1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.0:
6 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
8 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
9 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
10 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
12 * REMOVED configurations and files
14 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
15 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
17 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
19 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
21 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
22 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
25 * GDB supports logging output to a file
27 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
28 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
30 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
32 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
33 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
36 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
38 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
39 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
43 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
44 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
45 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
46 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
47 data, for more informative profiling results.
49 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
51 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
52 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
53 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
55 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
58 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
59 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
60 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
61 in a subsequent -var-update.
63 * New native configurations.
65 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
67 * Multi-arched targets.
69 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
70 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
72 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
74 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
75 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
76 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
79 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
80 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
81 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
82 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
83 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
84 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
85 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
86 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
87 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
88 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
89 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
90 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
92 * REMOVED configurations and files
95 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
96 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
97 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
98 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
99 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
100 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
102 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
103 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
104 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
105 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
106 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
107 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
109 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
111 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
112 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
113 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
114 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
115 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
117 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
119 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
121 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
122 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
123 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
124 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
125 shared libs like mad''.
127 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
129 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
130 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
131 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
132 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
134 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
136 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
137 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
140 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
141 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
143 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
144 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
146 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
147 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
148 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
149 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
151 * Multi-arched targets.
153 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
154 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
156 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
157 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
158 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
162 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
165 * New native configurations
167 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
168 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
169 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
170 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
172 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
174 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
175 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
176 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
179 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
180 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
181 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
182 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
183 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
184 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
185 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
186 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
187 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
188 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
190 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
191 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
195 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
197 * REMOVED configurations and files
199 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
200 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
201 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
202 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
203 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
205 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
207 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
209 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
210 commands. The default is 1024.
212 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
214 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
216 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
218 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
219 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
220 from a file into memory (restore).
222 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
224 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
225 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
226 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
228 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
236 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
237 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
238 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
240 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
241 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
242 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
244 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
245 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
246 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
248 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
249 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
250 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
252 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
254 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
256 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
257 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
258 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
259 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
260 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
261 (notably embedded) targets.
263 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
265 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
266 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
267 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
268 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
270 * New command line option
272 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
274 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
276 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
277 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
278 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
279 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
280 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
281 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
282 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
283 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
284 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
285 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
287 * Changes in ARM configurations.
289 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
290 configuration is fully multi-arch.
292 * New native configurations
294 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
295 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
296 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
297 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
301 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
303 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
305 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
306 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
307 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
310 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
311 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
312 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
313 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
314 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
316 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
318 * REMOVED configurations and files
320 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
322 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
323 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
324 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
325 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
326 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
327 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
328 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
329 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
330 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
331 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
332 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
334 * Changes to command line processing
336 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
337 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
339 * Changes to key bindings
341 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
343 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
345 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
347 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
350 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
352 Numerous documentation fixes.
354 Numerous testsuite fixes.
356 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
358 * New native configurations
360 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
361 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
362 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
363 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
365 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
369 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
371 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
373 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
375 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
376 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
377 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
378 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
379 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
381 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
382 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
383 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
384 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
385 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
386 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
387 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
388 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
390 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
391 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
393 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
394 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
395 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
398 * REMOVED configurations and files
400 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
401 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
403 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
407 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
409 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
410 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
415 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
417 * The MI enabled by default.
419 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
420 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
421 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
422 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
423 which is now deprecated.
425 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
427 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
428 main features are supported:
430 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
432 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
435 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
437 - a Pascal expression parser.
439 However, some important features are not yet supported.
441 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
443 - there are some problems with boolean types;
445 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
446 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
448 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
450 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
452 * Changes in completion.
454 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
455 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
456 users expect at the shell prompt.
458 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
459 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
460 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
461 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
462 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
463 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
464 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
466 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
468 * New platform-independent commands:
470 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
471 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
472 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
474 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
476 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
477 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
478 many threads as your system allows you to have.
480 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
482 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
483 multi-threaded programs though.
485 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
487 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
489 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
490 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
493 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
495 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
496 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
497 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
498 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
499 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
502 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
503 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
504 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
506 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
508 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
509 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
511 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
512 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
515 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
516 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
517 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
518 a given linear address.
520 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
521 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
522 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
524 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
526 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
528 * Changes in documentation.
530 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
531 Documentation License.
533 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
536 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
538 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
541 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
542 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
543 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
545 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
547 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
548 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
549 contents of this file.
553 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
555 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
557 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
559 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
560 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
561 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
562 greater level of detail.
564 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
566 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
567 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
568 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
571 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
573 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
574 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
575 machines ``out of the box''.
577 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
578 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
579 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
580 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
581 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
583 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
584 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
585 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
586 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
587 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
589 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
590 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
593 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
596 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
597 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
598 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
599 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
601 * New native configurations
603 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
604 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
608 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
609 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
610 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
611 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
613 * OBSOLETE configurations
615 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
616 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
618 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
621 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
622 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
623 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
624 be permanently REMOVED.
626 * Gould support removed
628 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
630 * New features for SVR4
632 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
633 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
634 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
636 * Many C++ enhancements
638 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
639 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
641 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
643 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
644 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
645 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
646 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
648 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
649 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
651 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
653 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
654 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
655 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
657 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
658 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
660 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
662 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
663 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
664 include ``set remote P-packet''.
666 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
668 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
669 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
670 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
672 * ``apropos'' command added.
674 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
675 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
676 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
680 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
681 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
682 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
683 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
684 enabled by configuring with:
686 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
688 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
690 * New native configurations
692 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
693 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
694 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
698 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
699 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
700 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
702 * OBSOLETE configurations
704 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
706 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
707 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
708 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
709 be permanently REMOVED.
713 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
714 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
715 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
716 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
717 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
718 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
719 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
724 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
726 * set extension-language
728 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
729 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
730 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
731 set extension-language .c c++
732 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
733 and their associated languages.
735 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
737 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
738 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
739 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
743 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
744 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
746 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
747 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
749 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
750 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
751 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
752 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
753 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
754 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
755 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
756 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
758 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
759 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
760 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
761 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
765 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
766 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
767 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
768 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
769 for xdb and dbx commands.
773 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
774 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
775 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
777 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
778 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
779 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
781 * Debugging across forks
783 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
788 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
789 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
790 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
792 * GDB remote protocol additions
794 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
795 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
796 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
797 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
799 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
800 full 64-bit address. The command
802 set remoteaddresssize 32
804 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
805 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
808 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
809 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
811 maint packet heythere
813 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
814 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
817 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
818 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
819 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
821 * Tracing can collect general expressions
823 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
824 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
825 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
827 * mask-address variable for Mips
829 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
830 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
831 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
833 * Higher serial baud rates
835 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
836 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
837 to achieve all of these rates.)
841 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
842 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
845 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
847 * New native configurations
849 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
850 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
851 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
852 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
853 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
854 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
855 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
859 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
860 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
861 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
862 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
863 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
864 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
865 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
866 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
867 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
868 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
869 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
871 * New debugging protocols
873 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
874 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
875 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
876 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
877 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
878 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
882 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
883 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
888 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
889 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
891 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
893 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
894 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
895 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
897 * Live range splitting
899 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
900 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
901 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
905 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
906 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
910 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
911 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
912 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
917 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
922 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
923 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
924 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
925 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
926 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
927 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
931 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
932 the symbol at the specified address.
936 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
937 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
938 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
939 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
940 file tracepoint.c for more details.
944 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
945 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
946 of most MIPS variants.
950 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
951 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
952 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
956 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
957 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
958 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
959 the possible architectures.
961 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
963 * New native configurations
965 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
966 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
967 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
968 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
969 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
970 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
974 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
975 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
976 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
977 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
978 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
980 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
984 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
985 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
986 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
987 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
988 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
992 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
994 * Windows 95/NT native
996 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
997 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
998 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
999 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1000 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1002 * dont-repeat command
1004 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1005 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1006 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1007 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1009 * Send break instead of ^C
1011 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1012 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1013 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1015 * Remote protocol timeout
1017 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1018 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1019 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1021 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1023 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1024 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1025 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1026 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1027 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1029 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1030 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1031 automatically on hpux10.
1033 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1035 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1037 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1039 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1040 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1041 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1042 every character. The default value is 1050.
1044 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1046 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1047 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1048 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1049 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1050 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1051 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1053 * Speedups for remote debugging
1055 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1056 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1057 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1059 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1061 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1062 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1064 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1066 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1068 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1069 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1071 * Remote targets use caching
1073 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1074 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1075 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1076 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1077 off' turns the the data cache off.
1079 * Remote targets may have threads
1081 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1082 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1083 gdb/remote.c for details.
1087 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1088 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1089 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1090 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1091 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1092 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1093 sequence is something like
1095 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1097 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1101 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1102 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1103 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1104 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1105 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1106 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1107 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1108 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1112 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1113 but does simplify configuration and building.
1117 GDB now supports hpux10.
1119 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1121 * New native configurations
1123 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1124 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1125 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1126 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1130 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1131 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1132 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1133 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1136 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1138 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1139 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1140 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1141 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1142 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1144 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1146 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1147 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1150 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1152 To execute the command use:
1155 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1156 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1157 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1159 * New `if' and `while' commands
1161 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1162 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1163 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1164 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1165 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1166 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1167 if the expression is zero.
1169 * Fortran source language mode
1171 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1172 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1173 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1174 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1177 * Better HPUX support
1179 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1180 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1181 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1182 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1183 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1189 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1190 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1196 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1197 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1200 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1201 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1203 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1205 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1206 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1207 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1208 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1209 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1210 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1212 * New DOS host serial code
1214 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1215 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1218 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1220 * New "complete" command
1222 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1223 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1225 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1227 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1228 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1230 * Breakpoint hit counts
1232 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1233 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1234 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1235 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1236 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1239 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1241 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1242 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1243 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1245 * Shared library breakpoints
1247 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1248 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1250 * Hardware watchpoints
1252 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1253 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1255 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1259 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1260 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1262 * Improved Irix 5 support
1264 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1266 * Improved HPPA support
1268 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1270 * New native configurations
1272 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1273 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1274 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1275 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1279 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1280 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1283 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1285 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1286 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1290 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1291 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1293 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1295 * Irix 5 is now supported
1299 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1300 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1301 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1302 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1303 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1306 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1308 * User visible changes:
1312 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1313 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1314 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1315 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1316 debugging info for the mips target).
1318 * DEC Alpha native support
1320 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1321 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1322 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1323 Alpha-specific notes.
1325 * Preliminary thread implementation
1327 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1329 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1331 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1332 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1335 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1337 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1338 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1339 call methods, ...etc.
1341 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1343 * User visible changes:
1345 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1346 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1347 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1348 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1350 Filename completion now works.
1352 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1353 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1354 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1356 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1357 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1358 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1359 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1360 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1364 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1365 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1368 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1372 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1373 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1374 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1378 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1379 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1380 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1381 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1382 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1386 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1387 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1388 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1390 * New targets supported
1392 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1393 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1394 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1395 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1396 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1398 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1399 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1400 GO32 memory extender.
1402 * New remote protocols
1404 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1406 * New source languages supported
1408 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1409 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1410 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1413 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1415 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1417 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1418 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1419 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1420 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1421 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1422 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1424 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1426 * Faster and better demangling
1428 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1429 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1430 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1431 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1432 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1433 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1436 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1437 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1438 compiler does not actually implement.
1440 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1442 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1443 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1444 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1445 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1446 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1447 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1450 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1451 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1453 * Improved configure script
1455 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1456 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1457 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1458 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1460 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1461 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1462 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1463 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1464 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1465 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1467 * Documentation improvements
1469 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1470 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1471 before submitting changes.
1473 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1474 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1475 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1476 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1477 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1479 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1480 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1481 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1482 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1483 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1484 around this problem.
1488 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1489 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1490 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1493 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1494 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1496 * New native hosts supported
1498 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1499 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1501 * New targets supported
1503 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1505 * New file formats supported
1507 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1508 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1512 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1514 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1515 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1517 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1518 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1519 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1521 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1522 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1524 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1525 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1526 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1529 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1530 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1531 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1532 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1533 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1535 * Internal improvements
1537 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1538 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1540 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1541 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1542 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1543 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1544 shared code that handles any of them.
1546 * New command line options
1548 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1552 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1553 General Public License.
1555 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1557 * Host/native/target split
1559 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1560 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1561 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1562 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1563 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1565 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1566 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1567 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1568 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1569 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1570 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1571 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1573 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1574 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1575 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1577 * New hosts supported
1579 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1580 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1581 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1583 * New targets supported
1585 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1586 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1588 * New native hosts supported
1590 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1591 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1592 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1594 * New file formats supported
1596 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1597 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1598 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1602 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1603 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1604 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1606 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1608 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1609 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1610 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1611 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1615 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1616 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1617 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1619 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1623 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1624 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1627 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1628 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1630 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1631 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1632 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1633 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1634 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1635 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1637 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1638 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1639 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1640 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1644 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1645 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1646 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1647 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1648 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1650 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1651 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1652 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1653 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1657 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1658 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1659 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1660 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1661 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1662 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1663 each instruction being stepped through.
1665 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1666 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1668 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1669 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1670 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1671 processor with a serial port.
1675 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1676 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1677 supported, and what files each one uses.
1681 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1682 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1683 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1684 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1686 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1687 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1688 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1689 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1693 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1694 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1695 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1696 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1697 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1698 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1700 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1703 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1705 * Better support for C++ function names
1707 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1708 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1709 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1710 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1711 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1713 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1714 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1715 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1716 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1717 for the list of formats.
1719 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1721 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1722 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1723 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1724 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1725 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1726 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1729 * New 'maintenance' command
1731 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1732 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1733 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1735 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1736 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1737 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1738 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1739 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1740 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1742 The following commands are new:
1744 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1745 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1746 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1748 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1750 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1751 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1752 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1753 read after argv processing.
1755 * New hosts supported
1757 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1759 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1761 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1762 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1763 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1764 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1765 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1768 * New targets supported
1770 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1772 * More smarts about finding #include files
1774 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1775 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1776 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1777 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1778 the one that contains your sources.
1780 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1781 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1782 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1784 * Interesting infernals change
1786 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1787 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1788 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1789 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1791 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1793 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1794 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1795 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1797 See the ChangeLog for details.
1799 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1801 * New machines supported (host and target)
1803 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1805 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1807 * New malloc package
1809 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1810 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1811 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1812 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1813 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1814 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1818 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1819 'help info proc' for details.
1821 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1823 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1824 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1827 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1829 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1830 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1831 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1832 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1833 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1834 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1836 * Cross byte order fixes
1838 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1839 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1841 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1843 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1844 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1845 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1846 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1847 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1848 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1849 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1850 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1851 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1852 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1854 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1855 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1856 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1857 slower, but makes future operations faster.
1859 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1860 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1861 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1864 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1866 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1867 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1868 shared across multiple host platforms.
1870 * longjmp() handling
1872 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1873 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1874 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1875 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1879 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1880 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1885 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1886 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1887 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1889 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1891 * New machines supported (host and target)
1893 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1895 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1896 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1898 * New machines supported (target)
1900 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1904 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1905 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1906 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1908 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1909 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1910 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1911 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1912 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1915 * New features for SVR4
1917 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1918 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1919 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1921 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1922 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1923 it prints the address mappings of the process.
1925 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1926 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1928 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1930 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1931 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1932 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1933 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1934 same code linked statically.
1938 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1939 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1940 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1941 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1942 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1943 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1947 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1948 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1949 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1952 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1954 * New machines supported (host and target)
1956 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1957 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1958 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1960 * Almost SCO Unix support
1962 We had hoped to support:
1963 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1964 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1965 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1966 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1968 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1970 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1971 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1972 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1973 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1978 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1979 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1980 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1984 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1985 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1986 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1988 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1990 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1991 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1992 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1994 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1995 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1996 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1997 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2000 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2001 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2002 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2003 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2006 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2007 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2010 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2011 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2012 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2015 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2017 * Improved configuration
2019 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2020 Porting BFD is simpler.
2024 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2025 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2026 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2027 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2031 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2033 * New host supported (not target)
2035 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2038 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2040 * Multiple source language support
2042 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2043 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2044 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2045 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2046 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2047 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2051 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2052 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2053 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2054 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2056 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2057 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2058 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2060 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2061 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2065 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2066 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2067 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2068 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2071 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2073 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2074 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2075 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2076 examining core files.
2080 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2083 * New machines supported (host and target)
2085 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2086 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2087 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2089 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2091 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2093 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2095 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2096 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2097 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2099 * New remote interfaces
2105 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2109 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2111 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2112 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2113 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2114 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2115 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2116 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2117 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2118 stub on the target system.
2120 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2122 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2123 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2124 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2126 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2127 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2130 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2132 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2133 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2135 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2136 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2137 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2139 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2140 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2141 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2142 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2144 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2145 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2146 it is already running. Default is ON.
2148 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2149 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2150 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2151 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2154 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2155 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2156 or the value of the environment variable
2159 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2160 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2163 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2164 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2165 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2167 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2168 history expansion will be performed on
2169 command line input. The default is OFF.
2171 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2172 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2173 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2175 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2176 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2177 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2180 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2181 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2182 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2185 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2186 ``set width'' instead.
2188 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2189 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2190 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2191 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2193 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2196 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2199 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2202 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2205 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2207 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2208 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2209 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2213 * Support for Shared Libraries
2215 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2216 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2217 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2218 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2219 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2220 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2221 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2222 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2224 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2225 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2226 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2228 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2233 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2234 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2235 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2236 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2237 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2238 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2240 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2242 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2244 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2245 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2246 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2249 * C++ multiple inheritance
2251 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2254 * C++ exception handling
2256 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2257 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2258 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2261 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2262 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2263 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2265 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2266 current stack frame.
2269 * Minor command changes
2271 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2272 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2273 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2275 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2276 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2277 frames without printing.
2279 * New directory command
2281 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2282 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2283 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2284 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2285 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2287 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2289 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2292 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2293 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2294 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2295 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / binutils-gdb.git / blob