1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.8
6 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
7 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
8 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
9 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
11 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
12 now complete on file names.
14 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
15 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
16 For instance, consider:
18 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
19 # struct example variable;
22 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
23 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
25 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
26 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
32 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
35 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
36 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
37 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
39 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
41 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
42 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
43 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
45 * The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
48 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
49 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
51 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
52 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
53 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
55 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
56 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
58 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
60 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
61 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
63 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
64 list of section offsets.
66 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
67 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
70 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
71 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
72 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
74 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
76 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
77 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
79 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
80 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
81 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
83 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
84 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
88 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
89 available is determined at configure time.
93 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
95 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
97 maint set python print-stack
98 maint show python print-stack
99 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
102 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
104 set print symbol-loading
105 show print symbol-loading
106 Control printing of symbol loading messages.
110 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
115 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
117 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
118 show multiple-symbols
119 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
120 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
121 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
123 set breakpoint always-inserted
124 show breakpoint always-inserted
125 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
126 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
127 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
129 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
130 show arm fallback-mode
131 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
133 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
134 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
135 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
136 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
138 set disable-randomization
139 show disable-randomization
140 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
141 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
142 multiple debugging sessions.
145 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
146 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
147 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
148 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
153 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
158 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
160 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
162 * New native configurations
164 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
165 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
169 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
170 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
172 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
174 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
175 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
176 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
177 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
179 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
180 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
182 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
185 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
186 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
187 and in inlined functions.
189 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
190 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
191 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
193 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
195 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
196 registers on PowerPC targets.
198 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
199 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
201 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
202 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
204 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
205 extended-remote mode.
207 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
208 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
209 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
210 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
212 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
213 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
214 target architectures.
216 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
217 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
218 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
219 stored in two consecutive float registers.
221 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
224 * Improved support for debugging Ada
225 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
227 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
228 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
229 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
230 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
232 - Improved command completion in Ada
235 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
240 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
241 show print frame-arguments
242 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
243 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
248 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
255 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
264 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
267 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
271 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
273 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
275 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
276 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
277 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
279 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
280 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
281 -Bsymbolic linker option.
283 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
284 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
287 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
288 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
290 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
291 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
293 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
295 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
296 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
297 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
299 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
300 automatically displayed as character or string data.
302 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
303 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
306 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
307 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
308 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
310 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
313 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
314 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
315 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
317 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
319 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
321 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
322 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
323 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
325 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
326 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
328 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
329 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
330 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
331 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
332 Windows and SymbianOS).
334 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
335 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
337 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
338 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
344 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
345 when debugging using remote targets.
347 set mem inaccessible-by-default
348 show mem inaccessible-by-default
349 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
350 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
351 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
352 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
353 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
355 set breakpoint auto-hw
356 show breakpoint auto-hw
357 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
358 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
359 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
360 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
361 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
362 including "next" and "finish".
365 catch exception unhandled
366 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
369 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
373 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
374 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
375 an alias to "set sysroot".
378 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
379 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
382 * New native configurations
384 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
389 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
390 not query the target for its built-in description.
394 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
395 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
396 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
401 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
402 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
405 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
410 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
411 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
413 qXfer:libraries:read:
414 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
415 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
416 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
417 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
421 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
430 i[34567]86-*-netware*
431 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
432 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
434 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
437 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
438 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
447 * Other removed features
454 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
461 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
466 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
467 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
472 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
473 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
475 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
477 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
478 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
479 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
480 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
484 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
485 in debugging information.
489 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
490 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
492 set mips stack-arg-size
493 set mips saved-gpreg-size
495 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
497 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
502 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
504 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
505 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
506 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
508 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
509 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
512 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
513 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
515 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
516 stub provides the required support.
518 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
519 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
524 unset substitute-path
526 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
527 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
528 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
529 between compilation and debugging.
533 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
534 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
535 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
539 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
541 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
542 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
544 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
549 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
550 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
551 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
552 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
556 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
557 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
559 qXfer:memory-map:read:
560 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
561 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
566 Erase and program a flash memory device.
568 * Removed remote packets
571 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
572 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
574 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
578 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
580 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
584 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
585 only if it doesn't already have a value.
587 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
589 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
591 restart <n> Return the program state to a
592 previously saved state.
594 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
596 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
598 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
599 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
601 info forks List forks of the user program that
602 are available to be debugged.
604 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
605 forks of the user program that are
606 available to be debugged.
608 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
609 that are available to be debugged (and
610 kill the forked process).
612 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
613 that are available to be debugged (and
614 allow the process to continue).
618 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
620 * Improved Windows host support
622 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
623 native console support, and remote communications using either
624 network sockets or serial ports.
626 * Improved Modula-2 language support
628 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
629 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
630 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
631 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
632 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
633 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
637 The ARM rdi-share module.
639 The Netware NLM debug server.
641 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
643 * New native configurations
645 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
646 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
650 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
652 * New command line options
654 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
655 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
656 the child (debugged) program exited with.
657 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
658 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
659 specified multiple times and in conjunction
660 with the --command (-x) option.
662 * Deprecated commands removed
664 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
668 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
669 othernames set arm disassembler
670 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
671 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
672 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
675 * New BSD user-level threads support
677 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
678 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
681 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
682 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
683 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
685 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
686 are not yet supported.
688 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
689 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
691 * REMOVED configurations and files
693 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
694 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
695 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
697 * New "set print array-indexes" command
699 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
700 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
703 * VAX floating point support
705 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
707 * User-defined command support
709 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
710 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
711 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
713 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
715 * New command line option
717 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
720 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
722 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
723 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
724 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
725 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
726 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
728 * Internationalization
730 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
731 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
732 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
736 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
737 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
738 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
740 * New native configurations
742 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
746 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
747 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
749 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
751 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
752 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
753 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
756 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
757 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
758 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
770 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
771 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
773 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
775 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
776 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
777 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
787 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
789 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
791 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
792 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
795 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
797 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
798 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
799 IRIX long double values).
803 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
804 command. This problem has been fixed.
806 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
808 * Fix for ``many threads''
810 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
811 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
814 ptrace: No such process.
815 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
817 This problem has been fixed.
819 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
821 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
824 * New ``start'' command.
826 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
828 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
830 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
831 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
832 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
834 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
835 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
836 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
837 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
838 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
839 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
840 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
841 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
842 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
844 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
846 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
847 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
848 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
849 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
850 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
852 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
853 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
854 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
856 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
858 * New native configurations
860 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
861 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
862 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
863 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
864 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
865 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
866 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
868 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
870 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
871 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
872 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
873 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
874 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
875 work, was also included.
877 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
878 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
888 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
889 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
891 * REMOVED configurations and files
893 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
894 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
895 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
896 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
897 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
898 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
899 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
900 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
901 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
903 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
905 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
907 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
909 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
910 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
911 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
912 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
915 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
917 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
918 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
919 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
920 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
921 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
922 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
925 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
927 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
929 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
930 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
931 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
933 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
935 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
936 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
938 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
940 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
941 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
942 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
944 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
946 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
947 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
949 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
951 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
952 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
953 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
955 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
957 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
958 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
959 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
961 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
963 * Removed --with-mmalloc
965 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
966 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
968 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
970 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
971 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
972 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
973 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
975 * Revised SPARC target
977 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
978 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
979 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
980 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
981 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
985 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
986 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
987 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
990 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
992 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
993 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
996 * C++ nested types and namespaces
998 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
999 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1000 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1001 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1002 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1003 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1004 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1005 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1006 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1008 * New native configurations
1010 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
1011 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1012 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
1013 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1014 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
1016 * New debugging protocols
1018 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1020 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1022 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1023 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1024 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1026 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1028 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1029 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1030 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1031 permanently REMOVED.
1033 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1034 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1035 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1036 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1037 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1038 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1039 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1040 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1041 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1042 sonymips mips-sony-*
1043 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1045 * REMOVED configurations and files
1047 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1048 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1049 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1050 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1051 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1052 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1053 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1054 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1055 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1056 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
1057 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1058 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1059 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1060 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1061 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
1062 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1063 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1065 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1069 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1070 integrated into GDB.
1072 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1074 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1075 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1076 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1079 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1080 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1081 DWARF 2 CFI support.
1085 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1086 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1087 remote protocol documentation for details.
1089 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
1091 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1092 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1093 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1096 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1098 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1099 per-thread variables.
1101 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1103 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1104 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1106 * Separate debug info.
1108 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1109 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1110 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1111 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1112 and optional debug files.
1114 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1116 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1117 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1120 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1121 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1125 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1126 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1127 considered "useable".
1129 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1131 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1132 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1135 * GDB supports logging output to a file
1137 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1138 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
1140 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1142 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1143 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1146 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
1148 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1149 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1153 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1154 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1155 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1156 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1157 data, for more informative profiling results.
1159 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1161 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1162 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
1163 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
1165 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1168 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1169 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1170 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1171 in a subsequent -var-update.
1173 * New native configurations.
1175 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1177 * Multi-arched targets.
1179 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
1180 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1182 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1184 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1185 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1186 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1187 permanently REMOVED.
1189 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1190 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1191 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1192 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1193 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1194 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1195 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1196 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1197 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1198 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1199 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1200 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1202 * REMOVED configurations and files
1205 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1206 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1207 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1208 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1209 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1210 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1212 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1213 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1214 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1215 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1216 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1217 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1219 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
1221 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1222 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1223 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1224 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1225 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1227 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
1229 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1231 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1232 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1233 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1234 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1235 shared libs like mad''.
1237 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
1239 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1240 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1241 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1242 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
1244 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1246 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1247 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1250 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1251 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1253 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1254 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1256 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1257 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1258 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1259 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1261 * Multi-arched targets.
1263 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1264 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
1266 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
1267 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1268 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1272 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1275 * New native configurations
1277 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
1278 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
1279 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
1280 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
1282 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1284 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1285 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1286 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1287 permanently REMOVED.
1289 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1290 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1291 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1292 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1293 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1294 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1295 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1296 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1297 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1298 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1300 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1301 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1303 * OBSOLETE languages
1305 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1307 * REMOVED configurations and files
1309 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1310 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1311 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1312 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1313 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1315 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1317 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1319 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1320 commands. The default is 1024.
1322 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1324 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1326 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1328 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1329 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1330 from a file into memory (restore).
1332 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1334 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1335 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1336 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1338 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1346 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1347 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1348 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1350 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1351 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1352 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1354 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1355 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1356 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1358 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1359 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1360 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1362 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
1364 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1366 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1367 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1368 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1369 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1370 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1371 (notably embedded) targets.
1373 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1375 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1376 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1377 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1378 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
1380 * New command line option
1382 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1384 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1386 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1387 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1388 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1389 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1390 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1391 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1392 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1393 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1394 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1395 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1397 * Changes in ARM configurations.
1399 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1400 configuration is fully multi-arch.
1402 * New native configurations
1404 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
1405 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
1406 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
1407 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
1411 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1413 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1415 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1416 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1417 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1418 permanently REMOVED.
1420 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1421 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1422 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1423 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1424 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1426 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1428 * REMOVED configurations and files
1430 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1432 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1433 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1434 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1435 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1436 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1437 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1438 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1439 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1440 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1441 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1442 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
1444 * Changes to command line processing
1446 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1447 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1449 * Changes to key bindings
1451 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1453 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1455 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1457 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1460 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1462 Numerous documentation fixes.
1464 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1466 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1468 * New native configurations
1470 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1471 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1472 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1473 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1474 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1475 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1479 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1481 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1483 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1485 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1486 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1487 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1488 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1489 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1491 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1492 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1493 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1494 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1495 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1496 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1497 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1498 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1500 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1501 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1503 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1504 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1505 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1506 permanently REMOVED.
1508 * REMOVED configurations and files
1510 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1511 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1513 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1517 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1519 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1520 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1525 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1527 * The MI enabled by default.
1529 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1530 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1531 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1532 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1533 which is now deprecated.
1535 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1537 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1538 main features are supported:
1540 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1542 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1545 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1547 - a Pascal expression parser.
1549 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1551 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1553 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1555 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1556 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1558 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1560 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1562 * Changes in completion.
1564 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1565 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1566 users expect at the shell prompt.
1568 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1569 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1570 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1571 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1572 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1573 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1574 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1576 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1578 * New platform-independent commands:
1580 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1581 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1582 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1584 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1586 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1587 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1588 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1590 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1592 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1593 multi-threaded programs though.
1595 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1597 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1599 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1600 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1603 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1605 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1606 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1607 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1608 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1609 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1612 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1613 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1614 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1616 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1618 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1619 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1621 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1622 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1625 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1626 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1627 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1628 a given linear address.
1630 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1631 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1632 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1634 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1636 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1638 * Changes in documentation.
1640 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1641 Documentation License.
1643 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1646 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1648 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1651 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1652 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1653 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1655 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1657 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1658 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1659 contents of this file.
1663 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1665 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1667 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1669 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1670 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1671 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1672 greater level of detail.
1674 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1676 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1677 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1678 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1681 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1683 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1684 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1685 machines ``out of the box''.
1687 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1688 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1689 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1690 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1691 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1693 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1694 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1695 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1696 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1697 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1699 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1700 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1703 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1706 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1707 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1708 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1709 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1711 * New native configurations
1713 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1714 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1718 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1719 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1720 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1721 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1723 * OBSOLETE configurations
1725 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1726 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1728 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1731 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1732 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1733 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1734 be permanently REMOVED.
1736 * Gould support removed
1738 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1740 * New features for SVR4
1742 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1743 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1744 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1746 * Many C++ enhancements
1748 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1749 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1751 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1753 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1754 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1755 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1756 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1758 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1759 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1761 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1763 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1764 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1765 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1767 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1768 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1770 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1772 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1773 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1774 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1776 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1778 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1779 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1780 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1782 * ``apropos'' command added.
1784 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1785 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1786 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1790 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1791 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1792 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1793 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1794 enabled by configuring with:
1796 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1798 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1800 * New native configurations
1802 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1803 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1804 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1808 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1809 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1810 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1812 * OBSOLETE configurations
1814 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1816 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1817 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1818 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1819 be permanently REMOVED.
1823 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1824 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1825 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1826 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1827 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1828 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1829 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1834 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1836 * set extension-language
1838 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1839 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1840 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1841 set extension-language .c c++
1842 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1843 and their associated languages.
1845 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1847 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1848 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1849 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1853 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1854 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1856 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1857 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1859 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1860 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1861 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1862 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1863 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1864 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1865 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1866 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1868 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1869 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1870 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1871 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1875 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1876 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1877 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1878 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1879 for xdb and dbx commands.
1883 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1884 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1885 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1887 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1888 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1889 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1891 * Debugging across forks
1893 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1898 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1899 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1900 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1902 * GDB remote protocol additions
1904 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1905 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1906 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1907 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1909 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1910 full 64-bit address. The command
1912 set remoteaddresssize 32
1914 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1915 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1918 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1919 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1921 maint packet heythere
1923 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1924 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1927 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1928 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1929 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1931 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1933 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1934 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1935 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1937 * mask-address variable for Mips
1939 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1940 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1941 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1943 * Higher serial baud rates
1945 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1946 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1947 to achieve all of these rates.)
1951 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1952 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1955 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1957 * New native configurations
1959 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1960 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1961 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1962 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1963 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1964 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1965 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1969 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1970 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1971 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1972 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1973 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1974 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1975 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1976 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1977 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1978 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1979 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1981 * New debugging protocols
1983 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1984 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1985 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1986 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1987 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1988 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1992 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1993 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1998 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1999 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2001 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2003 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2004 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2005 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2007 * Live range splitting
2009 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2010 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2011 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2015 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2016 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2020 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2021 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2022 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2027 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2032 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2033 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2034 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2035 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2036 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2037 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2041 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2042 the symbol at the specified address.
2046 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2047 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2048 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2049 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2050 file tracepoint.c for more details.
2054 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2055 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2056 of most MIPS variants.
2060 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2061 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2062 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2066 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2067 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2068 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2069 the possible architectures.
2071 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2073 * New native configurations
2075 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2076 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2077 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2078 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2079 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2080 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2084 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2085 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2086 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2087 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2088 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2090 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2094 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2095 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2096 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2097 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2098 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2102 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2104 * Windows 95/NT native
2106 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2107 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2108 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2109 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2110 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2112 * dont-repeat command
2114 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2115 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2116 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2117 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2119 * Send break instead of ^C
2121 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2122 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2123 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2125 * Remote protocol timeout
2127 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2128 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2129 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2131 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2133 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2134 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2135 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2136 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2137 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2139 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2140 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2141 automatically on hpux10.
2143 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2145 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2147 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2149 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2150 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2151 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2152 every character. The default value is 1050.
2154 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2156 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2157 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2158 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2159 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2160 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2161 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2163 * Speedups for remote debugging
2165 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2166 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2167 and more efficient S-record downloading.
2169 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2171 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2172 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2174 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2176 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
2178 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2179 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2181 * Remote targets use caching
2183 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2184 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2185 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2186 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2187 off' turns the the data cache off.
2189 * Remote targets may have threads
2191 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2192 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2193 gdb/remote.c for details.
2197 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2198 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2199 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2200 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2201 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2202 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2203 sequence is something like
2205 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2207 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2211 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2212 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2213 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2214 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2215 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2216 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2217 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2218 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2222 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2223 but does simplify configuration and building.
2227 GDB now supports hpux10.
2229 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2231 * New native configurations
2233 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2234 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2235 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2236 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2240 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2241 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2242 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2243 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2246 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2248 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2249 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2250 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2251 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2252 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2254 * Arguments to user-defined commands
2256 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2257 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2260 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2262 To execute the command use:
2265 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2266 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2267 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2269 * New `if' and `while' commands
2271 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2272 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2273 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2274 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2275 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2276 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2277 if the expression is zero.
2279 * Fortran source language mode
2281 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2282 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2283 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2284 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2287 * Better HPUX support
2289 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2290 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2291 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2292 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2293 that behavior do the following before running the program:
2299 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2300 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2306 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2307 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2310 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2311 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2313 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2315 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2316 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2317 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2318 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2319 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2320 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2322 * New DOS host serial code
2324 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2325 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2328 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2330 * New "complete" command
2332 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2333 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2335 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2337 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2338 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2340 * Breakpoint hit counts
2342 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2343 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2344 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2345 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2346 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2349 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2351 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2352 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2353 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2355 * Shared library breakpoints
2357 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2358 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2360 * Hardware watchpoints
2362 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2363 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2365 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
2369 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2370 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2372 * Improved Irix 5 support
2374 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2376 * Improved HPPA support
2378 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2380 * New native configurations
2382 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2383 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2384 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2385 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2389 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2390 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2393 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2395 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2396 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2400 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2401 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2403 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2405 * Irix 5 is now supported
2409 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2410 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2411 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2412 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2413 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2416 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2418 * User visible changes:
2422 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2423 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2424 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2425 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2426 debugging info for the mips target).
2428 * DEC Alpha native support
2430 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2431 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2432 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2433 Alpha-specific notes.
2435 * Preliminary thread implementation
2437 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2439 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
2441 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2442 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2445 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2447 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2448 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2449 call methods, ...etc.
2451 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2453 * User visible changes:
2455 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2456 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2457 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2458 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2460 Filename completion now works.
2462 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2463 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2464 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2466 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2467 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2468 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2469 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2470 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2474 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2475 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2478 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2482 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2483 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2484 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2488 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2489 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2490 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2491 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2492 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2496 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2497 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2498 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2500 * New targets supported
2502 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2503 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2504 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2505 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2506 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2508 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2509 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2510 GO32 memory extender.
2512 * New remote protocols
2514 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2516 * New source languages supported
2518 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2519 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2520 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2523 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2525 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2527 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2528 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2529 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2530 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2531 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2532 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2534 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2536 * Faster and better demangling
2538 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2539 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2540 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2541 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2542 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2543 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2546 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2547 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2548 compiler does not actually implement.
2550 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2552 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2553 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2554 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2555 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2556 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2557 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2560 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2561 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2563 * Improved configure script
2565 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2566 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2567 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2568 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2570 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2571 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2572 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2573 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2574 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2575 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2577 * Documentation improvements
2579 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2580 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2581 before submitting changes.
2583 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2584 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2585 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2586 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2587 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2589 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2590 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2591 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2592 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2593 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2594 around this problem.
2598 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2599 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2600 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2603 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2604 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2606 * New native hosts supported
2608 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2609 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2611 * New targets supported
2613 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2615 * New file formats supported
2617 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2618 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2622 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2624 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2625 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2627 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2628 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2629 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2631 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2632 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2634 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2635 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2636 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2639 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2640 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2641 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2642 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2643 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2645 * Internal improvements
2647 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2648 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2650 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2651 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2652 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2653 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2654 shared code that handles any of them.
2656 * New command line options
2658 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2662 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2663 General Public License.
2665 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2667 * Host/native/target split
2669 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2670 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2671 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2672 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2673 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2675 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2676 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2677 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2678 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2679 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2680 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2681 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2683 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2684 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2685 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2687 * New hosts supported
2689 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2690 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2691 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2693 * New targets supported
2695 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2696 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2698 * New native hosts supported
2700 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2701 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2702 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2704 * New file formats supported
2706 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2707 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2708 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2712 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2713 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2714 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2716 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2718 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2719 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2720 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2721 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2725 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2726 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2727 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2729 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2733 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2734 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2737 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2738 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2740 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2741 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2742 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2743 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2744 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2745 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2747 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2748 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2749 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2750 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2754 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2755 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2756 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2757 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2758 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2760 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2761 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2762 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2763 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2767 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2768 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2769 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2770 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2771 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2772 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2773 each instruction being stepped through.
2775 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2776 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2778 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2779 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2780 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2781 processor with a serial port.
2785 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2786 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2787 supported, and what files each one uses.
2791 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2792 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2793 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2794 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2796 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2797 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2798 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2799 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2803 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2804 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2805 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2806 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2807 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2808 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2810 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2813 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2815 * Better support for C++ function names
2817 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2818 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2819 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2820 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2821 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2823 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2824 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2825 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2826 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2827 for the list of formats.
2829 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2831 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2832 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2833 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2834 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2835 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2836 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2839 * New 'maintenance' command
2841 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2842 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2843 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2845 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2846 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2847 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2848 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2849 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2850 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2852 The following commands are new:
2854 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2855 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2856 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2858 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2860 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2861 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2862 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2863 read after argv processing.
2865 * New hosts supported
2867 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2869 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2871 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2872 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2873 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2874 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2875 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2878 * New targets supported
2880 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2882 * More smarts about finding #include files
2884 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2885 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2886 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2887 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2888 the one that contains your sources.
2890 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2891 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2892 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2894 * Interesting infernals change
2896 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2897 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2898 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2899 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2901 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2903 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2904 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2905 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2907 See the ChangeLog for details.
2909 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2911 * New machines supported (host and target)
2913 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2915 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2917 * New malloc package
2919 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2920 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2921 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2922 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2923 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2924 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2928 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2929 'help info proc' for details.
2931 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2933 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2934 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2937 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2939 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2940 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2941 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2942 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2943 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2944 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2946 * Cross byte order fixes
2948 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2949 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2951 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2953 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2954 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2955 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2956 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2957 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2958 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2959 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2960 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2961 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2962 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2964 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2965 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2966 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2967 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2969 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2970 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2971 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2974 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2976 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2977 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2978 shared across multiple host platforms.
2980 * longjmp() handling
2982 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2983 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2984 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2985 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2989 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2990 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2995 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2996 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2997 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2999 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3001 * New machines supported (host and target)
3003 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3005 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3006 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3008 * New machines supported (target)
3010 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3014 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3015 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3016 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3018 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3019 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3020 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3021 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3022 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3025 * New features for SVR4
3027 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3028 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3029 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3031 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3032 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3033 it prints the address mappings of the process.
3035 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3036 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3038 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3040 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3041 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3042 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3043 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3044 same code linked statically.
3048 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3049 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3050 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3051 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3052 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3053 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3057 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3058 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3059 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3062 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3064 * New machines supported (host and target)
3066 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3067 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3068 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3070 * Almost SCO Unix support
3072 We had hoped to support:
3073 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3074 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3075 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3076 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3078 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3080 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3081 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3082 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3083 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3088 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3089 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3090 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3094 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3095 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3096 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3098 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3100 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3101 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3102 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3104 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3105 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3106 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3107 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3110 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3111 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3112 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3113 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3116 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3117 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3120 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3121 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3122 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3125 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3127 * Improved configuration
3129 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3130 Porting BFD is simpler.
3134 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3135 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3136 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3137 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3141 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3143 * New host supported (not target)
3145 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3148 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3150 * Multiple source language support
3152 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3153 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3154 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3155 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3156 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3157 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3161 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3162 currently under development at the State University of New York at
3163 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3164 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3166 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3167 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3168 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3170 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3171 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3175 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3176 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3177 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3178 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3181 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3183 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3184 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3185 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3186 examining core files.
3190 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3193 * New machines supported (host and target)
3195 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3196 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3197 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3199 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3201 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3203 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3205 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3206 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3207 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3209 * New remote interfaces
3215 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3219 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3221 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3222 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3223 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3224 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3225 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3226 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3227 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3228 stub on the target system.
3230 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3232 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3233 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3234 object file types such as a.out and coff.
3236 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3237 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3240 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3242 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3243 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3245 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3246 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3247 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3249 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3250 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3251 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3252 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3254 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3255 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3256 it is already running. Default is ON.
3258 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3259 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3260 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3261 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3264 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3265 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3266 or the value of the environment variable
3269 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3270 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3273 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3274 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3275 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3277 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3278 history expansion will be performed on
3279 command line input. The default is OFF.
3281 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3282 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3283 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3285 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3286 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3287 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3290 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3291 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3292 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3295 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3296 ``set width'' instead.
3298 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3299 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3300 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3301 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3303 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3306 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3309 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3312 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3315 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3317 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3318 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3319 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3323 * Support for Shared Libraries
3325 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3326 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3327 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3328 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3329 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3330 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3331 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3332 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3334 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3335 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3336 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3338 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3343 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3344 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3345 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3346 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3347 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3348 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3350 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3352 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3354 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3355 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3356 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3359 * C++ multiple inheritance
3361 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3364 * C++ exception handling
3366 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3367 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3368 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3371 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3372 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3373 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3375 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3376 current stack frame.
3379 * Minor command changes
3381 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3382 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3383 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3385 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3386 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3387 frames without printing.
3389 * New directory command
3391 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3392 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3393 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3394 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3395 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3397 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3399 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3402 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3403 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3404 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3405 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / binutils-gdb.git / blob