1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.6
6 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
7 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
9 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
10 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
12 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
14 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
15 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
16 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
18 * Arrays of explicitly SIGNED or UNSIGNED CHARs are now printed as arrays
21 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
22 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
25 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
28 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
29 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
30 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
34 set mem inaccessible-by-default
35 show mem inaccessible-by-default
36 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
37 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
38 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
39 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
40 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
42 set breakpoint auto-hw
43 show breakpoint auto-hw
44 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
45 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
46 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
47 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
48 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
49 including "next" and "finish".
52 catch exception unhandled
53 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
56 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
60 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
61 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
62 an alias to "set sysroot".
64 * New native configurations
66 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
71 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
72 not query the target for its built-in description.
76 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
77 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
78 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
83 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
84 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
87 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
92 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
100 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
101 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
103 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
106 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
107 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
116 * Other removed features
123 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
130 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
135 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
136 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
141 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
142 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
144 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
146 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
147 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
148 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
149 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
153 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
154 in debugging information.
158 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
159 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
161 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
166 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
168 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
169 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
170 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
172 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
173 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
176 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
177 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
179 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
180 stub provides the required support.
182 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
183 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
188 unset substitute-path
190 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
191 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
192 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
193 between compilation and debugging.
197 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
198 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
199 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
203 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
205 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
206 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
208 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
213 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
214 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
215 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
216 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
220 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
221 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
223 qXfer:memory-map:read:
224 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
225 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
230 Erase and program a flash memory device.
232 * Removed remote packets
235 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
236 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
238 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
242 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
244 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
248 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
249 only if it doesn't already have a value.
251 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
253 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
255 restart <n> Return the program state to a
256 previously saved state.
258 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
260 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
262 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
263 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
265 info forks List forks of the user program that
266 are available to be debugged.
268 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
269 forks of the user program that are
270 available to be debugged.
272 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
273 that are available to be debugged (and
274 kill the forked process).
276 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
277 that are available to be debugged (and
278 allow the process to continue).
282 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
284 * Improved Windows host support
286 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
287 native console support, and remote communications using either
288 network sockets or serial ports.
290 * Improved Modula-2 language support
292 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
293 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
294 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
295 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
296 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
297 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
301 The ARM rdi-share module.
303 The Netware NLM debug server.
305 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
307 * New native configurations
309 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
310 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
314 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
316 * New command line options
318 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
319 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
320 the child (debugged) program exited with.
321 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
322 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
323 specified multiple times and in conjunction
324 with the --command (-x) option.
326 * Deprecated commands removed
328 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
332 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
333 othernames set arm disassembler
334 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
335 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
336 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
339 * New BSD user-level threads support
341 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
342 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
345 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
346 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
347 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
349 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
350 are not yet supported.
352 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
353 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
355 * REMOVED configurations and files
357 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
358 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
359 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
361 * New "set print array-indexes" command
363 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
364 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
367 * VAX floating point support
369 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
371 * User-defined command support
373 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
374 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
375 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
377 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
379 * New command line option
381 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
384 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
386 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
387 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
388 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
389 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
390 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
392 * Internationalization
394 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
395 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
396 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
400 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
401 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
402 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
404 * New native configurations
406 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
410 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
411 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
413 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
415 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
416 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
417 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
420 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
421 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
422 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
434 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
435 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
437 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
439 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
440 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
441 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
451 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
453 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
455 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
456 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
459 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
461 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
462 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
463 IRIX long double values).
467 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
468 command. This problem has been fixed.
470 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
472 * Fix for ``many threads''
474 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
475 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
478 ptrace: No such process.
479 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
481 This problem has been fixed.
483 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
485 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
488 * New ``start'' command.
490 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
492 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
494 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
495 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
496 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
498 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
499 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
500 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
501 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
502 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
503 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
504 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
505 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
506 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
508 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
510 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
511 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
512 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
513 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
514 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
516 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
517 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
518 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
520 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
522 * New native configurations
524 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
525 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
526 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
527 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
528 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
529 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
530 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
532 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
534 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
535 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
536 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
537 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
538 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
539 work, was also included.
541 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
542 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
552 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
553 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
555 * REMOVED configurations and files
557 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
558 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
559 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
560 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
561 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
562 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
563 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
564 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
565 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
567 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
569 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
571 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
573 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
574 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
575 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
576 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
579 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
581 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
582 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
583 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
584 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
585 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
586 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
589 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
591 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
593 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
594 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
595 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
597 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
599 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
600 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
602 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
604 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
605 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
606 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
608 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
610 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
611 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
613 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
615 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
616 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
617 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
619 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
621 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
622 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
623 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
625 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
627 * Removed --with-mmalloc
629 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
630 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
632 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
634 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
635 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
636 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
637 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
639 * Revised SPARC target
641 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
642 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
643 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
644 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
645 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
649 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
650 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
651 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
654 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
656 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
657 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
660 * C++ nested types and namespaces
662 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
663 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
664 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
665 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
666 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
667 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
668 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
669 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
670 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
672 * New native configurations
674 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
675 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
676 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
677 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
678 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
680 * New debugging protocols
682 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
684 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
686 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
687 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
688 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
690 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
692 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
693 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
694 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
697 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
698 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
699 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
700 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
701 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
702 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
703 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
704 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
705 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
707 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
709 * REMOVED configurations and files
711 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
712 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
713 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
714 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
715 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
716 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
717 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
718 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
719 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
720 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
721 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
722 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
723 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
724 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
725 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
726 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
727 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
729 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
733 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
736 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
738 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
739 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
740 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
743 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
744 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
749 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
750 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
751 remote protocol documentation for details.
753 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
755 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
756 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
757 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
760 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
762 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
763 per-thread variables.
765 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
767 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
768 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
770 * Separate debug info.
772 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
773 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
774 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
775 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
776 and optional debug files.
778 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
780 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
781 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
784 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
785 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
789 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
790 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
791 considered "useable".
793 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
795 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
796 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
799 * GDB supports logging output to a file
801 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
802 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
804 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
806 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
807 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
810 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
812 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
813 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
817 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
818 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
819 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
820 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
821 data, for more informative profiling results.
823 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
825 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
826 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
827 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
829 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
832 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
833 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
834 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
835 in a subsequent -var-update.
837 * New native configurations.
839 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
841 * Multi-arched targets.
843 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
844 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
846 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
848 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
849 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
850 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
853 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
854 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
855 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
856 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
857 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
858 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
859 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
860 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
861 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
862 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
863 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
864 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
866 * REMOVED configurations and files
869 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
870 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
871 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
872 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
873 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
874 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
876 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
877 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
878 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
879 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
880 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
881 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
883 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
885 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
886 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
887 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
888 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
889 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
891 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
893 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
895 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
896 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
897 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
898 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
899 shared libs like mad''.
901 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
903 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
904 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
905 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
906 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
908 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
910 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
911 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
914 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
915 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
917 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
918 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
920 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
921 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
922 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
923 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
925 * Multi-arched targets.
927 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
928 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
930 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
931 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
932 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
936 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
939 * New native configurations
941 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
942 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
943 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
944 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
946 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
948 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
949 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
950 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
953 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
954 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
955 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
956 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
957 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
958 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
959 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
960 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
961 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
962 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
964 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
965 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
969 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
971 * REMOVED configurations and files
973 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
974 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
975 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
976 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
977 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
979 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
981 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
983 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
984 commands. The default is 1024.
986 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
988 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
990 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
992 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
993 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
994 from a file into memory (restore).
996 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
998 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
999 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1000 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1002 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1010 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1011 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1012 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1014 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1015 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1016 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1018 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1019 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1020 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1022 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1023 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1024 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1026 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
1028 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1030 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1031 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1032 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1033 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1034 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1035 (notably embedded) targets.
1037 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1039 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1040 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1041 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1042 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
1044 * New command line option
1046 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1048 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1050 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1051 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1052 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1053 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1054 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1055 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1056 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1057 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1058 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1059 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1061 * Changes in ARM configurations.
1063 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1064 configuration is fully multi-arch.
1066 * New native configurations
1068 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
1069 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
1070 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
1071 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
1075 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1077 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1079 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1080 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1081 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1082 permanently REMOVED.
1084 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1085 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1086 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1087 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1088 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1090 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1092 * REMOVED configurations and files
1094 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1096 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1097 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1098 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1099 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1100 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1101 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1102 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1103 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1104 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1105 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1106 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
1108 * Changes to command line processing
1110 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1111 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1113 * Changes to key bindings
1115 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1117 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1119 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1121 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1124 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1126 Numerous documentation fixes.
1128 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1130 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1132 * New native configurations
1134 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1135 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1136 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1137 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1138 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1139 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1143 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1145 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1147 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1149 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1150 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1151 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1152 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1153 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1155 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1156 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1157 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1158 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1159 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1160 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1161 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1162 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1164 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1165 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1167 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1168 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1169 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1170 permanently REMOVED.
1172 * REMOVED configurations and files
1174 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1175 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1177 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1181 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1183 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1184 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1189 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1191 * The MI enabled by default.
1193 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1194 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1195 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1196 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1197 which is now deprecated.
1199 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1201 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1202 main features are supported:
1204 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1206 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1209 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1211 - a Pascal expression parser.
1213 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1215 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1217 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1219 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1220 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1222 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1224 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1226 * Changes in completion.
1228 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1229 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1230 users expect at the shell prompt.
1232 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1233 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1234 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1235 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1236 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1237 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1238 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1240 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1242 * New platform-independent commands:
1244 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1245 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1246 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1248 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1250 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1251 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1252 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1254 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1256 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1257 multi-threaded programs though.
1259 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1261 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1263 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1264 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1267 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1269 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1270 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1271 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1272 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1273 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1276 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1277 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1278 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1280 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1282 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1283 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1285 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1286 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1289 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1290 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1291 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1292 a given linear address.
1294 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1295 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1296 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1298 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1300 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1302 * Changes in documentation.
1304 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1305 Documentation License.
1307 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1310 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1312 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1315 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1316 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1317 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1319 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1321 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1322 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1323 contents of this file.
1327 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1329 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1331 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1333 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1334 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1335 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1336 greater level of detail.
1338 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1340 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1341 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1342 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1345 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1347 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1348 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1349 machines ``out of the box''.
1351 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1352 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1353 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1354 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1355 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1357 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1358 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1359 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1360 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1361 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1363 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1364 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1367 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1370 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1371 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1372 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1373 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1375 * New native configurations
1377 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1378 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1382 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1383 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1384 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1385 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1387 * OBSOLETE configurations
1389 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1390 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1392 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1395 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1396 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1397 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1398 be permanently REMOVED.
1400 * Gould support removed
1402 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1404 * New features for SVR4
1406 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1407 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1408 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1410 * Many C++ enhancements
1412 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1413 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1415 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1417 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1418 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1419 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1420 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1422 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1423 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1425 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1427 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1428 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1429 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1431 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1432 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1434 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1436 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1437 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1438 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1440 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1442 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1443 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1444 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1446 * ``apropos'' command added.
1448 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1449 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1450 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1454 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1455 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1456 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1457 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1458 enabled by configuring with:
1460 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1462 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1464 * New native configurations
1466 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1467 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1468 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1472 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1473 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1474 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1476 * OBSOLETE configurations
1478 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1480 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1481 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1482 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1483 be permanently REMOVED.
1487 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1488 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1489 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1490 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1491 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1492 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1493 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1498 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1500 * set extension-language
1502 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1503 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1504 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1505 set extension-language .c c++
1506 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1507 and their associated languages.
1509 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1511 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1512 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1513 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1517 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1518 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1520 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1521 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1523 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1524 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1525 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1526 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1527 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1528 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1529 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1530 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1532 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1533 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1534 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1535 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1539 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1540 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1541 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1542 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1543 for xdb and dbx commands.
1547 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1548 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1549 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1551 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1552 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1553 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1555 * Debugging across forks
1557 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1562 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1563 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1564 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1566 * GDB remote protocol additions
1568 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1569 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1570 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1571 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1573 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1574 full 64-bit address. The command
1576 set remoteaddresssize 32
1578 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1579 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1582 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1583 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1585 maint packet heythere
1587 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1588 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1591 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1592 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1593 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1595 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1597 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1598 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1599 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1601 * mask-address variable for Mips
1603 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1604 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1605 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1607 * Higher serial baud rates
1609 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1610 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1611 to achieve all of these rates.)
1615 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1616 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1619 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1621 * New native configurations
1623 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1624 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1625 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1626 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1627 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1628 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1629 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1633 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1634 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1635 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1636 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1637 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1638 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1639 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1640 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1641 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1642 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1643 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1645 * New debugging protocols
1647 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1648 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1649 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1650 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1651 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1652 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1656 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1657 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1662 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1663 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1665 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1667 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1668 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1669 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1671 * Live range splitting
1673 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1674 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1675 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1679 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1680 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1684 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1685 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1686 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1691 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1696 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1697 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1698 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1699 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1700 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1701 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1705 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1706 the symbol at the specified address.
1710 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1711 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1712 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1713 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1714 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1718 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1719 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1720 of most MIPS variants.
1724 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1725 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1726 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1730 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1731 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1732 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1733 the possible architectures.
1735 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1737 * New native configurations
1739 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1740 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1741 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1742 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1743 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1744 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1748 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1749 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1750 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1751 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1752 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1754 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1758 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1759 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1760 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1761 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1762 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1766 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1768 * Windows 95/NT native
1770 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1771 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1772 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1773 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1774 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1776 * dont-repeat command
1778 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1779 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1780 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1781 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1783 * Send break instead of ^C
1785 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1786 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1787 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1789 * Remote protocol timeout
1791 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1792 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1793 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1795 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1797 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1798 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1799 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1800 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1801 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1803 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1804 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1805 automatically on hpux10.
1807 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1809 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1811 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1813 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1814 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1815 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1816 every character. The default value is 1050.
1818 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1820 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1821 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1822 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1823 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1824 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1825 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1827 * Speedups for remote debugging
1829 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1830 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1831 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1833 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1835 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1836 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1838 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1840 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1842 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1843 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1845 * Remote targets use caching
1847 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1848 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1849 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1850 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1851 off' turns the the data cache off.
1853 * Remote targets may have threads
1855 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1856 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1857 gdb/remote.c for details.
1861 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1862 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1863 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1864 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1865 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1866 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1867 sequence is something like
1869 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1871 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1875 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1876 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1877 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1878 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1879 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1880 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1881 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1882 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1886 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1887 but does simplify configuration and building.
1891 GDB now supports hpux10.
1893 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1895 * New native configurations
1897 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1898 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1899 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1900 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1904 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1905 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1906 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1907 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1910 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1912 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1913 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1914 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1915 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1916 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1918 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1920 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1921 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1924 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1926 To execute the command use:
1929 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1930 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1931 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1933 * New `if' and `while' commands
1935 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1936 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1937 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1938 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1939 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1940 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1941 if the expression is zero.
1943 * Fortran source language mode
1945 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1946 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1947 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1948 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1951 * Better HPUX support
1953 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1954 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1955 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1956 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1957 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1963 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1964 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1970 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1971 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1974 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1975 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1977 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1979 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1980 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1981 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1982 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1983 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1984 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1986 * New DOS host serial code
1988 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1989 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1992 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1994 * New "complete" command
1996 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1997 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1999 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2001 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2002 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2004 * Breakpoint hit counts
2006 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2007 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2008 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2009 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2010 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2013 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2015 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2016 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2017 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2019 * Shared library breakpoints
2021 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2022 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2024 * Hardware watchpoints
2026 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2027 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2029 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
2033 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2034 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2036 * Improved Irix 5 support
2038 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2040 * Improved HPPA support
2042 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2044 * New native configurations
2046 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2047 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2048 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2049 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2053 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2054 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2057 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2059 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2060 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2064 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2065 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2067 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2069 * Irix 5 is now supported
2073 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2074 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2075 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2076 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2077 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2080 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2082 * User visible changes:
2086 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2087 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2088 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2089 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2090 debugging info for the mips target).
2092 * DEC Alpha native support
2094 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2095 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2096 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2097 Alpha-specific notes.
2099 * Preliminary thread implementation
2101 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2103 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
2105 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2106 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2109 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2111 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2112 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2113 call methods, ...etc.
2115 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2117 * User visible changes:
2119 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2120 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2121 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2122 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2124 Filename completion now works.
2126 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2127 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2128 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2130 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2131 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2132 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2133 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2134 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2138 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2139 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2142 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2146 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2147 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2148 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2152 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2153 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2154 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2155 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2156 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2160 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2161 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2162 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2164 * New targets supported
2166 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2167 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2168 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2169 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2170 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2172 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2173 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2174 GO32 memory extender.
2176 * New remote protocols
2178 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2180 * New source languages supported
2182 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2183 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2184 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2187 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2189 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2191 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2192 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2193 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2194 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2195 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2196 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2198 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2200 * Faster and better demangling
2202 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2203 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2204 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2205 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2206 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2207 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2210 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2211 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2212 compiler does not actually implement.
2214 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2216 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2217 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2218 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2219 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2220 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2221 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2224 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2225 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2227 * Improved configure script
2229 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2230 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2231 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2232 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2234 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2235 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2236 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2237 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2238 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2239 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2241 * Documentation improvements
2243 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2244 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2245 before submitting changes.
2247 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2248 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2249 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2250 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2251 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2253 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2254 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2255 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2256 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2257 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2258 around this problem.
2262 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2263 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2264 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2267 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2268 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2270 * New native hosts supported
2272 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2273 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2275 * New targets supported
2277 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2279 * New file formats supported
2281 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2282 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2286 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2288 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2289 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2291 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2292 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2293 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2295 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2296 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2298 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2299 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2300 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2303 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2304 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2305 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2306 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2307 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2309 * Internal improvements
2311 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2312 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2314 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2315 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2316 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2317 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2318 shared code that handles any of them.
2320 * New command line options
2322 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2326 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2327 General Public License.
2329 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2331 * Host/native/target split
2333 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2334 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2335 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2336 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2337 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2339 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2340 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2341 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2342 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2343 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2344 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2345 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2347 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2348 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2349 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2351 * New hosts supported
2353 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2354 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2355 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2357 * New targets supported
2359 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2360 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2362 * New native hosts supported
2364 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2365 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2366 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2368 * New file formats supported
2370 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2371 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2372 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2376 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2377 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2378 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2380 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2382 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2383 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2384 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2385 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2389 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2390 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2391 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2393 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2397 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2398 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2401 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2402 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2404 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2405 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2406 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2407 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2408 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2409 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2411 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2412 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2413 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2414 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2418 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2419 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2420 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2421 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2422 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2424 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2425 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2426 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2427 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2431 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2432 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2433 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2434 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2435 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2436 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2437 each instruction being stepped through.
2439 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2440 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2442 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2443 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2444 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2445 processor with a serial port.
2449 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2450 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2451 supported, and what files each one uses.
2455 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2456 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2457 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2458 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2460 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2461 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2462 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2463 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2467 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2468 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2469 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2470 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2471 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2472 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2474 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2477 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2479 * Better support for C++ function names
2481 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2482 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2483 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2484 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2485 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2487 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2488 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2489 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2490 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2491 for the list of formats.
2493 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2495 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2496 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2497 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2498 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2499 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2500 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2503 * New 'maintenance' command
2505 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2506 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2507 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2509 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2510 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2511 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2512 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2513 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2514 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2516 The following commands are new:
2518 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2519 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2520 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2522 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2524 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2525 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2526 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2527 read after argv processing.
2529 * New hosts supported
2531 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2533 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2535 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2536 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2537 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2538 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2539 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2542 * New targets supported
2544 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2546 * More smarts about finding #include files
2548 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2549 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2550 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2551 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2552 the one that contains your sources.
2554 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2555 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2556 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2558 * Interesting infernals change
2560 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2561 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2562 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2563 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2565 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2567 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2568 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2569 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2571 See the ChangeLog for details.
2573 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2575 * New machines supported (host and target)
2577 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2579 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2581 * New malloc package
2583 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2584 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2585 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2586 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2587 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2588 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2592 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2593 'help info proc' for details.
2595 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2597 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2598 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2601 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2603 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2604 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2605 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2606 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2607 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2608 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2610 * Cross byte order fixes
2612 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2613 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2615 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2617 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2618 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2619 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2620 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2621 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2622 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2623 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2624 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2625 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2626 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2628 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2629 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2630 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2631 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2633 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2634 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2635 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2638 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2640 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2641 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2642 shared across multiple host platforms.
2644 * longjmp() handling
2646 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2647 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2648 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2649 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2653 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2654 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2659 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2660 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2661 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2663 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2665 * New machines supported (host and target)
2667 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2669 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2670 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2672 * New machines supported (target)
2674 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2678 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2679 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2680 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2682 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2683 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2684 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2685 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2686 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2689 * New features for SVR4
2691 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2692 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2693 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2695 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2696 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2697 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2699 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2700 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2702 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2704 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2705 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2706 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2707 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2708 same code linked statically.
2712 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2713 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2714 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2715 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2716 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2717 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2721 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2722 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2723 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2726 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2728 * New machines supported (host and target)
2730 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2731 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2732 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2734 * Almost SCO Unix support
2736 We had hoped to support:
2737 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2738 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2739 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2740 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2742 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2744 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2745 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2746 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2747 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2752 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2753 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2754 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2758 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2759 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2760 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2762 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2764 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2765 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2766 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2768 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2769 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2770 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2771 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2774 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2775 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2776 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2777 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2780 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2781 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2784 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2785 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2786 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2789 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2791 * Improved configuration
2793 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2794 Porting BFD is simpler.
2798 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2799 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2800 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2801 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2805 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2807 * New host supported (not target)
2809 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2812 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2814 * Multiple source language support
2816 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2817 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2818 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2819 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2820 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2821 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2825 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2826 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2827 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2828 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2830 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2831 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2832 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2834 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2835 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2839 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2840 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2841 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2842 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2845 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2847 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2848 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2849 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2850 examining core files.
2854 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2857 * New machines supported (host and target)
2859 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2860 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2861 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2863 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2865 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2867 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2869 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2870 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2871 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2873 * New remote interfaces
2879 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2883 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2885 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2886 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2887 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2888 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2889 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2890 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2891 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2892 stub on the target system.
2894 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2896 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2897 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2898 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2900 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2901 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2904 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2906 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2907 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2909 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2910 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2911 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2913 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2914 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2915 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2916 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2918 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2919 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2920 it is already running. Default is ON.
2922 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2923 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2924 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2925 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2928 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2929 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2930 or the value of the environment variable
2933 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2934 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2937 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2938 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2939 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2941 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2942 history expansion will be performed on
2943 command line input. The default is OFF.
2945 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2946 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2947 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2949 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2950 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2951 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2954 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2955 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2956 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2959 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2960 ``set width'' instead.
2962 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2963 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2964 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2965 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2967 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2970 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2973 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2976 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2979 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2981 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2982 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2983 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2987 * Support for Shared Libraries
2989 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2990 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2991 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2992 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2993 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2994 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2995 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2996 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2998 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2999 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3000 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3002 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3007 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3008 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3009 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3010 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3011 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3012 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3014 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3016 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3018 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3019 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3020 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3023 * C++ multiple inheritance
3025 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3028 * C++ exception handling
3030 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3031 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3032 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3035 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3036 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3037 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3039 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3040 current stack frame.
3043 * Minor command changes
3045 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3046 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3047 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3049 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3050 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3051 frames without printing.
3053 * New directory command
3055 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3056 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3057 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3058 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3059 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3061 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3063 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3066 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3067 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3068 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3069 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob