
1082 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1084 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1085 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1087 * Separate debug info.
1089 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1090 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1091 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1092 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1093 and optional debug files.
1095 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1097 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1098 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1101 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1102 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1106 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1107 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1108 considered "useable".
1110 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1112 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1113 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1116 * GDB supports logging output to a file
1118 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1119 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
1121 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1123 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1124 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1127 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
1129 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1130 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1134 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1135 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1136 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1137 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1138 data, for more informative profiling results.
1140 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1142 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1143 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
1144 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
1146 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1149 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1150 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1151 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1152 in a subsequent -var-update.
1154 * New native configurations.
1156 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1158 * Multi-arched targets.
1160 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
1161 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1163 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1165 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1166 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1167 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1168 permanently REMOVED.
1170 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1171 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1172 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1173 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1174 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1175 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1176 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1177 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1178 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1179 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1180 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1181 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1183 * REMOVED configurations and files
1186 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1187 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1188 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1189 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1190 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1191 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1193 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1194 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1195 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1196 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1197 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1198 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1200 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
1202 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1203 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1204 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1205 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1206 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1208 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
1210 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1212 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1213 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1214 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1215 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1216 shared libs like mad''.
1218 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
1220 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1221 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1222 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1223 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
1225 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1227 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1228 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1231 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1232 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1234 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1235 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1237 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1238 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1239 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1240 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1242 * Multi-arched targets.
1244 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1245 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
1247 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
1248 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1249 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1253 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1256 * New native configurations
1258 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
1259 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
1260 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
1261 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
1263 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1265 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1266 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1267 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1268 permanently REMOVED.
1270 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1271 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1272 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1273 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1274 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1275 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1276 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1277 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1278 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1279 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1281 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1282 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1284 * OBSOLETE languages
1286 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1288 * REMOVED configurations and files
1290 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1291 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1292 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1293 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1294 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1296 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1298 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1300 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1301 commands. The default is 1024.
1303 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1305 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1307 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1309 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1310 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1311 from a file into memory (restore).
1313 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1315 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1316 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1317 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1319 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1327 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1328 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1329 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1331 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1332 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1333 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1335 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1336 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1337 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1339 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1340 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1341 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1343 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
1345 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1347 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1348 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1349 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1350 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1351 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1352 (notably embedded) targets.
1354 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1356 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1357 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1358 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1359 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
1361 * New command line option
1363 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1365 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1367 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1368 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1369 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1370 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1371 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1372 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1373 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1374 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1375 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1376 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1378 * Changes in ARM configurations.
1380 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1381 configuration is fully multi-arch.
1383 * New native configurations
1385 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
1386 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
1387 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
1388 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
1392 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1394 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1396 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1397 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1398 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1399 permanently REMOVED.
1401 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1402 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1403 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1404 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1405 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1407 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1409 * REMOVED configurations and files
1411 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1413 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1414 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1415 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1416 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1417 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1418 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1419 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1420 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1421 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1422 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1423 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
1425 * Changes to command line processing
1427 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1428 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1430 * Changes to key bindings
1432 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1434 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1436 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1438 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1441 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1443 Numerous documentation fixes.
1445 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1447 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1449 * New native configurations
1451 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1452 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1453 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1454 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1455 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1456 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1460 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1462 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1464 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1466 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1467 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1468 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1469 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1470 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1472 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1473 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1474 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1475 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1476 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1477 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1478 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1479 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1481 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1482 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1484 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1485 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1486 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1487 permanently REMOVED.
1489 * REMOVED configurations and files
1491 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1492 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1494 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1498 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1500 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1501 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1506 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1508 * The MI enabled by default.
1510 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1511 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1512 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1513 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1514 which is now deprecated.
1516 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1518 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1519 main features are supported:
1521 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1523 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1526 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1528 - a Pascal expression parser.
1530 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1532 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1534 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1536 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1537 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1539 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1541 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1543 * Changes in completion.
1545 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1546 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1547 users expect at the shell prompt.
1549 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1550 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1551 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1552 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1553 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1554 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1555 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1557 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1559 * New platform-independent commands:
1561 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1562 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1563 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1565 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1567 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1568 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1569 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1571 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1573 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1574 multi-threaded programs though.
1576 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1578 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1580 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1581 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1584 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1586 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1587 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1588 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1589 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1590 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1593 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1594 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1595 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1597 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1599 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1600 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1602 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1603 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1606 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1607 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1608 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1609 a given linear address.
1611 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1612 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1613 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1615 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1617 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1619 * Changes in documentation.
1621 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1622 Documentation License.
1624 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1627 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1629 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1632 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1633 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1634 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1636 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1638 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1639 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1640 contents of this file.
1644 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1646 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1648 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1650 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1651 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1652 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1653 greater level of detail.
1655 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1657 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1658 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1659 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1662 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1664 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1665 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1666 machines ``out of the box''.
1668 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1669 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1670 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1671 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1672 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1674 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1675 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1676 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1677 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1678 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1680 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1681 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1684 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1687 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1688 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1689 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1690 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1692 * New native configurations
1694 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1695 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1699 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1700 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1701 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1702 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1704 * OBSOLETE configurations
1706 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1707 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1709 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1712 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1713 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1714 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1715 be permanently REMOVED.
1717 * Gould support removed
1719 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1721 * New features for SVR4
1723 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1724 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1725 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1727 * Many C++ enhancements
1729 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1730 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1732 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1734 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1735 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1736 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1737 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1739 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1740 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1742 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1744 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1745 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1746 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1748 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1749 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1751 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1753 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1754 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1755 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1757 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1759 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1760 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1761 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1763 * ``apropos'' command added.
1765 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1766 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1767 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1771 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1772 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1773 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1774 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1775 enabled by configuring with:
1777 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1779 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1781 * New native configurations
1783 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1784 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1785 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1789 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1790 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1791 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1793 * OBSOLETE configurations
1795 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1797 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1798 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1799 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1800 be permanently REMOVED.
1804 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1805 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1806 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1807 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1808 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1809 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1810 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1815 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1817 * set extension-language
1819 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1820 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1821 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1822 set extension-language .c c++
1823 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1824 and their associated languages.
1826 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1828 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1829 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1830 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1834 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1835 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1837 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1838 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1840 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1841 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1842 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1843 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1844 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1845 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1846 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1847 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1849 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1850 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1851 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1852 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1856 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1857 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1858 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1859 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1860 for xdb and dbx commands.
1864 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1865 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1866 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1868 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1869 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1870 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1872 * Debugging across forks
1874 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1879 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1880 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1881 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1883 * GDB remote protocol additions
1885 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1886 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1887 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1888 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1890 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1891 full 64-bit address. The command
1893 set remoteaddresssize 32
1895 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1896 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1899 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1900 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1902 maint packet heythere
1904 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1905 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1908 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1909 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1910 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1912 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1914 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1915 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1916 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1918 * mask-address variable for Mips
1920 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1921 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1922 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1924 * Higher serial baud rates
1926 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1927 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1928 to achieve all of these rates.)
1932 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1933 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1936 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1938 * New native configurations
1940 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1941 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1942 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1943 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1944 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1945 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1946 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1950 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1951 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1952 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1953 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1954 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1955 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1956 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1957 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1958 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1959 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1960 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1962 * New debugging protocols
1964 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1965 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1966 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1967 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1968 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1969 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1973 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1974 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1979 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1980 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1982 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1984 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1985 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1986 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1988 * Live range splitting
1990 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1991 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1992 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1996 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1997 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2001 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2002 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2003 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2008 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2013 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2014 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2015 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2016 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2017 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2018 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2022 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2023 the symbol at the specified address.
2027 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2028 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2029 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2030 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2031 file tracepoint.c for more details.
2035 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2036 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2037 of most MIPS variants.
2041 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2042 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2043 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2047 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2048 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2049 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2050 the possible architectures.
2052 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2054 * New native configurations
2056 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2057 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2058 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2059 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2060 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2061 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2065 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2066 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2067 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2068 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2069 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2071 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2075 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2076 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2077 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2078 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2079 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2083 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2085 * Windows 95/NT native
2087 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2088 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2089 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2090 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2091 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2093 * dont-repeat command
2095 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2096 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2097 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2098 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2100 * Send break instead of ^C
2102 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2103 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2104 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2106 * Remote protocol timeout
2108 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2109 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2110 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2112 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2114 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2115 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2116 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2117 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2118 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2120 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2121 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2122 automatically on hpux10.
2124 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2126 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2128 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2130 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2131 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2132 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2133 every character. The default value is 1050.
2135 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2137 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2138 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2139 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2140 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2141 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2142 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2144 * Speedups for remote debugging
2146 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2147 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2148 and more efficient S-record downloading.
2150 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2152 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2153 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2155 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2157 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
2159 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2160 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2162 * Remote targets use caching
2164 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2165 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2166 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2167 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2168 off' turns the the data cache off.
2170 * Remote targets may have threads
2172 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2173 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2174 gdb/remote.c for details.
2178 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2179 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2180 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2181 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2182 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2183 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2184 sequence is something like
2186 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2188 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2192 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2193 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2194 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2195 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2196 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2197 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2198 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2199 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2203 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2204 but does simplify configuration and building.
2208 GDB now supports hpux10.
2210 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2212 * New native configurations
2214 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2215 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2216 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2217 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2221 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2222 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2223 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2224 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2227 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2229 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2230 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2231 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2232 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2233 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2235 * Arguments to user-defined commands
2237 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2238 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2241 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2243 To execute the command use:
2246 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2247 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2248 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2250 * New `if' and `while' commands
2252 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2253 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2254 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2255 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2256 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2257 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2258 if the expression is zero.
2260 * Fortran source language mode
2262 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2263 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2264 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2265 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2268 * Better HPUX support
2270 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2271 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2272 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2273 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2274 that behavior do the following before running the program:
2280 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2281 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2287 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2288 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2291 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2292 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2294 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2296 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2297 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2298 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2299 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2300 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2301 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2303 * New DOS host serial code
2305 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2306 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2309 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2311 * New "complete" command
2313 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2314 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2316 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2318 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2319 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2321 * Breakpoint hit counts
2323 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2324 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2325 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2326 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2327 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2330 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2332 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2333 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2334 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2336 * Shared library breakpoints
2338 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2339 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2341 * Hardware watchpoints
2343 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2344 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2346 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
2350 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2351 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2353 * Improved Irix 5 support
2355 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2357 * Improved HPPA support
2359 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2361 * New native configurations
2363 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2364 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2365 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2366 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2370 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2371 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2374 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2376 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2377 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2381 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2382 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2384 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2386 * Irix 5 is now supported
2390 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2391 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2392 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2393 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2394 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2397 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2399 * User visible changes:
2403 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2404 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2405 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2406 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2407 debugging info for the mips target).
2409 * DEC Alpha native support
2411 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2412 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2413 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2414 Alpha-specific notes.
2416 * Preliminary thread implementation
2418 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2420 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
2422 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2423 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2426 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2428 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2429 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2430 call methods, ...etc.
2432 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2434 * User visible changes:
2436 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2437 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2438 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2439 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2441 Filename completion now works.
2443 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2444 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2445 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2447 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2448 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2449 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2450 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2451 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2455 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2456 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2459 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2463 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2464 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2465 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2469 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2470 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2471 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2472 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2473 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2477 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2478 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2479 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2481 * New targets supported
2483 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2484 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2485 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2486 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2487 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2489 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2490 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2491 GO32 memory extender.
2493 * New remote protocols
2495 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2497 * New source languages supported
2499 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2500 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2501 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2504 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2506 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2508 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2509 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2510 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2511 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2512 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2513 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2515 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2517 * Faster and better demangling
2519 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2520 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2521 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2522 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2523 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2524 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2527 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2528 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2529 compiler does not actually implement.
2531 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2533 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2534 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2535 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2536 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2537 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2538 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2541 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2542 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2544 * Improved configure script
2546 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2547 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2548 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2549 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2551 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2552 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2553 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2554 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2555 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2556 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2558 * Documentation improvements
2560 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2561 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2562 before submitting changes.
2564 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2565 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2566 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2567 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2568 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2570 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2571 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2572 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2573 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2574 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2575 around this problem.
2579 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2580 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2581 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2584 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2585 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2587 * New native hosts supported
2589 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2590 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2592 * New targets supported
2594 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2596 * New file formats supported
2598 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2599 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2603 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2605 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2606 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2608 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2609 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2610 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2612 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2613 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2615 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2616 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2617 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2620 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2621 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2622 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2623 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2624 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2626 * Internal improvements
2628 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2629 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2631 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2632 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2633 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2634 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2635 shared code that handles any of them.
2637 * New command line options
2639 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2643 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2644 General Public License.
2646 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2648 * Host/native/target split
2650 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2651 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2652 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2653 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2654 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2656 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2657 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2658 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2659 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2660 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2661 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2662 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2664 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2665 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2666 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2668 * New hosts supported
2670 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2671 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2672 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2674 * New targets supported
2676 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2677 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2679 * New native hosts supported
2681 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2682 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2683 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2685 * New file formats supported
2687 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2688 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2689 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2693 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2694 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2695 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2697 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2699 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2700 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2701 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2702 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2706 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2707 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2708 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2710 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2714 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2715 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2718 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2719 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2721 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2722 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2723 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2724 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2725 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2726 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2728 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2729 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2730 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2731 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2735 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2736 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2737 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2738 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2739 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2741 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2742 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2743 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2744 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2748 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2749 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2750 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2751 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2752 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2753 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2754 each instruction being stepped through.
2756 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2757 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2759 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2760 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2761 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2762 processor with a serial port.
2766 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2767 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2768 supported, and what files each one uses.
2772 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2773 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2774 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2775 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2777 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2778 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2779 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2780 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2784 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2785 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2786 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2787 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2788 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2789 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2791 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2794 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2796 * Better support for C++ function names
2798 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2799 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2800 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2801 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2802 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2804 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2805 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2806 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2807 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2808 for the list of formats.
2810 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2812 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2813 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2814 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2815 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2816 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2817 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2820 * New 'maintenance' command
2822 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2823 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2824 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2826 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2827 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2828 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2829 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2830 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2831 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2833 The following commands are new:
2835 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2836 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2837 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2839 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2841 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2842 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2843 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2844 read after argv processing.
2846 * New hosts supported
2848 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2850 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2852 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2853 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2854 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2855 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2856 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2859 * New targets supported
2861 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2863 * More smarts about finding #include files
2865 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2866 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2867 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2868 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2869 the one that contains your sources.
2871 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2872 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2873 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2875 * Interesting infernals change
2877 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2878 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2879 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2880 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2882 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2884 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2885 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2886 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2888 See the ChangeLog for details.
2890 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2892 * New machines supported (host and target)
2894 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2896 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2898 * New malloc package
2900 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2901 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2902 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2903 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2904 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2905 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2909 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2910 'help info proc' for details.
2912 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2914 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2915 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2918 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2920 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2921 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2922 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2923 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2924 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2925 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2927 * Cross byte order fixes
2929 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2930 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2932 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2934 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2935 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2936 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2937 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2938 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2939 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2940 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2941 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2942 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2943 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2945 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2946 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2947 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2948 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2950 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2951 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2952 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2955 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2957 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2958 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2959 shared across multiple host platforms.
2961 * longjmp() handling
2963 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2964 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2965 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2966 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2970 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2971 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2976 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2977 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2978 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2980 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2982 * New machines supported (host and target)
2984 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2986 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2987 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2989 * New machines supported (target)
2991 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2995 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2996 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2997 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2999 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3000 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3001 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3002 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3003 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3006 * New features for SVR4
3008 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3009 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3010 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3012 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3013 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3014 it prints the address mappings of the process.
3016 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3017 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3019 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3021 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3022 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3023 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3024 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3025 same code linked statically.
3029 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3030 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3031 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3032 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3033 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3034 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3038 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3039 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3040 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3043 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3045 * New machines supported (host and target)
3047 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3048 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3049 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3051 * Almost SCO Unix support
3053 We had hoped to support:
3054 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3055 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3056 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3057 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3059 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3061 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3062 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3063 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3064 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3069 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3070 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3071 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3075 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3076 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3077 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3079 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3081 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3082 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3083 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3085 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3086 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3087 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3088 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3091 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3092 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3093 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3094 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3097 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3098 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3101 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3102 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3103 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3106 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3108 * Improved configuration
3110 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3111 Porting BFD is simpler.
3115 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3116 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3117 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3118 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3122 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3124 * New host supported (not target)
3126 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3129 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3131 * Multiple source language support
3133 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3134 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3135 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3136 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3137 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3138 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3142 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3143 currently under development at the State University of New York at
3144 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3145 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3147 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3148 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3149 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3151 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3152 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3156 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3157 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3158 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3159 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3162 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3164 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3165 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3166 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3167 examining core files.
3171 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3174 * New machines supported (host and target)
3176 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3177 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3178 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3180 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3182 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3184 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3186 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3187 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3188 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3190 * New remote interfaces
3196 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3200 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3202 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3203 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3204 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3205 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3206 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3207 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3208 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3209 stub on the target system.
3211 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3213 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3214 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3215 object file types such as a.out and coff.
3217 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3218 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3221 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3223 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3224 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3226 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3227 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3228 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3230 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3231 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3232 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3233 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3235 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3236 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3237 it is already running. Default is ON.
3239 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3240 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3241 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3242 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3245 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3246 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3247 or the value of the environment variable
3250 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3251 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3254 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3255 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3256 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3258 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3259 history expansion will be performed on
3260 command line input. The default is OFF.
3262 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3263 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3264 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3266 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3267 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3268 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3271 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3272 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3273 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3276 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3277 ``set width'' instead.
3279 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3280 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3281 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3282 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3284 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3287 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3290 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3293 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3296 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3298 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3299 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3300 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3304 * Support for Shared Libraries
3306 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3307 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3308 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3309 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3310 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3311 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3312 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3313 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3315 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3316 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3317 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3319 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3324 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3325 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3326 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3327 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3328 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3329 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3331 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3333 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3335 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3336 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3337 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3340 * C++ multiple inheritance
3342 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3345 * C++ exception handling
3347 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3348 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3349 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3352 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3353 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3354 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3356 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3357 current stack frame.
3360 * Minor command changes
3362 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3363 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3364 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3366 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3367 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3368 frames without printing.
3370 * New directory command
3372 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3373 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3374 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3375 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3376 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3378 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3380 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3383 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3384 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3385 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3386 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob