1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.7
6 * New native configurations
8 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
12 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
14 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
16 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
17 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
18 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
19 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
23 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
24 show print frame-arguments
25 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
26 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
28 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
29 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
31 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
34 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
35 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
36 and in inlined functions.
38 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
39 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
40 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
42 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
44 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
45 registers on PowerPC targets.
47 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
48 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
50 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
51 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
53 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
54 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
55 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
56 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
58 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
59 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
67 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
74 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
83 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
85 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
87 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
88 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
89 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
91 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
92 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
93 -Bsymbolic linker option.
95 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
96 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
99 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
100 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
102 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
103 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
105 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
107 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
108 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
109 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
111 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
112 automatically displayed as character or string data.
114 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
115 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
118 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
119 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
120 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
122 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
125 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
126 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
127 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
129 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
131 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
133 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
134 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
135 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
137 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
138 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
140 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
141 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
142 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
143 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
144 Windows and SymbianOS).
146 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
147 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
149 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
150 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
156 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
157 when debugging using remote targets.
159 set mem inaccessible-by-default
160 show mem inaccessible-by-default
161 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
162 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
163 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
164 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
165 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
167 set breakpoint auto-hw
168 show breakpoint auto-hw
169 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
170 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
171 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
172 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
173 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
174 including "next" and "finish".
177 catch exception unhandled
178 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
181 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
185 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
186 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
187 an alias to "set sysroot".
190 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
191 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
194 * New native configurations
196 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
201 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
202 not query the target for its built-in description.
206 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
207 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
208 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
213 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
214 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
217 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
222 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
223 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
225 qXfer:libraries:read:
226 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
227 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
228 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
229 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
233 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
242 i[34567]86-*-netware*
243 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
244 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
246 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
249 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
250 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
259 * Other removed features
266 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
273 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
278 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
279 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
284 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
285 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
287 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
289 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
290 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
291 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
292 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
296 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
297 in debugging information.
301 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
302 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
304 set mips stack-arg-size
305 set mips saved-gpreg-size
307 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
309 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
314 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
316 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
317 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
318 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
320 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
321 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
324 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
325 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
327 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
328 stub provides the required support.
330 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
331 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
336 unset substitute-path
338 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
339 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
340 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
341 between compilation and debugging.
345 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
346 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
347 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
351 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
353 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
354 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
356 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
361 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
362 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
363 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
364 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
368 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
369 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
371 qXfer:memory-map:read:
372 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
373 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
378 Erase and program a flash memory device.
380 * Removed remote packets
383 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
384 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
386 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
390 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
392 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
396 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
397 only if it doesn't already have a value.
399 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
401 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
403 restart <n> Return the program state to a
404 previously saved state.
406 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
408 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
410 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
411 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
413 info forks List forks of the user program that
414 are available to be debugged.
416 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
417 forks of the user program that are
418 available to be debugged.
420 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
421 that are available to be debugged (and
422 kill the forked process).
424 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
425 that are available to be debugged (and
426 allow the process to continue).
430 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
432 * Improved Windows host support
434 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
435 native console support, and remote communications using either
436 network sockets or serial ports.
438 * Improved Modula-2 language support
440 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
441 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
442 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
443 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
444 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
445 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
449 The ARM rdi-share module.
451 The Netware NLM debug server.
453 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
455 * New native configurations
457 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
458 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
462 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
464 * New command line options
466 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
467 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
468 the child (debugged) program exited with.
469 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
470 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
471 specified multiple times and in conjunction
472 with the --command (-x) option.
474 * Deprecated commands removed
476 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
480 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
481 othernames set arm disassembler
482 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
483 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
484 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
487 * New BSD user-level threads support
489 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
490 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
493 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
494 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
495 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
497 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
498 are not yet supported.
500 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
501 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
503 * REMOVED configurations and files
505 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
506 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
507 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
509 * New "set print array-indexes" command
511 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
512 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
515 * VAX floating point support
517 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
519 * User-defined command support
521 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
522 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
523 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
525 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
527 * New command line option
529 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
532 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
534 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
535 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
536 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
537 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
538 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
540 * Internationalization
542 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
543 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
544 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
548 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
549 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
550 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
552 * New native configurations
554 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
558 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
559 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
561 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
563 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
564 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
565 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
568 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
569 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
570 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
582 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
583 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
585 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
587 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
588 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
589 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
599 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
601 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
603 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
604 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
607 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
609 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
610 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
611 IRIX long double values).
615 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
616 command. This problem has been fixed.
618 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
620 * Fix for ``many threads''
622 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
623 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
626 ptrace: No such process.
627 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
629 This problem has been fixed.
631 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
633 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
636 * New ``start'' command.
638 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
640 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
642 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
643 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
644 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
646 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
647 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
648 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
649 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
650 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
651 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
652 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
653 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
654 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
656 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
658 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
659 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
660 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
661 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
662 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
664 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
665 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
666 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
668 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
670 * New native configurations
672 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
673 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
674 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
675 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
676 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
677 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
678 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
680 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
682 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
683 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
684 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
685 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
686 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
687 work, was also included.
689 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
690 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
700 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
701 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
703 * REMOVED configurations and files
705 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
706 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
707 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
708 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
709 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
710 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
711 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
712 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
713 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
715 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
717 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
719 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
721 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
722 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
723 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
724 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
727 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
729 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
730 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
731 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
732 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
733 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
734 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
737 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
739 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
741 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
742 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
743 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
745 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
747 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
748 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
750 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
752 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
753 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
754 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
756 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
758 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
759 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
761 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
763 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
764 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
765 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
767 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
769 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
770 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
771 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
773 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
775 * Removed --with-mmalloc
777 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
778 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
780 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
782 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
783 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
784 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
785 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
787 * Revised SPARC target
789 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
790 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
791 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
792 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
793 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
797 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
798 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
799 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
802 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
804 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
805 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
808 * C++ nested types and namespaces
810 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
811 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
812 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
813 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
814 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
815 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
816 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
817 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
818 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
820 * New native configurations
822 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
823 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
824 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
825 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
826 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
828 * New debugging protocols
830 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
832 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
834 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
835 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
836 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
838 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
840 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
841 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
842 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
845 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
846 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
847 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
848 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
849 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
850 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
851 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
852 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
853 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
855 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
857 * REMOVED configurations and files
859 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
860 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
861 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
862 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
863 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
864 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
865 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
866 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
867 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
868 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
869 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
870 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
871 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
872 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
873 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
874 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
875 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
877 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
881 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
884 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
886 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
887 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
888 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
891 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
892 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
897 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
898 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
899 remote protocol documentation for details.
901 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
903 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
904 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
905 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
908 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
910 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
911 per-thread variables.
913 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
915 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
916 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
918 * Separate debug info.
920 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
921 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
922 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
923 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
924 and optional debug files.
926 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
928 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
929 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
932 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
933 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
937 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
938 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
939 considered "useable".
941 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
943 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
944 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
947 * GDB supports logging output to a file
949 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
950 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
952 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
954 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
955 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
958 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
960 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
961 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
965 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
966 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
967 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
968 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
969 data, for more informative profiling results.
971 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
973 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
974 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
975 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
977 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
980 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
981 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
982 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
983 in a subsequent -var-update.
985 * New native configurations.
987 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
989 * Multi-arched targets.
991 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
992 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
994 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
996 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
997 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
998 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1001 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1002 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1003 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1004 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1005 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1006 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1007 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1008 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1009 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1010 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1011 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1012 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1014 * REMOVED configurations and files
1017 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1018 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1019 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1020 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1021 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1022 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1024 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1025 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1026 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1027 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1028 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1029 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1031 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
1033 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1034 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1035 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1036 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1037 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1039 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
1041 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1043 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1044 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1045 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1046 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1047 shared libs like mad''.
1049 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
1051 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1052 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1053 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1054 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
1056 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1058 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1059 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1062 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1063 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1065 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1066 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1068 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1069 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1070 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1071 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1073 * Multi-arched targets.
1075 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1076 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
1078 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
1079 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1080 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1084 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1087 * New native configurations
1089 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
1090 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
1091 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
1092 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
1094 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1096 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1097 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1098 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1099 permanently REMOVED.
1101 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1102 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1103 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1104 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1105 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1106 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1107 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1108 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1109 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1110 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1112 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1113 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1115 * OBSOLETE languages
1117 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1119 * REMOVED configurations and files
1121 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1122 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1123 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1124 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1125 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1127 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1129 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1131 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1132 commands. The default is 1024.
1134 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1136 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1138 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1140 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1141 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1142 from a file into memory (restore).
1144 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1146 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1147 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1148 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1150 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1158 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1159 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1160 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1162 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1163 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1164 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1166 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1167 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1168 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1170 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1171 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1172 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1174 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
1176 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1178 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1179 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1180 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1181 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1182 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1183 (notably embedded) targets.
1185 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1187 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1188 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1189 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1190 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
1192 * New command line option
1194 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1196 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1198 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1199 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1200 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1201 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1202 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1203 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1204 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1205 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1206 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1207 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1209 * Changes in ARM configurations.
1211 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1212 configuration is fully multi-arch.
1214 * New native configurations
1216 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
1217 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
1218 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
1219 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
1223 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1225 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1227 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1228 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1229 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1230 permanently REMOVED.
1232 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1233 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1234 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1235 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1236 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1238 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1240 * REMOVED configurations and files
1242 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1244 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1245 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1246 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1247 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1248 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1249 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1250 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1251 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1252 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1253 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1254 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
1256 * Changes to command line processing
1258 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1259 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1261 * Changes to key bindings
1263 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1265 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1267 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1269 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1272 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1274 Numerous documentation fixes.
1276 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1278 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1280 * New native configurations
1282 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1283 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1284 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1285 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1286 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1287 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1291 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1293 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1295 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1297 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1298 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1299 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1300 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1301 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1303 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1304 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1305 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1306 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1307 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1308 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1309 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1310 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1312 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1313 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1315 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1316 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1317 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1318 permanently REMOVED.
1320 * REMOVED configurations and files
1322 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1323 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1325 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1329 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1331 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1332 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1337 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1339 * The MI enabled by default.
1341 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1342 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1343 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1344 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1345 which is now deprecated.
1347 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1349 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1350 main features are supported:
1352 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1354 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1357 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1359 - a Pascal expression parser.
1361 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1363 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1365 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1367 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1368 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1370 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1372 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1374 * Changes in completion.
1376 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1377 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1378 users expect at the shell prompt.
1380 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1381 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1382 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1383 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1384 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1385 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1386 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1388 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1390 * New platform-independent commands:
1392 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1393 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1394 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1396 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1398 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1399 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1400 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1402 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1404 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1405 multi-threaded programs though.
1407 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1409 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1411 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1412 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1415 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1417 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1418 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1419 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1420 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1421 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1424 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1425 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1426 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1428 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1430 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1431 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1433 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1434 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1437 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1438 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1439 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1440 a given linear address.
1442 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1443 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1444 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1446 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1448 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1450 * Changes in documentation.
1452 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1453 Documentation License.
1455 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1458 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1460 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1463 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1464 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1465 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1467 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1469 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1470 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1471 contents of this file.
1475 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1477 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1479 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1481 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1482 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1483 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1484 greater level of detail.
1486 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1488 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1489 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1490 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1493 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1495 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1496 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1497 machines ``out of the box''.
1499 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1500 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1501 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1502 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1503 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1505 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1506 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1507 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1508 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1509 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1511 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1512 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1515 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1518 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1519 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1520 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1521 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1523 * New native configurations
1525 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1526 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1530 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1531 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1532 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1533 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1535 * OBSOLETE configurations
1537 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1538 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1540 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1543 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1544 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1545 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1546 be permanently REMOVED.
1548 * Gould support removed
1550 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1552 * New features for SVR4
1554 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1555 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1556 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1558 * Many C++ enhancements
1560 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1561 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1563 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1565 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1566 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1567 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1568 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1570 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1571 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1573 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1575 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1576 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1577 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1579 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1580 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1582 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1584 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1585 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1586 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1588 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1590 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1591 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1592 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1594 * ``apropos'' command added.
1596 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1597 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1598 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1602 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1603 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1604 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1605 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1606 enabled by configuring with:
1608 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1610 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1612 * New native configurations
1614 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1615 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1616 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1620 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1621 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1622 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1624 * OBSOLETE configurations
1626 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1628 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1629 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1630 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1631 be permanently REMOVED.
1635 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1636 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1637 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1638 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1639 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1640 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1641 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1646 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1648 * set extension-language
1650 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1651 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1652 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1653 set extension-language .c c++
1654 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1655 and their associated languages.
1657 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1659 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1660 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1661 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1665 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1666 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1668 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1669 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1671 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1672 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1673 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1674 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1675 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1676 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1677 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1678 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1680 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1681 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1682 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1683 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1687 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1688 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1689 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1690 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1691 for xdb and dbx commands.
1695 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1696 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1697 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1699 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1700 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1701 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1703 * Debugging across forks
1705 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1710 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1711 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1712 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1714 * GDB remote protocol additions
1716 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1717 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1718 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1719 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1721 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1722 full 64-bit address. The command
1724 set remoteaddresssize 32
1726 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1727 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1730 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1731 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1733 maint packet heythere
1735 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1736 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1739 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1740 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1741 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1743 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1745 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1746 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1747 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1749 * mask-address variable for Mips
1751 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1752 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1753 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1755 * Higher serial baud rates
1757 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1758 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1759 to achieve all of these rates.)
1763 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1764 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1767 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1769 * New native configurations
1771 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1772 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1773 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1774 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1775 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1776 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1777 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1781 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1782 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1783 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1784 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1785 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1786 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1787 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1788 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1789 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1790 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1791 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1793 * New debugging protocols
1795 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1796 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1797 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1798 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1799 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1800 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1804 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1805 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1810 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1811 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1813 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1815 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1816 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1817 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1819 * Live range splitting
1821 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1822 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1823 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1827 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1828 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1832 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1833 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1834 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1839 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1844 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1845 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1846 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1847 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1848 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1849 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1853 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1854 the symbol at the specified address.
1858 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1859 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1860 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1861 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1862 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1866 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1867 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1868 of most MIPS variants.
1872 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1873 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1874 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1878 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1879 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1880 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1881 the possible architectures.
1883 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1885 * New native configurations
1887 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1888 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1889 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1890 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1891 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1892 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1896 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1897 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1898 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1899 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1900 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1902 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1906 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1907 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1908 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1909 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1910 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1914 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1916 * Windows 95/NT native
1918 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1919 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1920 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1921 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1922 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1924 * dont-repeat command
1926 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1927 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1928 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1929 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1931 * Send break instead of ^C
1933 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1934 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1935 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1937 * Remote protocol timeout
1939 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1940 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1941 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1943 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1945 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1946 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1947 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1948 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1949 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1951 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1952 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1953 automatically on hpux10.
1955 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1957 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1959 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1961 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1962 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1963 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1964 every character. The default value is 1050.
1966 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1968 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1969 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1970 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1971 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1972 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1973 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1975 * Speedups for remote debugging
1977 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1978 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1979 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1981 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1983 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1984 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1986 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1988 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1990 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1991 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1993 * Remote targets use caching
1995 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1996 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1997 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1998 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1999 off' turns the the data cache off.
2001 * Remote targets may have threads
2003 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2004 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2005 gdb/remote.c for details.
2009 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2010 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2011 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2012 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2013 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2014 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2015 sequence is something like
2017 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2019 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2023 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2024 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2025 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2026 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2027 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2028 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2029 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2030 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2034 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2035 but does simplify configuration and building.
2039 GDB now supports hpux10.
2041 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2043 * New native configurations
2045 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2046 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2047 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2048 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2052 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2053 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2054 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2055 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2058 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2060 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2061 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2062 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2063 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2064 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2066 * Arguments to user-defined commands
2068 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2069 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2072 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2074 To execute the command use:
2077 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2078 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2079 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2081 * New `if' and `while' commands
2083 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2084 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2085 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2086 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2087 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2088 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2089 if the expression is zero.
2091 * Fortran source language mode
2093 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2094 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2095 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2096 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2099 * Better HPUX support
2101 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2102 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2103 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2104 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2105 that behavior do the following before running the program:
2111 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2112 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2118 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2119 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2122 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2123 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2125 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2127 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2128 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2129 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2130 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2131 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2132 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2134 * New DOS host serial code
2136 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2137 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2140 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2142 * New "complete" command
2144 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2145 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2147 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2149 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2150 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2152 * Breakpoint hit counts
2154 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2155 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2156 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2157 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2158 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2161 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2163 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2164 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2165 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2167 * Shared library breakpoints
2169 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2170 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2172 * Hardware watchpoints
2174 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2175 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2177 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
2181 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2182 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2184 * Improved Irix 5 support
2186 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2188 * Improved HPPA support
2190 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2192 * New native configurations
2194 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2195 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2196 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2197 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2201 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2202 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2205 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2207 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2208 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2212 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2213 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2215 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2217 * Irix 5 is now supported
2221 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2222 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2223 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2224 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2225 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2228 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2230 * User visible changes:
2234 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2235 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2236 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2237 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2238 debugging info for the mips target).
2240 * DEC Alpha native support
2242 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2243 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2244 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2245 Alpha-specific notes.
2247 * Preliminary thread implementation
2249 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2251 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
2253 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2254 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2257 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2259 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2260 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2261 call methods, ...etc.
2263 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2265 * User visible changes:
2267 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2268 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2269 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2270 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2272 Filename completion now works.
2274 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2275 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2276 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2278 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2279 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2280 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2281 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2282 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2286 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2287 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2290 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2294 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2295 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2296 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2300 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2301 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2302 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2303 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2304 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2308 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2309 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2310 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2312 * New targets supported
2314 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2315 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2316 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2317 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2318 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2320 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2321 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2322 GO32 memory extender.
2324 * New remote protocols
2326 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2328 * New source languages supported
2330 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2331 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2332 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2335 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2337 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2339 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2340 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2341 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2342 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2343 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2344 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2346 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2348 * Faster and better demangling
2350 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2351 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2352 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2353 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2354 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2355 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2358 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2359 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2360 compiler does not actually implement.
2362 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2364 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2365 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2366 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2367 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2368 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2369 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2372 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2373 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2375 * Improved configure script
2377 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2378 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2379 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2380 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2382 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2383 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2384 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2385 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2386 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2387 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2389 * Documentation improvements
2391 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2392 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2393 before submitting changes.
2395 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2396 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2397 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2398 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2399 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2401 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2402 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2403 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2404 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2405 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2406 around this problem.
2410 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2411 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2412 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2415 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2416 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2418 * New native hosts supported
2420 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2421 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2423 * New targets supported
2425 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2427 * New file formats supported
2429 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2430 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2434 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2436 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2437 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2439 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2440 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2441 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2443 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2444 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2446 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2447 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2448 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2451 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2452 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2453 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2454 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2455 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2457 * Internal improvements
2459 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2460 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2462 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2463 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2464 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2465 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2466 shared code that handles any of them.
2468 * New command line options
2470 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2474 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2475 General Public License.
2477 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2479 * Host/native/target split
2481 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2482 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2483 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2484 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2485 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2487 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2488 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2489 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2490 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2491 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2492 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2493 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2495 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2496 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2497 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2499 * New hosts supported
2501 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2502 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2503 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2505 * New targets supported
2507 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2508 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2510 * New native hosts supported
2512 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2513 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2514 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2516 * New file formats supported
2518 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2519 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2520 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2524 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2525 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2526 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2528 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2530 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2531 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2532 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2533 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2537 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2538 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2539 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2541 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2545 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2546 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2549 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2550 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2552 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2553 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2554 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2555 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2556 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2557 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2559 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2560 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2561 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2562 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2566 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2567 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2568 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2569 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2570 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2572 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2573 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2574 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2575 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2579 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2580 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2581 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2582 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2583 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2584 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2585 each instruction being stepped through.
2587 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2588 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2590 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2591 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2592 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2593 processor with a serial port.
2597 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2598 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2599 supported, and what files each one uses.
2603 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2604 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2605 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2606 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2608 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2609 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2610 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2611 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2615 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2616 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2617 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2618 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2619 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2620 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2622 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2625 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2627 * Better support for C++ function names
2629 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2630 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2631 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2632 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2633 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2635 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2636 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2637 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2638 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2639 for the list of formats.
2641 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2643 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2644 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2645 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2646 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2647 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2648 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2651 * New 'maintenance' command
2653 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2654 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2655 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2657 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2658 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2659 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2660 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2661 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2662 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2664 The following commands are new:
2666 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2667 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2668 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2670 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2672 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2673 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2674 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2675 read after argv processing.
2677 * New hosts supported
2679 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2681 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2683 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2684 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2685 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2686 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2687 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2690 * New targets supported
2692 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2694 * More smarts about finding #include files
2696 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2697 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2698 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2699 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2700 the one that contains your sources.
2702 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2703 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2704 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2706 * Interesting infernals change
2708 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2709 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2710 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2711 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2713 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2715 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2716 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2717 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2719 See the ChangeLog for details.
2721 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2723 * New machines supported (host and target)
2725 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2727 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2729 * New malloc package
2731 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2732 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2733 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2734 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2735 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2736 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2740 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2741 'help info proc' for details.
2743 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2745 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2746 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2749 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2751 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2752 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2753 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2754 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2755 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2756 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2758 * Cross byte order fixes
2760 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2761 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2763 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2765 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2766 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2767 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2768 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2769 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2770 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2771 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2772 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2773 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2774 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2776 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2777 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2778 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2779 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2781 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2782 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2783 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2786 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2788 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2789 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2790 shared across multiple host platforms.
2792 * longjmp() handling
2794 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2795 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2796 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2797 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2801 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2802 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2807 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2808 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2809 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2811 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2813 * New machines supported (host and target)
2815 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2817 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2818 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2820 * New machines supported (target)
2822 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2826 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2827 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2828 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2830 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2831 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2832 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2833 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2834 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2837 * New features for SVR4
2839 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2840 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2841 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2843 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2844 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2845 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2847 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2848 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2850 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2852 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2853 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2854 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2855 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2856 same code linked statically.
2860 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2861 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2862 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2863 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2864 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2865 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2869 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2870 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2871 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2874 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2876 * New machines supported (host and target)
2878 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2879 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2880 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2882 * Almost SCO Unix support
2884 We had hoped to support:
2885 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2886 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2887 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2888 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2890 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2892 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2893 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2894 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2895 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2900 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2901 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2902 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2906 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2907 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2908 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2910 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2912 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2913 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2914 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2916 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2917 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2918 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2919 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2922 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2923 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2924 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2925 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2928 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2929 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2932 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2933 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2934 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2937 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2939 * Improved configuration
2941 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2942 Porting BFD is simpler.
2946 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2947 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2948 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2949 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2953 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2955 * New host supported (not target)
2957 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2960 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2962 * Multiple source language support
2964 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2965 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2966 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2967 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2968 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2969 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2973 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2974 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2975 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2976 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2978 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2979 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2980 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2982 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2983 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2987 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2988 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2989 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2990 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2993 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2995 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2996 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2997 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2998 examining core files.
3002 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3005 * New machines supported (host and target)
3007 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3008 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3009 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3011 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3013 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3015 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3017 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3018 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3019 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3021 * New remote interfaces
3027 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3031 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3033 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3034 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3035 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3036 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3037 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3038 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3039 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3040 stub on the target system.
3042 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3044 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3045 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3046 object file types such as a.out and coff.
3048 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3049 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3052 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3054 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3055 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3057 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3058 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3059 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3061 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3062 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3063 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3064 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3066 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3067 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3068 it is already running. Default is ON.
3070 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3071 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3072 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3073 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3076 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3077 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3078 or the value of the environment variable
3081 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3082 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3085 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3086 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3087 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3089 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3090 history expansion will be performed on
3091 command line input. The default is OFF.
3093 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3094 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3095 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3097 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3098 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3099 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3102 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3103 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3104 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3107 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3108 ``set width'' instead.
3110 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3111 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3112 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3113 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3115 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3118 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3121 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3124 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3127 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3129 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3130 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3131 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3135 * Support for Shared Libraries
3137 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3138 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3139 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3140 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3141 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3142 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3143 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3144 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3146 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3147 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3148 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3150 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3155 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3156 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3157 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3158 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3159 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3160 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3162 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3164 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3166 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3167 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3168 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3171 * C++ multiple inheritance
3173 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3176 * C++ exception handling
3178 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3179 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3180 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3183 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3184 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3185 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3187 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3188 current stack frame.
3191 * Minor command changes
3193 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3194 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3195 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3197 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3198 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3199 frames without printing.
3201 * New directory command
3203 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3204 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3205 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3206 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3207 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3209 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3211 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3214 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3215 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3216 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3217 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob