- What has changed since GDB-3.5?
- (Organized release by release)
+ What has changed in GDB?
+ (Organized release by release)
+
+*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
+
+* New native configurations
+
+x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
+x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
+NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
+Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
+
+* New targets
+
+A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
+HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
+CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
+PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
+WDC 65816 w65-*-*
+
+* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
+
+GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
+possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
+filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
+the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
+if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
+
+* Arguments to user-defined commands
+
+User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
+Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
+trivial example:
+define adder
+ print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
+
+To execute the command use:
+adder 1 2 3
+
+Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
+Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
+use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
+
+* New `if' and `while' commands
+
+This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
+commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
+expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
+execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
+terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
+`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
+if the expression is zero.
+
+* Fortran source language mode
+
+GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
+Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
+variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
+with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
+Fortran compilers.
+
+* Better HPUX support
+
+Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
+running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
+processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
+for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
+that behavior do the following before running the program:
+
+ adb -w a.out
+ __dld_flags?W 0x5
+ control-d
+
+This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
+To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
+
+ adb -w a.out
+ __dld_flags?W 0x4
+ control-d
+
+You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
+the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
+external linkage.
+
+GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
+HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
+
+* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
+
+You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
+commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
+current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
+"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
+associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
+configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
+
+* New DOS host serial code
+
+This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
+no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
+a PC's serial port.
+
+*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
+
+* New "complete" command
+
+This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
+were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
+
+* Trailing space optional in prompt
+
+"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
+allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
+
+* Breakpoint hit counts
+
+"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
+has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
+can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
+to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
+less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
+that breakpoint.
+
+* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
+
+"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
+an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
+arrays actually contain only short strings.
+
+* Shared library breakpoints
+
+In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
+breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
+
+* Hardware watchpoints
+
+There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
+targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
+
+Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under Linux.
+
+* Annotations
+
+Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
+and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
+
+* Improved Irix 5 support
+
+GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
+
+* Improved HPPA support
+
+GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
+
+* New native configurations
+
+Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
+HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
+Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
+RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
+
+* New targets
+
+OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
+MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
+Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
+
+* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
+
+There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
+This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
+
+* Fixes
+
+As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
+and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
+
+*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
+
+* Irix 5 is now supported
+
+* HPPA support
+
+GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
+to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
+GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
+of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
+can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
+
+
+*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
+
+* User visible changes:
+
+* Remote Debugging
+
+The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
+target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
+debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
+integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
+debugging info for the mips target).
+
+* DEC Alpha native support
+
+GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
+debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
+work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
+Alpha-specific notes.
+
+* Preliminary thread implementation
+
+GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
+
+* LynxOS native and target support for 386
+
+This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
+to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
+for details).
+
+* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
+
+This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
+mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
+call methods, ...etc.
+
+*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
+
+ * User visible changes:
+
+Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
+supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
+other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
+somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
+
+Filename completion now works.
+
+When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
+arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
+addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
+
+All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
+vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
+should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
+your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
+to be on the far side of a thin network line.
+
+ * DEC alpha support
+
+This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
+cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
+
+
+*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
+
+ * Testsuite
+
+This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
+The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
+via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
+
+ * C++ demangling
+
+'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
+emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
+Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
+disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
+use gdb with AT&T cfront.
+
+ * Simulators
+
+GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
+So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
+Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
+
+ * New targets supported
+
+H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
+H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
+SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
+Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
+IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
+
+Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
+version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
+GO32 memory extender.
+
+ * New remote protocols
+
+MIPS remote debugging protocol.
+
+ * New source languages supported
+
+This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
+used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
+into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
+
+
+*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
+
+ * HP Precision Architecture supported
+
+GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
+version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
+University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
+compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
+format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
+(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
+
+Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
+
+ * Faster and better demangling
+
+We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
+demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
+character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
+only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
+This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
+increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
+symbol lookups.
+
+`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
+from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
+compiler does not actually implement.
+
+ * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
+
+In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
+inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
+recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
+very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
+The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
+circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
+fix.
+
+The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
+release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
+
+ * Improved configure script
+
+The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
+you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
+host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
+done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
+
+We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
+version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
+`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
+The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
+only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
+We hope to make this the default in a future release.
+
+ * Documentation improvements
+
+There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
+produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
+before submitting changes.
+
+The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
+M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
+`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
+you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
+a future texinfo-X.Y release.
+
+*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
+We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
+been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
+or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
+`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
+around this problem.
+
+ * New features
+
+GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
+the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
+`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
+the target program.
+
+The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
+how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
+
+ * New native hosts supported
+
+HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
+386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
+
+ * New targets supported
+
+AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
+
+ * New file formats supported
+
+BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
+HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
+
+ * Major bug fixes
+
+Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
+
+We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
+printf_filtered("%s") problems.
+
+We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
+for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
+release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
+
+You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
+will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
+
+We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
+for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
+especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
+libraries.
+
+The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
+information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
+command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
+any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
+when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
+
+ * Internal improvements
+
+GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
+debugging of multiple languages in the future.
+
+GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
+Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
+symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
+contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
+shared code that handles any of them.
+
+ * New command line options
+
+We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
+
+ * Mmalloc licensing
+
+The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
+General Public License.
+
+*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
+
+ * Host/native/target split
+
+GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
+hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
+target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
+local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
+ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
+
+The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
+GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
+is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
+code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
+any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
+built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
+handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
+
+GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
+It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
+plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
+
+ * New hosts supported
+
+HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
+386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
+386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
+
+ * New targets supported
+
+Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
+68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
+
+ * New native hosts supported
+
+386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
+ (386bsd is not well tested yet)
+386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
+
+ * New file formats supported
+
+BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
+supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
+format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
+
+ * New commands
+
+`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
+`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
+These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
+
+`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
+
+You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
+scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
+prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
+executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
+
+ * C++ improvements
+
+We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
+info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
+symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
+
+Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
+
+ * Major bug fixes
+
+The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
+fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
+by the compiler.
+
+We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
+support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
+
+John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
+slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
+that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
+purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
+the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
+mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
+
+Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
+about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
+completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
+we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
+
+ * AMD 29k support
+
+A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
+specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
+calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
+usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
+in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
+
+We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
+Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
+of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
+resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
+
+ * Remote interfaces
+
+We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
+with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
+message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
+This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
+needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
+breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
+each instruction being stepped through.
+
+The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
+registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
+
+There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
+find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
+Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
+processor with a serial port.
+
+ * Configuration
+
+Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
+`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
+supported, and what files each one uses.
+
+ * Library changes
+
+There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
+disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
+Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
+disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
+
+The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
+Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
+can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
+grants all the rights from the General Public License.
+
+ * Documentation
+
+The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
+reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
+as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
+encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
+system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
+bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
+
+And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
+
*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blobdiff