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 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
21 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
22 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
23 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
26 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
27 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
32 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
33 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
34 remote protocol documentation for details.
36 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
38 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
39 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
40 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
43 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
45 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
48 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
50 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
51 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
53 * Separate debug info.
55 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
56 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
57 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
58 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
59 and optional debug files.
61 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
63 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
64 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
67 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
68 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
72 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
73 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
76 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
78 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
79 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
82 * GDB supports logging output to a file
84 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
85 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
87 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
89 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
90 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
93 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
95 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
96 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
100 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
101 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
102 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
103 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
104 data, for more informative profiling results.
106 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
108 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
109 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
110 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
112 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
115 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
116 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
117 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
118 in a subsequent -var-update.
120 * New native configurations.
122 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
124 * Multi-arched targets.
126 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
127 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
129 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
131 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
132 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
133 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
136 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
137 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
138 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
139 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
140 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
141 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
142 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
143 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
144 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
145 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
146 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
147 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
149 * REMOVED configurations and files
152 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
153 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
154 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
155 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
156 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
157 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
159 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
160 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
161 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
162 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
163 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
164 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
166 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
168 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
169 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
170 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
171 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
172 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
174 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
176 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
178 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
179 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
180 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
181 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
182 shared libs like mad''.
184 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
186 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
187 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
188 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
189 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
191 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
193 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
194 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
197 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
198 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
200 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
201 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
203 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
204 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
205 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
206 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
208 * Multi-arched targets.
210 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
211 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
213 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
214 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
215 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
219 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
222 * New native configurations
224 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
225 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
226 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
227 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
229 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
231 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
232 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
233 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
236 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
237 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
238 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
239 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
240 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
241 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
242 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
243 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
244 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
245 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
247 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
248 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
252 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
254 * REMOVED configurations and files
256 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
257 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
258 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
259 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
260 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
262 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
264 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
266 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
267 commands. The default is 1024.
269 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
271 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
273 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
275 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
276 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
277 from a file into memory (restore).
279 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
281 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
282 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
283 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
285 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
293 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
294 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
295 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
297 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
298 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
299 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
301 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
302 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
303 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
305 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
306 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
307 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
309 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
311 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
313 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
314 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
315 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
316 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
317 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
318 (notably embedded) targets.
320 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
322 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
323 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
324 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
325 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
327 * New command line option
329 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
331 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
333 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
334 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
335 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
336 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
337 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
338 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
339 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
340 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
341 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
342 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
344 * Changes in ARM configurations.
346 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
347 configuration is fully multi-arch.
349 * New native configurations
351 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
352 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
353 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
354 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
358 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
360 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
362 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
363 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
364 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
367 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
368 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
369 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
370 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
371 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
373 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
375 * REMOVED configurations and files
377 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
379 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
380 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
381 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
382 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
383 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
384 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
385 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
386 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
387 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
388 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
389 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
391 * Changes to command line processing
393 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
394 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
396 * Changes to key bindings
398 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
400 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
402 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
404 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
407 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
409 Numerous documentation fixes.
411 Numerous testsuite fixes.
413 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
415 * New native configurations
417 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
418 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
419 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
420 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
422 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
426 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
428 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
430 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
432 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
433 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
434 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
435 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
436 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
438 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
439 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
440 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
441 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
442 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
443 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
444 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
445 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
447 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
448 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
450 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
451 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
452 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
455 * REMOVED configurations and files
457 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
458 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
460 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
464 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
466 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
467 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
472 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
474 * The MI enabled by default.
476 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
477 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
478 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
479 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
480 which is now deprecated.
482 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
484 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
485 main features are supported:
487 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
489 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
492 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
494 - a Pascal expression parser.
496 However, some important features are not yet supported.
498 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
500 - there are some problems with boolean types;
502 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
503 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
505 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
507 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
509 * Changes in completion.
511 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
512 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
513 users expect at the shell prompt.
515 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
516 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
517 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
518 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
519 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
520 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
521 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
523 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
525 * New platform-independent commands:
527 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
528 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
529 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
531 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
533 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
534 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
535 many threads as your system allows you to have.
537 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
539 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
540 multi-threaded programs though.
542 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
544 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
546 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
547 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
550 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
552 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
553 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
554 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
555 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
556 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
559 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
560 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
561 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
563 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
565 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
566 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
568 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
569 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
572 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
573 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
574 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
575 a given linear address.
577 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
578 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
579 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
581 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
583 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
585 * Changes in documentation.
587 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
588 Documentation License.
590 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
593 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
595 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
598 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
599 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
600 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
602 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
604 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
605 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
606 contents of this file.
610 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
612 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
614 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
616 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
617 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
618 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
619 greater level of detail.
621 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
623 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
624 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
625 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
628 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
630 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
631 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
632 machines ``out of the box''.
634 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
635 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
636 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
637 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
638 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
640 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
641 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
642 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
643 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
644 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
646 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
647 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
650 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
653 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
654 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
655 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
656 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
658 * New native configurations
660 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
661 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
665 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
666 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
667 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
668 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
670 * OBSOLETE configurations
672 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
673 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
675 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
678 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
679 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
680 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
681 be permanently REMOVED.
683 * Gould support removed
685 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
687 * New features for SVR4
689 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
690 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
691 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
693 * Many C++ enhancements
695 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
696 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
698 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
700 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
701 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
702 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
703 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
705 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
706 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
708 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
710 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
711 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
712 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
714 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
715 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
717 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
719 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
720 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
721 include ``set remote P-packet''.
723 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
725 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
726 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
727 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
729 * ``apropos'' command added.
731 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
732 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
733 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
737 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
738 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
739 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
740 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
741 enabled by configuring with:
743 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
745 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
747 * New native configurations
749 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
750 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
751 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
755 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
756 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
757 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
759 * OBSOLETE configurations
761 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
763 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
764 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
765 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
766 be permanently REMOVED.
770 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
771 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
772 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
773 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
774 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
775 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
776 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
781 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
783 * set extension-language
785 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
786 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
787 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
788 set extension-language .c c++
789 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
790 and their associated languages.
792 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
794 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
795 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
796 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
800 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
801 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
803 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
804 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
806 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
807 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
808 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
809 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
810 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
811 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
812 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
813 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
815 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
816 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
817 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
818 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
822 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
823 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
824 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
825 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
826 for xdb and dbx commands.
830 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
831 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
832 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
834 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
835 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
836 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
838 * Debugging across forks
840 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
845 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
846 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
847 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
849 * GDB remote protocol additions
851 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
852 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
853 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
854 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
856 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
857 full 64-bit address. The command
859 set remoteaddresssize 32
861 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
862 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
865 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
866 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
868 maint packet heythere
870 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
871 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
874 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
875 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
876 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
878 * Tracing can collect general expressions
880 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
881 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
882 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
884 * mask-address variable for Mips
886 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
887 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
888 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
890 * Higher serial baud rates
892 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
893 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
894 to achieve all of these rates.)
898 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
899 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
902 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
904 * New native configurations
906 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
907 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
908 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
909 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
910 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
911 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
912 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
916 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
917 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
918 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
919 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
920 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
921 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
922 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
923 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
924 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
925 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
926 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
928 * New debugging protocols
930 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
931 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
932 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
933 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
934 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
935 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
939 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
940 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
945 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
946 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
948 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
950 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
951 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
952 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
954 * Live range splitting
956 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
957 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
958 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
962 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
963 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
967 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
968 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
969 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
974 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
979 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
980 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
981 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
982 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
983 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
984 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
988 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
989 the symbol at the specified address.
993 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
994 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
995 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
996 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
997 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1001 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1002 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1003 of most MIPS variants.
1007 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1008 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1009 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1013 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1014 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1015 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1016 the possible architectures.
1018 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1020 * New native configurations
1022 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1023 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1024 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1025 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1026 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1027 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1031 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1032 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1033 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1034 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1035 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1037 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1041 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1042 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1043 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1044 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1045 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1049 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1051 * Windows 95/NT native
1053 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1054 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1055 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1056 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1057 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1059 * dont-repeat command
1061 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1062 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1063 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1064 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1066 * Send break instead of ^C
1068 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1069 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1070 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1072 * Remote protocol timeout
1074 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1075 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1076 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1078 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1080 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1081 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1082 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1083 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1084 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1086 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1087 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1088 automatically on hpux10.
1090 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1092 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1094 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1096 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1097 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1098 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1099 every character. The default value is 1050.
1101 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1103 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1104 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1105 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1106 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1107 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1108 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1110 * Speedups for remote debugging
1112 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1113 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1114 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1116 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1118 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1119 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1121 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1123 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1125 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1126 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1128 * Remote targets use caching
1130 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1131 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1132 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1133 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1134 off' turns the the data cache off.
1136 * Remote targets may have threads
1138 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1139 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1140 gdb/remote.c for details.
1144 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1145 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1146 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1147 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1148 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1149 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1150 sequence is something like
1152 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1154 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1158 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1159 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1160 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1161 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1162 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1163 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1164 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1165 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1169 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1170 but does simplify configuration and building.
1174 GDB now supports hpux10.
1176 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1178 * New native configurations
1180 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1181 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1182 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1183 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1187 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1188 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1189 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1190 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1193 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1195 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1196 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1197 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1198 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1199 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1201 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1203 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1204 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1207 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1209 To execute the command use:
1212 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1213 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1214 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1216 * New `if' and `while' commands
1218 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1219 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1220 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1221 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1222 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1223 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1224 if the expression is zero.
1226 * Fortran source language mode
1228 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1229 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1230 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1231 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1234 * Better HPUX support
1236 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1237 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1238 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1239 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1240 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1246 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1247 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1253 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1254 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1257 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1258 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1260 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1262 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1263 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1264 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1265 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1266 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1267 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1269 * New DOS host serial code
1271 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1272 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1275 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1277 * New "complete" command
1279 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1280 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1282 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1284 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1285 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1287 * Breakpoint hit counts
1289 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1290 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1291 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1292 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1293 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1296 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1298 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1299 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1300 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1302 * Shared library breakpoints
1304 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1305 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1307 * Hardware watchpoints
1309 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1310 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1312 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1316 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1317 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1319 * Improved Irix 5 support
1321 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1323 * Improved HPPA support
1325 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1327 * New native configurations
1329 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1330 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1331 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1332 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1336 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1337 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1340 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1342 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1343 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1347 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1348 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1350 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1352 * Irix 5 is now supported
1356 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1357 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1358 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1359 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1360 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1363 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1365 * User visible changes:
1369 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1370 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1371 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1372 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1373 debugging info for the mips target).
1375 * DEC Alpha native support
1377 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1378 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1379 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1380 Alpha-specific notes.
1382 * Preliminary thread implementation
1384 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1386 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1388 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1389 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1392 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1394 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1395 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1396 call methods, ...etc.
1398 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1400 * User visible changes:
1402 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1403 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1404 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1405 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1407 Filename completion now works.
1409 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1410 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1411 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1413 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1414 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1415 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1416 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1417 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1421 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1422 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1425 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1429 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1430 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1431 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1435 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1436 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1437 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1438 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1439 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1443 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1444 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1445 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1447 * New targets supported
1449 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1450 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1451 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1452 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1453 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1455 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1456 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1457 GO32 memory extender.
1459 * New remote protocols
1461 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1463 * New source languages supported
1465 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1466 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1467 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1470 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1472 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1474 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1475 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1476 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1477 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1478 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1479 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1481 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1483 * Faster and better demangling
1485 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1486 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1487 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1488 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1489 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1490 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1493 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1494 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1495 compiler does not actually implement.
1497 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1499 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1500 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1501 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1502 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1503 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1504 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1507 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1508 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1510 * Improved configure script
1512 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1513 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1514 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1515 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1517 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1518 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1519 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1520 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1521 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1522 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1524 * Documentation improvements
1526 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1527 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1528 before submitting changes.
1530 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1531 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1532 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1533 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1534 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1536 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1537 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1538 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1539 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1540 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1541 around this problem.
1545 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1546 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1547 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1550 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1551 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1553 * New native hosts supported
1555 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1556 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1558 * New targets supported
1560 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1562 * New file formats supported
1564 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1565 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1569 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1571 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1572 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1574 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1575 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1576 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1578 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1579 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1581 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1582 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1583 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1586 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1587 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1588 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1589 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1590 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1592 * Internal improvements
1594 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1595 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1597 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1598 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1599 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1600 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1601 shared code that handles any of them.
1603 * New command line options
1605 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1609 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1610 General Public License.
1612 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1614 * Host/native/target split
1616 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1617 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1618 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1619 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1620 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1622 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1623 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1624 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1625 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1626 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1627 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1628 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1630 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1631 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1632 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1634 * New hosts supported
1636 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1637 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1638 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1640 * New targets supported
1642 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1643 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1645 * New native hosts supported
1647 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1648 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1649 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1651 * New file formats supported
1653 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1654 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1655 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1659 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1660 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1661 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1663 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1665 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1666 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1667 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1668 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1672 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1673 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1674 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1676 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1680 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1681 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1684 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1685 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1687 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1688 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1689 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1690 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1691 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1692 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1694 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1695 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1696 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1697 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1701 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1702 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1703 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1704 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1705 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1707 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1708 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1709 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1710 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1714 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1715 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1716 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1717 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1718 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1719 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1720 each instruction being stepped through.
1722 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1723 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1725 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1726 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1727 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1728 processor with a serial port.
1732 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1733 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1734 supported, and what files each one uses.
1738 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1739 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1740 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1741 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1743 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1744 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1745 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1746 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1750 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1751 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1752 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1753 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1754 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1755 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1757 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1760 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1762 * Better support for C++ function names
1764 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1765 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1766 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1767 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1768 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1770 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1771 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1772 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1773 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1774 for the list of formats.
1776 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1778 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1779 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1780 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1781 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1782 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1783 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1786 * New 'maintenance' command
1788 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1789 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1790 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1792 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1793 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1794 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1795 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1796 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1797 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1799 The following commands are new:
1801 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1802 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1803 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1805 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1807 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1808 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1809 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1810 read after argv processing.
1812 * New hosts supported
1814 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1816 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1818 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1819 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1820 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1821 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1822 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1825 * New targets supported
1827 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1829 * More smarts about finding #include files
1831 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1832 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1833 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1834 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1835 the one that contains your sources.
1837 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1838 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1839 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1841 * Interesting infernals change
1843 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1844 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1845 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1846 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1848 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1850 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1851 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1852 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1854 See the ChangeLog for details.
1856 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1858 * New machines supported (host and target)
1860 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1862 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1864 * New malloc package
1866 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1867 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1868 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1869 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1870 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1871 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1875 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1876 'help info proc' for details.
1878 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1880 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1881 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1884 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1886 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1887 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1888 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1889 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1890 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1891 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1893 * Cross byte order fixes
1895 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1896 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1898 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1900 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1901 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1902 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1903 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1904 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1905 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1906 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1907 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1908 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1909 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1911 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1912 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1913 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1914 slower, but makes future operations faster.
1916 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1917 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1918 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1921 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1923 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1924 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1925 shared across multiple host platforms.
1927 * longjmp() handling
1929 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1930 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1931 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1932 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1936 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1937 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1942 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1943 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1944 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1946 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1948 * New machines supported (host and target)
1950 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1952 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1953 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1955 * New machines supported (target)
1957 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1961 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1962 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1963 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1965 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1966 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1967 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1968 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1969 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1972 * New features for SVR4
1974 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1975 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1976 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1978 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1979 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1980 it prints the address mappings of the process.
1982 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1983 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1985 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1987 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1988 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1989 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1990 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1991 same code linked statically.
1995 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1996 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1997 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1998 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1999 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2000 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2004 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2005 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2006 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2009 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2011 * New machines supported (host and target)
2013 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2014 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2015 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2017 * Almost SCO Unix support
2019 We had hoped to support:
2020 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2021 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2022 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2023 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2025 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2027 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2028 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2029 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2030 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2035 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2036 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2037 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2041 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2042 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2043 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2045 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2047 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2048 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2049 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2051 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2052 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2053 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2054 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2057 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2058 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2059 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2060 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2063 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2064 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2067 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2068 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2069 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2072 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2074 * Improved configuration
2076 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2077 Porting BFD is simpler.
2081 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2082 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2083 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2084 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2088 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2090 * New host supported (not target)
2092 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2095 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2097 * Multiple source language support
2099 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2100 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2101 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2102 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2103 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2104 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2108 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2109 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2110 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2111 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2113 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2114 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2115 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2117 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2118 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2122 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2123 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2124 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2125 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2128 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2130 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2131 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2132 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2133 examining core files.
2137 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2140 * New machines supported (host and target)
2142 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2143 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2144 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2146 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2148 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2150 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2152 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2153 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2154 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2156 * New remote interfaces
2162 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2166 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2168 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2169 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2170 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2171 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2172 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2173 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2174 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2175 stub on the target system.
2177 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2179 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2180 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2181 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2183 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2184 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2187 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2189 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2190 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2192 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2193 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2194 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2196 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2197 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2198 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2199 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2201 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2202 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2203 it is already running. Default is ON.
2205 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2206 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2207 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2208 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2211 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2212 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2213 or the value of the environment variable
2216 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2217 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2220 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2221 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2222 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2224 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2225 history expansion will be performed on
2226 command line input. The default is OFF.
2228 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2229 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2230 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2232 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2233 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2234 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2237 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2238 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2239 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2242 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2243 ``set width'' instead.
2245 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2246 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2247 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2248 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2250 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2253 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2256 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2259 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2262 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2264 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2265 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2266 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2270 * Support for Shared Libraries
2272 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2273 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2274 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2275 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2276 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2277 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2278 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2279 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2281 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2282 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2283 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2285 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2290 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2291 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2292 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2293 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2294 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2295 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2297 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2299 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2301 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2302 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2303 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2306 * C++ multiple inheritance
2308 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2311 * C++ exception handling
2313 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2314 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2315 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2318 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2319 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2320 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2322 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2323 current stack frame.
2326 * Minor command changes
2328 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2329 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2330 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2332 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2333 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2334 frames without printing.
2336 * New directory command
2338 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2339 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2340 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2341 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2342 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2344 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2346 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2349 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2350 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2351 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2352 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / binutils-gdb.git / blob