sim: Add PRU simulator port
[binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.3
5
6 * 'thread-exited' event is now available in the annotations interface.
7
8 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
9 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
10 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
11 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
12 such as in system-wide init files.
13
14 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
15 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
16 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
17 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
18
19 * Support for Pointer Authentication (PAC) on AArch64 Linux. Return
20 addresses that required unmasking are shown in the backtrace with the
21 postfix [PAC].
22
23 * Two new convenience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
24 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
25
26 * New built-in convenience variables $_shell_exitcode and $_shell_exitsignal
27 provide the exitcode or exit status of the shell commands launched by
28 GDB commands such as "shell", "pipe" and "make".
29
30 * The RX port now supports XML target descriptions.
31
32 * GDB now shows the Ada task names at more places, e.g. in task switching
33 messages.
34
35 * GDB can now be compiled with Python 3 on Windows.
36
37 * Python API
38
39 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
40 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
41 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
42 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
43 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
44
45 ** gdb.Type has a new property 'objfile' which returns the objfile the
46 type was defined in.
47
48 ** The frame information printed by the python frame filtering code
49 is now consistent with what the 'backtrace' command prints when
50 there are no filters, or when the 'backtrace' '-no-filters' option
51 is given.
52
53 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbol can be used to look up
54 symbols with static linkage.
55
56 ** gdb.Objfile has new methods 'lookup_global_symbol' and
57 'lookup_static_symbol' to lookup a symbol from this objfile only.
58
59 ** gdb.Block now supports the dictionary syntax for accessing symbols in
60 this block (e.g. block['local_variable']).
61
62 * New commands
63
64 | [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
65 | -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
66 pipe [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
67 pipe -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
68 Executes COMMAND and sends its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
69 With no COMMAND, repeat the last executed command
70 and send its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
71
72 with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
73 w SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
74 Temporarily set SETTING, run COMMAND, and restore SETTING.
75 Usage: with SETTING -- COMMAND
76 With no COMMAND, repeats the last executed command.
77 SETTING is any GDB setting you can change with the "set"
78 subcommands. For example, 'with language c -- print someobj'
79 temporarily switches to the C language in order to print someobj.
80 Settings can be combined: 'w lang c -- w print elements unlimited --
81 usercmd' switches to the C language and runs usercmd with no limit
82 of array elements to print.
83
84 maint with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
85 Like "with", but works with "maintenance set" settings.
86
87 set may-call-functions [on|off]
88 show may-call-functions
89 This controls whether GDB will attempt to call functions in
90 the program, such as with expressions in the print command. It
91 defaults to on. Calling functions in the program being debugged
92 can have undesired side effects. It is now possible to forbid
93 such function calls. If function calls are forbidden, GDB will throw
94 an error when a command (such as print expression) calls a function
95 in the program.
96
97 set print finish [on|off]
98 show print finish
99 This controls whether the `finish' command will display the value
100 that is returned by the current function. When `off', the value is
101 still entered into the value history, but it is not printed. The
102 default is `on'.
103
104 set print max-depth
105 show print max-depth
106 Allows deeply nested structures to be simplified when printing by
107 replacing deeply nested parts (beyond the max-depth) with ellipses.
108 The default max-depth is 20, but this can be set to unlimited to get
109 the old behavior back.
110
111 set logging debugredirect [on|off]
112 By default, GDB debug output will go to both the terminal and the logfile.
113 Set if you want debug output to go only to the log file.
114
115 set style title foreground COLOR
116 set style title background COLOR
117 set style title intensity VALUE
118 Control the styling of titles.
119
120 set style highlight foreground COLOR
121 set style highlight background COLOR
122 set style highlight intensity VALUE
123 Control the styling of highlightings.
124
125 maint set test-settings KIND
126 maint show test-settings KIND
127 A set of commands used by the testsuite for exercising the settings
128 infrastructure.
129
130 set print frame-info [short-location|location|location-and-address
131 |source-and-location|source-line|auto]
132 show print frame-info
133 This controls what frame information is printed by the commands printing
134 a frame. This setting will e.g. influence the behaviour of 'backtrace',
135 'frame', 'stepi'. The python frame filtering also respect this setting.
136 The 'backtrace' '-frame-info' option can override this global setting.
137
138 * Changed commands
139
140 help
141 The "help" command uses the title style to enhance the
142 readibility of its output by styling the classes and
143 command names.
144
145 apropos [-v] REGEXP
146 Similarly to "help", the "apropos" command also uses the
147 title style for the command names. "apropos" accepts now
148 a flag "-v" (verbose) to show the full documentation
149 of matching commands and to use the highlight style to mark
150 the documentation parts matching REGEXP.
151
152 printf
153 eval
154 The GDB printf and eval commands can now print C-style and Ada-style
155 string convenience variables without calling functions in the program.
156 This allows to do formatted printing of strings without having
157 a running inferior, or when debugging a core dump.
158
159 info sources [-dirname | -basename] [--] [REGEXP]
160 This command has now optional arguments to only print the files
161 whose names match REGEXP. The arguments -dirname and -basename
162 allow to restrict matching respectively to the dirname and basename
163 parts of the files.
164
165 show style
166 The "show style" and its subcommands are now styling
167 a style name in their output using its own style, to help
168 the user visualize the different styles.
169
170 set print frame-arguments
171 The new value 'presence' indicates to only indicate the presence of
172 arguments using ..., instead of printing argument names and values.
173
174 set print raw-frame-arguments
175 show print raw-frame-arguments
176
177 These commands replace the similarly-named "set/show print raw
178 frame-arguments" commands (now with a dash instead of a space). The
179 old commands are now deprecated and may be removed in a future
180 release.
181
182 maint test-options require-delimiter
183 maint test-options unknown-is-error
184 maint test-options unknown-is-operand
185 maint show test-options-completion-result
186 Commands used by the testsuite to validate the command options
187 framework.
188
189 focus, winheight, +, -, >, <
190 These commands are now case-sensitive.
191
192 * New command options, command completion
193
194 GDB now has a standard infrastructure to support dash-style command
195 options ('-OPT'). One benefit is that commands that use it can
196 easily support completion of command line arguments. Try "CMD
197 -[TAB]" or "help CMD" to find options supported by a command. Over
198 time, we intend to migrate most commands to this infrastructure. A
199 number of commands got support for new command options in this
200 release:
201
202 ** The "print" and "compile print" commands now support a number of
203 options that allow overriding relevant global print settings as
204 set by "set print" subcommands:
205
206 -address [on|off]
207 -array [on|off]
208 -array-indexes [on|off]
209 -elements NUMBER|unlimited
210 -null-stop [on|off]
211 -object [on|off]
212 -pretty [on|off]
213 -repeats NUMBER|unlimited
214 -static-members [on|off]
215 -symbol [on|off]
216 -union [on|off]
217 -vtbl [on|off]
218
219 Note that because the "print"/"compile print" commands accept
220 arbitrary expressions which may look like options (including
221 abbreviations), if you specify any command option, then you must
222 use a double dash ("--") to mark the end of argument processing.
223
224 ** The "backtrace" command now supports a number of options that
225 allow overriding relevant global print settings as set by "set
226 backtrace" and "set print" subcommands:
227
228 -entry-values no|only|preferred|if-needed|both|compact|default
229 -frame-arguments all|scalars|none
230 -raw-frame-arguments [on|off]
231 -frame-info auto|source-line|location|source-and-location
232 |location-and-address|short-location
233 -past-main [on|off]
234 -past-entry [on|off]
235
236 In addition, the full/no-filters/hide qualifiers are now also
237 exposed as command options too:
238
239 -full
240 -no-filters
241 -hide
242
243 ** The "frame apply", "tfaas" and "faas" commands similarly now
244 support the following options:
245
246 -past-main [on|off]
247 -past-entry [on|off]
248
249 ** The new "info sources" options -dirname and -basename options
250 are using the standard '-OPT' infrastructure.
251
252 All options above can also be abbreviated. The argument of boolean
253 (on/off) options can be 0/1 too, and also the argument is assumed
254 "on" if omitted. This allows writing compact command invocations,
255 like for example:
256
257 (gdb) p -r -p -o 0 -- *myptr
258
259 The above is equivalent to:
260
261 (gdb) print -raw -pretty -object off -- *myptr
262
263 ** The "info types" command now supports the '-q' flag to disable
264 printing of some header information in a similar fashion to "info
265 variables" and "info functions".
266
267 ** The "info variables", "info functions", and "whereis" commands
268 now take a '-n' flag that excludes non-debug symbols (symbols
269 from the symbol table, not from the debug info such as DWARF)
270 from the results.
271
272 * Completion improvements
273
274 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "thread apply all" and
275 "taas" commands, and their "-ascending" option can now be
276 abbreviated.
277
278 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "info threads", "info
279 functions", "info variables", "info locals", and "info args"
280 commands.
281
282 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "compile file" and
283 "compile code" commands. The "compile file" command now
284 completes on filenames.
285
286 ** GDB can now complete the backtrace command's
287 "full/no-filters/hide" qualifiers.
288
289 * In settings, you can now abbreviate "unlimited".
290
291 E.g., "set print elements u" is now equivalent to "set print
292 elements unlimited".
293
294 * New MI commands
295
296 -complete
297 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
298 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by MI
299 frontends in cases when separate CLI and MI channels cannot be used.
300
301 -catch-throw, -catch-rethrow, and -catch-catch
302 These can be used to catch C++ exceptions in a similar fashion to
303 the CLI commands 'catch throw', 'catch rethrow', and 'catch catch'.
304
305 * Other MI changes
306
307 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
308
309 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
310 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
311 the following commands and events:
312
313 - -break-insert
314 - -break-info
315 - =breakpoint-created
316 - =breakpoint-modified
317
318 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
319 this behavior with previous MI versions.
320
321 ** Backtraces and frames include a new optional field addr_flags which is
322 given after the addr field. On AArch64 this contains PAC if the address
323 has been masked in the frame. On all other targets the field is not
324 present.
325
326 * Testsuite
327
328 The testsuite now creates the files gdb.cmd (containing the arguments
329 used to launch GDB) and gdb.in (containing all the commands sent to
330 GDB) in the output directory for each test script. Multiple invocations
331 are appended with .1, .2, .3 etc.
332
333 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.82.
334
335 Using another implementation of the make program or an earlier version of
336 GNU make to build GDB or GDBserver is not supported.
337
338 * Building GDB now requires GNU readline >= 7.0.
339
340 GDB now bundles GNU readline 8.0, but if you choose to use
341 --with-system-readline, only readline >= 7.0 can be used.
342
343 * The TUI SingleKey keymap is now named "SingleKey". This can be used
344 from .inputrc to bind keys in this keymap. This feature is only
345 available when gdb is built against GNU readline 8.0 or later.
346
347 * Removed targets and native configurations
348
349 GDB no longer supports debugging the Cell Broadband Engine. This includes
350 both debugging standalone Cell/B.E. SPU applications and integrated debugging
351 of Cell/B.E. applications that use both the PPU and SPU architectures.
352
353 * New Simulators
354
355 TI PRU pru-*-elf
356
357 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
358
359 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
360 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
361 HTM registers.
362
363 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
364 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
365 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
366 and operators.
367
368 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
369 (the C++ plug-in).
370
371 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
372 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
373 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
374
375 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
376 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
377
378 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
379 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
380 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
381 in the GDB user manual.
382
383 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
384 executed failed.
385
386 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
387
388 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
389 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
390 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
391 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
392 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
393 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
394 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
395 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
396 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
397 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
398 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
399 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
400
401 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
402 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
403 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
404 information.
405
406 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
407 lucid.
408
409 * New commands
410
411 set debug compile-cplus-types
412 show debug compile-cplus-types
413 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
414 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiliong
415 for other languages.
416
417 set debug skip
418 show debug skip
419 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
420 displayed.
421
422 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
423 Apply a command to some frames.
424 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
425 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
426
427 taas COMMAND
428 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
429 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
430
431 faas COMMAND
432 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
433 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
434
435 tfaas COMMAND
436 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
437 output).
438 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
439
440 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
441 maint show dwarf unwinders
442 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
443
444 info proc files
445 Display a list of open files for a process.
446
447 * Changed commands
448
449 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
450 These commands all now take a frame specification which
451 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
452 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
453 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
454 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
455 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
456
457 target remote FILENAME
458 target extended-remote FILENAME
459 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
460 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
461
462 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
463 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
464 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
465 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
466 These commands can now print only the searched entities
467 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
468 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
469 printing headers or informations messages.
470
471 info functions
472 info types
473 info variables
474 rbreak
475 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
476 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
477 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
478 the shown entities.
479
480 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
481 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
482 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
483 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
484
485 set tui tab-width NCHARS
486 show tui tab-width NCHARS
487 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
488
489 set style enabled [on|off]
490 show style enabled
491 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
492 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
493
494 set style sources [on|off]
495 show style sources
496 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
497 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
498 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
499
500 set style filename foreground COLOR
501 set style filename background COLOR
502 set style filename intensity VALUE
503 Control the styling of file names.
504
505 set style function foreground COLOR
506 set style function background COLOR
507 set style function intensity VALUE
508 Control the styling of function names.
509
510 set style variable foreground COLOR
511 set style variable background COLOR
512 set style variable intensity VALUE
513 Control the styling of variable names.
514
515 set style address foreground COLOR
516 set style address background COLOR
517 set style address intensity VALUE
518 Control the styling of addresses.
519
520 * MI changes
521
522 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
523 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
524 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
525 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
526 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
527
528 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
529 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
530
531 * New native configurations
532
533 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
534 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
535
536 * New targets
537
538 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
539 CSKY ELF csky*-*-elf
540 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
541 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
542 NXP S12Z s12z-*-elf
543 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
544
545 * Removed targets
546
547 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
548 before Windows XP.
549
550 * Python API
551
552 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
553
554 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
555 space associated to that inferior.
556
557 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
558 of objfiles associated to that program space.
559
560 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
561 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
562 the gdb core.
563
564 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
565 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
566 correct and did not work properly.
567
568 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
569 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
570
571 * Configure changes
572
573 --enable-ubsan
574
575 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
576 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
577 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
578 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
579 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
580
581 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
582
583 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
584 for the MIPS target.
585
586 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
587 offset to all sections.
588
589 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
590 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
591 address of individual sections using '-s'.
592
593 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
594 (address of the text section).
595
596 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
597 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
598 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
599 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
600 default.
601
602 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
603 for the rest of the current command.
604
605 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
606 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
607
608 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
609 files created on FreeBSD systems.
610
611 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
612 alignof.
613
614 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
615 the vector length while the process is running.
616
617 * New commands
618
619 set debug fbsd-nat
620 show debug fbsd-nat
621 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
622
623 set|show varsize-limit
624 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
625 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
626 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
627
628 set|show record btrace cpu
629 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
630 branch trace decode.
631
632 maint check libthread-db
633 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
634 library
635
636 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
637 maint show check-libthread-db
638 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
639 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
640 perform such checks.
641
642 * Python API
643
644 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
645
646 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
647 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
648
649 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
650
651 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
652 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
653 of convenience variables.
654
655 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
656 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
657 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
658
659 * New targets
660
661 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
662
663 * Removed targets and native configurations
664
665 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
666 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
667 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
668 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
669
670 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
671
672 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
673 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
674 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
675 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
676 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
677 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
678 reported.
679
680 * Configure changes
681
682 --enable-codesign=CERT
683 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
684 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
685 gdb to work properly.
686
687 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
688 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
689
690 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
691
692 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
693 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
694 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
695
696 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
697 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
698
699 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
700 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
701 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
702 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
703 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
704
705 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
706 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
707 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
708 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
709
710 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
711 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
712
713 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
714 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
715 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
716
717 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
718 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
719 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
720
721 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
722 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
723 environment" command.
724
725 * Completion improvements
726
727 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
728 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
729 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
730 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
731 correctly:
732
733 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
734 (gdb) b function(int)
735
736 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
737 C++ anonymous namespaces:
738
739 (gdb) b (anon[TAB]
740 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
741 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
742 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
743
744 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
745 completion support, that better understands what you're
746 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
747 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
748 setting a breakpoint.
749
750 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
751
752 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
753
754 * New command line options (gcore)
755
756 -a
757 Dump all memory mappings.
758
759 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
760
761 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
762 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
763 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
764
765 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
766
767 A::B::func()
768 B::func()
769
770 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
771 on both symbols.
772
773 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
774 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
775 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
776 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
777 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
778 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
779 a breakpoint from Python.
780
781 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
782
783 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
784 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
785 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
786
787 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
788
789 function[abi:cxx11](int)
790 ^^^^^^^^^^^
791
792 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
793 no tag, like:
794
795 (gdb) b function(int)
796
797 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
798
799 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
800
801 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
802
803 * Python Scripting
804
805 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
806 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
807 description of these.
808
809 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
810 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
811 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
812
813 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
814 manual for a further description of this feature.
815
816
817 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
818
819 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
820 specified initial working directory.
821
822 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
823 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
824
825 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
826 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
827
828 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
829 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
830
831 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
832 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
833 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
834 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
835 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
836
837 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
838 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
839 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
840
841 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
842 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
843 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
844 in the *stopped notification.
845
846 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
847 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
848
849 * New remote packets
850
851 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
852 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
853 the inferior when starting it.
854
855 QEnvironmentUnset
856 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
857 before starting the remote inferior.
858
859 QEnvironmentReset
860 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
861 user-set environment variables should be unset).
862
863 QStartupWithShell
864 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
865
866 QSetWorkingDir
867 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
868 working directory.
869
870 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
871 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
872
873 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
874 filter the tests to be run.
875
876 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
877 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
878
879 * New commands
880
881 set|show cwd
882 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
883
884 set|show compile-gcc
885 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
886 with the 'compile' commands.
887
888 set debug separate-debug-file
889 show debug separate-debug-file
890 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
891
892 set dump-excluded-mappings
893 show dump-excluded-mappings
894 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
895 dumped when generating a core file.
896
897 maint info selftests
898 List the registered selftests.
899
900 starti
901 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
902
903 set|show debug or1k
904 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
905
906 set|show print type nested-type-limit
907 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
908 type printer will show.
909
910 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
911 `o' for nexti.
912
913 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
914
915 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
916 'int'.
917
918 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
919 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
920 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
921 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
922
923 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
924 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
925 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
926 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
927 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
928 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
929
930 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
931 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
932 unless you tell it the variable's type:
933
934 (gdb) p var
935 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
936 (gdb) p (float) var
937 $3 = 3.14
938
939 * New native configurations
940
941 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
942 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
943
944 * New targets
945
946 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
947 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
948 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
949
950 * Removed targets and native configurations
951
952 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
953
954 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
955
956 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
957 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
958 available in future Intel CPUs.
959
960 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
961
962 * Python Scripting
963
964 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
965 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
966
967 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
968 instructions.
969
970 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
971
972 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
973
974 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
975 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
976 removed.
977
978 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
979
980 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
981 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
982
983 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
984
985 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
986 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
987 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
988 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
989 features.
990
991 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
992
993 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
994 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
995 debugger.
996
997 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
998
999 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
1000 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
1001
1002 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
1003
1004 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
1005
1006 define mycommand
1007 set $i = 0
1008 while $i < $argc
1009 eval "print $arg%d", $i
1010 set $i = $i + 1
1011 end
1012 end
1013
1014 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
1015
1016 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
1017 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
1018
1019 * New native configurations
1020
1021 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1022
1023 * New targets
1024
1025 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
1026 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1027
1028 * Removed targets and native configurations
1029
1030 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1031 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
1032
1033 * New commands
1034
1035 flash-erase
1036 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
1037
1038 maint print arc arc-instruction address
1039 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
1040
1041 * New options
1042
1043 set disassembler-options
1044 show disassembler-options
1045 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
1046 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
1047 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
1048 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
1049 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
1050
1051 * New MI commands
1052
1053 -target-flash-erase
1054 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
1055 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
1056
1057 -file-list-shared-libraries
1058 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
1059 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
1060
1061 -catch-handlers
1062 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
1063 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
1064
1065 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
1066
1067 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
1068
1069 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
1070 default. One must now explicitly configure with
1071 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
1072 option will be removed in a future release.
1073
1074 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
1075 GDB connection.
1076
1077 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
1078 memory backward from the given address. For example:
1079
1080 (gdb) bt
1081 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
1082 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
1083 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
1084 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
1085 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
1086 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
1087 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
1088 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
1089 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
1090
1091 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
1092 arrays of dynamic types.
1093
1094 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
1095 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1096 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1097 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1098 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1099 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
1100
1101 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
1102 descriptions.
1103
1104 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
1105 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
1106 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
1107
1108 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
1109
1110 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
1111 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
1112 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
1113 signal received and code location.
1114
1115 For example:
1116
1117 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
1118 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
1119 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
1120 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
1121
1122 * Rust language support.
1123 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
1124 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
1125 Rust.
1126
1127 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
1128
1129 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
1130 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
1131 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
1132 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
1133 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
1134 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
1135 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
1136 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
1137 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
1138 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
1139 line.
1140
1141 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
1142
1143 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
1144 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
1145
1146 * New commands
1147
1148 skip -file file
1149 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
1150 skip -function function
1151 skip -rfunction regular-expression
1152 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
1153 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
1154 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
1155
1156 maint info line-table REGEXP
1157 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
1158
1159 maint selftest
1160 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
1161
1162 new-ui INTERP TTY
1163 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
1164 using the TTY file for input/output.
1165
1166 * Python Scripting
1167
1168 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
1169 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
1170 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
1171 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
1172 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
1173
1174 signal-event EVENTID
1175 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
1176 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
1177 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
1178 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
1179 signalling an event.
1180
1181 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
1182 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
1183 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
1184
1185 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
1186 been removed:
1187
1188 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
1189 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
1190 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
1191 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
1192 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
1193 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
1194
1195 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
1196 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
1197 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
1198 bytecode into native code.
1199
1200 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
1201 recording. For example:
1202
1203 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
1204
1205 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
1206
1207 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
1208
1209 * New targets
1210
1211 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
1212
1213 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
1214
1215 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
1216
1217 * Per-inferior thread numbers
1218
1219 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
1220 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
1221 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
1222
1223 (gdb) info threads
1224 Id Target Id Frame
1225 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
1226 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
1227 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
1228 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
1229
1230 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
1231 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
1232 are no longer unique between inferiors.
1233
1234 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
1235 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
1236 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
1237
1238 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
1239 IDs.
1240
1241 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
1242 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
1243
1244 (gdb) thread 2.1
1245 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
1246 (gdb)
1247
1248 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
1249 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
1250 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
1251 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
1252 threads 2.*".
1253
1254 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
1255 all threads.
1256
1257 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
1258 the current thread.
1259
1260 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
1261 current inferior.
1262
1263 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
1264 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
1265 example:
1266
1267 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
1268 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
1269
1270 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
1271
1272 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
1273
1274 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
1275 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
1276
1277 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
1278 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
1279 clients.
1280
1281 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1282 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
1283 at the same time.
1284
1285 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
1286 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
1287 into native code.
1288
1289 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1290
1291 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
1292 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
1293 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
1294
1295 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
1296 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
1297
1298 * New commands
1299
1300 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
1301 maint show target-non-stop
1302 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
1303 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
1304 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
1305
1306 maint set bfd-sharing
1307 maint show bfd-sharing
1308 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
1309
1310 set debug bfd-cache
1311 show debug bfd-cache
1312 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
1313
1314 set debug fbsd-lwp
1315 show debug fbsd-lwp
1316 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
1317
1318 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1319 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1320 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
1321
1322 set remote thread-events
1323 show remote thread-events
1324 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
1325
1326 set ada print-signatures on|off
1327 show ada print-signatures"
1328 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
1329 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
1330
1331 set max-value-size
1332 show max-value-size
1333 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
1334 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
1335 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1336
1337 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1338 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1339 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1340 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1341 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1342 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1343
1344 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1345 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1346
1347 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1348 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1349
1350 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1351
1352 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1353 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1354 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1355 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1356 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1357 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1358
1359 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1360 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1361
1362 catch handlers
1363 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1364
1365 * New remote packets
1366
1367 exec stop reason
1368 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1369
1370 exec-events feature in qSupported
1371 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1372 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1373 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1374 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1375
1376 vCtrlC
1377 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1378 non-stop mode.
1379
1380 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1381 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1382
1383 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1384 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1385
1386 QThreadEvents
1387 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1388 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1389 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1390 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1391 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1392 stop for that same thread.
1393
1394 N stop reply
1395 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1396 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1397 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1398
1399 QCatchSyscalls
1400 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1401 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1402
1403 syscall_entry stop reason
1404 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1405
1406 syscall_return stop reason
1407 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
1408
1409 * Extended-remote exec events
1410
1411 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
1412 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
1413 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
1414
1415 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
1416 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
1417 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
1418
1419 * Thread names in remote protocol
1420
1421 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
1422 thread.
1423
1424 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
1425
1426 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
1427 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
1428 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
1429 fork and exec catchpoints.
1430
1431 * Remote syscall events
1432
1433 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
1434 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
1435
1436 set remote catch-syscall-packet
1437 show remote catch-syscall-packet
1438 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
1439
1440 * MI changes
1441
1442 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
1443 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
1444 left.
1445
1446 * Python Scripting
1447
1448 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
1449 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
1450 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
1451 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
1452 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
1453 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
1454
1455 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
1456
1457 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
1458 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
1459 including advance SIMD instructions.
1460
1461 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
1462
1463 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
1464 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
1465 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
1466 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
1467 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
1468 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
1469 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
1470
1471 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1472 cpu information :
1473 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
1474
1475 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
1476 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
1477 remote serial I/O.
1478
1479 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
1480 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
1481 and may include things like its command line arguments.
1482
1483 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
1484 is now available on all platforms.
1485
1486 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
1487 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
1488 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
1489 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
1490 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
1491 backward compatibility.
1492
1493 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
1494 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
1495 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
1496 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
1497
1498 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
1499 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
1500 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
1501 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
1502 packets" below.
1503
1504 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
1505
1506 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
1507
1508 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
1509 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
1510 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
1511 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
1512 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
1513 See "New remote packets" below.
1514
1515 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
1516 available register groups, including target specific groups.
1517
1518 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
1519 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
1520 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
1521 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
1522 are ignored.
1523
1524 * Guile Scripting
1525
1526 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
1527
1528 * Python Scripting
1529
1530 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
1531 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
1532 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
1533 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
1534 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
1535 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
1536 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
1537 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
1538 "const" version of the value respectively.
1539
1540 * New commands
1541
1542 maint print symbol-cache
1543 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
1544
1545 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
1546 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
1547
1548 maint flush-symbol-cache
1549 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
1550
1551 record btrace bts
1552 record bts
1553 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
1554
1555 compile print
1556 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
1557
1558 tui enable
1559 tui disable
1560 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
1561
1562 show mpx bound
1563 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
1564 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
1565
1566 record btrace pt
1567 record pt
1568 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
1569
1570 maint info btrace
1571 Print information about branch tracing internals.
1572
1573 maint btrace packet-history
1574 Print the raw branch tracing data.
1575
1576 maint btrace clear-packet-history
1577 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
1578
1579 maint btrace clear
1580 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
1581 anew by the next "record" command.
1582
1583 * New options
1584
1585 set debug dwarf-die
1586 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
1587 show debug dwarf-die
1588 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
1589
1590 set debug dwarf-read
1591 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
1592 show debug dwarf-read
1593 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
1594
1595 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
1596 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1597 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
1598 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1599
1600 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
1601 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1602 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
1603 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1604
1605 set debug dwarf-line
1606 show debug dwarf-line
1607 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
1608
1609 set max-completions
1610 show max-completions
1611 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
1612 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
1613 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
1614 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
1615
1616 set history remove-duplicates
1617 show history remove-duplicates
1618 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
1619
1620 maint set symbol-cache-size
1621 maint show symbol-cache-size
1622 Control the size of the symbol cache.
1623
1624 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
1625 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1626 BTS format.
1627 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1628 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1629
1630 set debug linux-namespaces
1631 show debug linux-namespaces
1632 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
1633
1634 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
1635 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1636 Intel Processor Trace format.
1637 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1638 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1639
1640 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
1641 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
1642 packet history.
1643
1644 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
1645 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
1646
1647 * Python/Guile scripting
1648
1649 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
1650 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
1651
1652 * New remote packets
1653
1654 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
1655 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
1656
1657 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
1658 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
1659
1660 Qbtrace:pt
1661 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
1662 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
1663 qSupported query.
1664
1665 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
1666 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
1667 Trace format.
1668
1669 swbreak stop reason
1670 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
1671 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
1672 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
1673 mode operation.
1674
1675 hwbreak stop reason
1676 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
1677 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
1678
1679 vFile:fstat:
1680 Return information about files on the remote system.
1681
1682 qXfer:exec-file:read
1683 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
1684 create a process running on the remote system.
1685
1686 vFile:setfs:
1687 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
1688 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
1689 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1690 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1691
1692 fork stop reason
1693 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1694
1695 vfork stop reason
1696 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1697
1698 vforkdone stop reason
1699 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1700 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1701
1702 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1703 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1704 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1705 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1706 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1707 whether these features are enabled.
1708
1709 * Extended-remote fork events
1710
1711 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1712 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1713 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1714 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1715
1716 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1717 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1718 the btrace record target.
1719 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1720
1721 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1722 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1723
1724 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1725 targets.
1726
1727 * Removed command line options
1728
1729 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1730
1731 * Removed targets and native configurations
1732
1733 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1734 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1735
1736 * New configure options
1737
1738 --with-intel-pt
1739 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1740 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1741
1742 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1743 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1744 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1745 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1746
1747 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1748
1749 * Python Scripting
1750
1751 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1752
1753 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1754
1755 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1756
1757 * Python Scripting
1758
1759 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1760 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1761 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1762 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1763 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1764 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1765 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1766 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1767 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1768 selecting a new file to debug.
1769 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1770 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1771
1772 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1773 inferior.
1774
1775 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1776 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1777 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1778 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1779
1780 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1781
1782 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1783 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1784 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1785 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1786
1787 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1788 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1789 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1790 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1791 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1792 interface with this new feature are:
1793
1794 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1795 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1796
1797 * New commands
1798
1799 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1800 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1801 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1802 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1803 as "maint demangler-warning".
1804
1805 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1806 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1807
1808 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1809 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1810 scripts.
1811
1812 maint print user-registers
1813 List all currently available "user" registers.
1814
1815 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1816 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1817 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1818
1819 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1820 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1821 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1822 provided.
1823
1824 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1825 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1826 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1827 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1828 at resume time.
1829
1830 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1831 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1832 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1833 switched threads meanwhile.
1834
1835 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1836
1837 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1838 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1839 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1840 is now the default mode.
1841
1842 * New options
1843
1844 set debug symbol-lookup
1845 show debug symbol-lookup
1846 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1847
1848 * MI changes
1849
1850 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1851 inferiors that have exited.
1852
1853 * New targets
1854
1855 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1856
1857 * Removed targets
1858
1859 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1860
1861 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1862 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1863 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1864 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1865 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1866
1867 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1868 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1869 its alias "share", instead.
1870
1871 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1872
1873 * New command line options
1874
1875 -D data-directory
1876 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1877
1878 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1879 as specified in ISO C99.
1880
1881 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1882 with or without disassembly.
1883
1884 * Guile scripting
1885
1886 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1887 available is determined at configure time.
1888 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1889 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1890
1891 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1892
1893 guile [code]
1894 gu [code]
1895 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1896
1897 guile-repl
1898 gr
1899 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1900
1901 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1902 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1903
1904 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1905 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1906
1907 * New options
1908
1909 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1910 show print symbol-loading
1911 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1912 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1913 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1914 becomes less useful.
1915
1916 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1917 show guile print-stack
1918 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1919
1920 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1921 show auto-load guile-scripts
1922 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1923
1924 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1925 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1926 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1927 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1928 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1929 usage of this option.
1930
1931 set auto-connect-native-target
1932
1933 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1934 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1935 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1936
1937 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1938 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1939 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1940
1941 maint set target-async (on|off)
1942 maint show target-async
1943 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1944 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1945 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1946 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1947
1948 set mi-async (on|off)
1949 show mi-async
1950 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1951 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1952
1953 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1954 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1955
1956 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1957 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1958 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1959 "set target-async on" command.
1960
1961 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1962
1963 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1964 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1965 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1966 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1967 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1968
1969 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1970 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1971 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1972
1973 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1974 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1975 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1976 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1977 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1978 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1979 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1980
1981 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1982 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1983
1984 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1985 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1986 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1987
1988 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1989 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1990 memory or registers.
1991
1992 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1993
1994 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1995 remote. It now works with all targets.
1996
1997 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1998 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1999 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
2000 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
2001 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
2002 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
2003 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
2004 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
2005 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
2006 target-stack".
2007
2008 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
2009 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
2010 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
2011
2012 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
2013
2014 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
2015 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
2016 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
2017
2018 * New remote packets
2019
2020 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
2021 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
2022 branch trace incrementally.
2023
2024 * Python Scripting
2025
2026 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
2027 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
2028 available.
2029 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
2030 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
2031 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
2032 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
2033 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
2034
2035 * New targets
2036 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
2037
2038 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2039 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2040 its alias "share", instead.
2041
2042 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
2043 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
2044 instead.
2045
2046 * MI changes
2047
2048 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
2049 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
2050 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
2051 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
2052 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
2053 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
2054 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
2055 commands and CLI execution commands.
2056
2057 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
2058
2059 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
2060 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
2061 recording has been added.
2062
2063 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
2064
2065 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
2066 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
2067
2068 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
2069 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
2070 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
2071 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
2072 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
2073 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
2074 "void".
2075
2076 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
2077
2078 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
2079
2080 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
2081 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
2082 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
2083 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
2084
2085 (gdb) p $rax
2086 $1 = <not saved>
2087
2088 (gdb) info registers rax
2089 rax <not saved>
2090
2091 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
2092 "*value not available*".
2093
2094 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
2095 to binaries.
2096
2097 * Python scripting
2098
2099 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
2100 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
2101 ** Line tables representation has been added.
2102 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
2103 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
2104 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
2105
2106 * New targets
2107
2108 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
2109 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
2110 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
2111
2112 * Removed native configurations
2113
2114 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
2115 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
2116
2117 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2118 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2119 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
2120 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
2121 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2122 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2123 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2124
2125 * New commands:
2126 catch rethrow
2127 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
2128 maint check-psymtabs
2129 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
2130 maint check-symtabs
2131 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
2132 maint expand-symtabs
2133 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
2134
2135 show configuration
2136 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2137
2138 maint set|show per-command
2139 maint set|show per-command space
2140 maint set|show per-command time
2141 maint set|show per-command symtab
2142 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
2143
2144 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
2145 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
2146 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
2147 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
2148 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
2149
2150 info exceptions
2151 info exceptions REGEXP
2152 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
2153 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
2154 are listed.
2155
2156 * New options
2157
2158 set debug symfile off|on
2159 show debug symfile
2160 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
2161 symbol tables within those files
2162
2163 set print raw frame-arguments
2164 show print raw frame-arguments
2165 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
2166 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
2167
2168 set remote trace-status-packet
2169 show remote trace-status-packet
2170 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
2171
2172 set debug nios2
2173 show debug nios2
2174 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
2175
2176 set range-stepping
2177 show range-stepping
2178 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
2179
2180 set startup-with-shell
2181 show startup-with-shell
2182 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
2183 directly.
2184
2185 set code-cache
2186 show code-cache
2187 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
2188 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
2189
2190 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
2191 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
2192 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
2193 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
2194 "set height 0".
2195
2196 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
2197 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
2198 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
2199
2200 * New command-line options
2201 --configuration
2202 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2203
2204 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
2205 buffer in Common Trace Format.
2206
2207 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
2208 GDB command gcore.
2209
2210 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
2211
2212 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
2213 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
2214
2215 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
2216 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
2217
2218 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
2219 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
2220 due to an uncaught signal.
2221
2222 * MI changes
2223
2224 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
2225 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
2226 command, which should contain "language-option".
2227
2228 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
2229 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
2230
2231 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
2232 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
2233 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
2234 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2235 "undefined-command-error-code".
2236
2237 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
2238 Trace Format now.
2239
2240 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
2241
2242 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
2243 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
2244 are displayed.
2245
2246 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
2247 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
2248
2249 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
2250 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
2251 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
2252
2253 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
2254 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
2255 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
2256 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
2257 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2258 "exec-run-start-option".
2259
2260 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
2261 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
2262
2263 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
2264 the new "info exceptions" command.
2265
2266 * New system-wide configuration scripts
2267 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
2268 configuration scripts for the following systems:
2269 ** ElinOS
2270 ** Wind River Linux
2271
2272 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
2273 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
2274 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
2275 below.
2276
2277 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
2278 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
2279
2280 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
2281 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
2282 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
2283
2284 * New remote packets
2285
2286 vCont;r
2287
2288 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
2289 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
2290 involvemement at each single-step.
2291
2292 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
2293 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
2294 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
2295 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
2296 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
2297 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
2298 speedup.
2299
2300 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2301
2302 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
2303 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
2304
2305 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
2306 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
2307 trace state variables.
2308
2309 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
2310 target.
2311
2312 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
2313 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
2314
2315 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
2316
2317 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
2318 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
2319 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
2320 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2321
2322 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
2323
2324 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
2325 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
2326 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
2327 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
2328
2329 set|show record full insn-number-max
2330 set|show record full stop-at-limit
2331 set|show record full memory-query
2332
2333 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
2334 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
2335 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
2336 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2337 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2338
2339 record btrace
2340
2341 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2342 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2343
2344 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2345 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2346 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2347
2348 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2349 instruction granularity
2350
2351 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2352 function granularity
2353
2354 * New native configurations
2355
2356 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2357 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2358 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2359 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2360
2361 * New targets
2362
2363 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2364 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2365 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2366 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2367 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2368
2369 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2370 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2371 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2372 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2373 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2374 --data-directory command-line option.
2375
2376 * New command line options:
2377
2378 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2379 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2380
2381 * Removed command line options
2382
2383 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2384 Emacs.
2385
2386 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2387 type formatting.
2388
2389 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2390
2391 * Python scripting
2392
2393 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2394
2395 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2396
2397 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2398
2399 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2400
2401 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2402 of architecture in the Python API.
2403
2404 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2405 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2406
2407 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2408
2409 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
2410 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
2411 ** $_strlen(str)
2412 ** $_regex(str, regex)
2413
2414 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
2415 given an argument.
2416
2417 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
2418 default for GCC since November 2000.
2419
2420 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
2421
2422 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
2423 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
2424
2425 * New configure options
2426
2427 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
2428 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
2429 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
2430 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
2431 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
2432 options allow the user to override that default.
2433 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
2434 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
2435 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
2436
2437 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2438
2439 catch signal
2440 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
2441 conditions to be attached.
2442
2443 maint info bfds
2444 List the BFDs known to GDB.
2445
2446 python-interactive [command]
2447 pi [command]
2448 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
2449 and print the result of expressions.
2450
2451 py [command]
2452 "py" is a new alias for "python".
2453
2454 enable type-printer [name]...
2455 disable type-printer [name]...
2456 Enable or disable type printers.
2457
2458 * Removed commands
2459
2460 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
2461 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
2462 instead.
2463
2464 * New options
2465
2466 set print type methods (on|off)
2467 show print type methods
2468 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
2469 The default is to show them.
2470
2471 set print type typedefs (on|off)
2472 show print type typedefs
2473 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
2474 The default is to show them.
2475
2476 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
2477 show filename-display
2478 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
2479 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
2480
2481 set trace-buffer-size
2482 show trace-buffer-size
2483 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
2484
2485 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
2486 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
2487 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
2488
2489 set debug aarch64
2490 show debug aarch64
2491 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
2492 The default is off.
2493
2494 set debug coff-pe-read
2495 show debug coff-pe-read
2496 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
2497 exported symbols.
2498
2499 set debug mach-o
2500 show debug mach-o
2501 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
2502 processing.
2503
2504 set debug notification
2505 show debug notification
2506 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
2507
2508 * MI changes
2509
2510 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
2511 "=cmd-param-changed".
2512 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
2513 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
2514 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
2515 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
2516 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
2517 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
2518 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
2519 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
2520 "=memory-changed".
2521 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
2522 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
2523 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
2524 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
2525 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
2526 library load/unload events.
2527 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
2528 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
2529 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
2530 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
2531 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
2532 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
2533 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
2534 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
2535
2536 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
2537 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
2538 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
2539 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
2540
2541 * New remote packets
2542
2543 QTBuffer:size
2544 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
2545 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2546
2547 Qbtrace:bts
2548 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
2549 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
2550 qSupported query.
2551
2552 Qbtrace:off
2553 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
2554 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2555
2556 qXfer:btrace:read
2557 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
2558 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2559
2560 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
2561
2562 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
2563 for more x32 ABI info.
2564
2565 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
2566
2567 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
2568
2569 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2570 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
2571 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
2572 "info os files" lists file descriptors
2573 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
2574 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
2575 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
2576 "info os msg" lists message queues
2577 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
2578
2579 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
2580 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
2581 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
2582 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
2583 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
2584 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
2585
2586 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
2587 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
2588 record/replay support.
2589
2590 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
2591
2592 * Python scripting
2593
2594 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
2595 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
2596
2597 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
2598
2599 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
2600 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
2601
2602 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
2603
2604 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
2605 the source at which the symbol was defined.
2606
2607 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
2608 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
2609 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
2610 symbol's value.
2611
2612 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
2613 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
2614
2615 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
2616 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
2617 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
2618
2619 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
2620 object associated with a PC value.
2621
2622 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
2623 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
2624
2625 * Go language support.
2626 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
2627 language.
2628
2629 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
2630 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
2631
2632 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
2633 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
2634
2635 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
2636 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
2637 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
2638 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
2639 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
2640 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
2641
2642 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
2643 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
2644 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
2645 build/libcpp/expr.c.
2646
2647 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
2648 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
2649
2650 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
2651 since December 2007.
2652
2653 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
2654 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
2655 command does. For instance:
2656
2657 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
2658
2659 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
2660 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
2661 created, using the "condition" command.
2662
2663 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
2664 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
2665
2666 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
2667
2668 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
2669 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
2670 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
2671 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
2672 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
2673 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
2674 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
2675 files with older .gdb_index sections.
2676
2677 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
2678 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
2679 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
2680 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
2681 the .gdb_index section.
2682
2683 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
2684
2685 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
2686 target.
2687
2688 * MI changes
2689
2690 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2691
2692 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2693
2694 * New commands
2695
2696 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2697 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2698 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2699
2700 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2701 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2702
2703 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2704 several hits.
2705
2706 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2707 C++ and Java objects.
2708
2709 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2710 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2711 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2712 configured with '--with-python'.
2713
2714 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2715 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2716 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2717 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2718 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2719 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2720 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2721
2722 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2723 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2724 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2725 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2726
2727 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2728 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2729 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2730 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2731
2732 ** "set print symbol"
2733 "show print symbol"
2734 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2735 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2736 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2737
2738 * Deprecated commands
2739
2740 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2741 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2742
2743 * New targets
2744
2745 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2746 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2747
2748 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2749 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2750 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2751 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2752 evaluates to true.
2753
2754 * New options
2755
2756 set mips compression
2757 show mips compression
2758 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2759 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2760 mips16
2761 micromips
2762 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2763
2764 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2765 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2766 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2767 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2768 available mode.
2769 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2770 target.
2771
2772 set auto-load off
2773 Disable auto-loading globally.
2774
2775 show auto-load
2776 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2777
2778 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2779 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2780 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2781
2782 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2783 show auto-load python-scripts
2784 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2785
2786 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2787 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2788 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2789
2790 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2791 show auto-load libthread-db
2792 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2793
2794 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2795 show auto-load scripts-directory
2796 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2797 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2798 of the directories listed by this option.
2799 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2800
2801 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2802 show auto-load safe-path
2803 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2804 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2805
2806 set debug auto-load on|off
2807 show debug auto-load
2808 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2809
2810 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2811 show dprintf-style
2812 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2813 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2814 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2815 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2816
2817 set dprintf-function <expr>
2818 show dprintf-function
2819 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2820 show dprintf-channel
2821 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2822 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2823
2824 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2825 show disconnected-dprintf
2826 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2827 after GDB disconnects.
2828
2829 * New configure options
2830
2831 --with-auto-load-dir
2832 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2833 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2834 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2835 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2836 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2837
2838 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2839 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2840 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2841
2842 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2843 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2844 security feature.
2845
2846 * New remote packets
2847
2848 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2849
2850 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2851 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2852 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2853 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2854
2855 QProgramSignals:
2856
2857 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2858 program without GDB involvement.
2859
2860 * New command line options
2861
2862 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2863 before loading inferior.
2864 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2865 execute it before loading inferior.
2866
2867 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2868
2869 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2870 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2871 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2872 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2873 inferior changes.
2874
2875 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2876 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2877
2878 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2879 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2880 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2881 target hardware watchpoint.
2882
2883 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2884 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2885 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2886 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2887
2888 * Python scripting
2889
2890 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2891 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2892 existing one.
2893
2894 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2895 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2896 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2897 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2898 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2899 the stack trace.
2900
2901 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2902 Python API.
2903
2904 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2905 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2906 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2907 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2908 corresponding value.
2909
2910 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2911 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2912 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2913 on GDB start-up.
2914
2915 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2916 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2917 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2918 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2919
2920 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2921
2922 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2923 "gdb.breakpoints".
2924
2925 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2926 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2927 available in the CLI.
2928
2929 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2930 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2931 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2932 "some_type.items()".
2933
2934 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2935 new object file.
2936
2937 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2938 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2939 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2940 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2941 any anonymous fields.
2942
2943 * MI changes
2944
2945 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2946 "solib-event".
2947
2948 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2949 "=breakpoint-modified".
2950
2951 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2952
2953 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2954 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2955 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2956 lives.
2957
2958 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2959 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2960 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2961 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2962 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2963
2964 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2965 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2966
2967 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2968 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2969 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2970 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2971 use this option to specify where to find it.
2972
2973 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2974 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2975 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2976 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2977 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2978 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2979 section in the user manual for more details.
2980
2981 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2982 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2983 become available after that.
2984
2985 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2986
2987 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2988 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2989 gcc version 4.7.
2990
2991 * New commands
2992
2993 !SHELL COMMAND
2994 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2995 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2996
2997 * Changed commands
2998
2999 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
3000 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
3001 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
3002
3003 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
3004 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
3005 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
3006
3007 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
3008 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
3009 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
3010 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
3011 name starts with a hyphen.
3012
3013 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
3014 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
3015 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
3016 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
3017 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
3018 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
3019 number of bytes that will be collected.
3020
3021 tstart [NOTES]
3022 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
3023 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
3024 setting the variable trace-notes.
3025
3026 tstop [NOTES]
3027 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
3028 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
3029 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
3030 trace-stop-notes.
3031
3032 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
3033 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
3034 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
3035 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
3036 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
3037 is running.
3038
3039 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
3040 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
3041 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
3042
3043 * New options
3044
3045 set debug dwarf2-read
3046 show debug dwarf2-read
3047 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
3048 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
3049
3050 set debug symtab-create
3051 show debug symtab-create
3052 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
3053 creation. The default is off.
3054
3055 set extended-prompt
3056 show extended-prompt
3057 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
3058 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
3059 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
3060 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
3061 prompt is displayed.
3062
3063 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
3064 show print entry-values
3065 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
3066 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
3067 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
3068
3069 set debug entry-values
3070 show debug entry-values
3071 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
3072 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
3073
3074 set basenames-may-differ
3075 show basenames-may-differ
3076 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
3077 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
3078 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
3079 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
3080 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
3081 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
3082 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
3083 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
3084
3085 set trace-user
3086 show trace-user
3087 set trace-notes
3088 show trace-notes
3089 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
3090 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
3091 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
3092 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
3093
3094 set trace-stop-notes
3095 show trace-stop-notes
3096 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
3097 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
3098 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
3099 started by someone else.
3100
3101 * New remote packets
3102
3103 QTEnable
3104
3105 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3106
3107 QTDisable
3108
3109 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3110
3111 QTNotes
3112
3113 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
3114
3115 qTP
3116
3117 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
3118
3119 qTMinFTPILen
3120
3121 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
3122 be placed.
3123
3124 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
3125 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
3126
3127 * New targets
3128
3129 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
3130
3131 * New Simulators
3132
3133 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3134
3135 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
3136
3137 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
3138
3139 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
3140
3141 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
3142 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
3143 matches the given regular expression.
3144
3145 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
3146
3147 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
3148 dumping the instruction opcodes.
3149
3150 * New command line options
3151
3152 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
3153 This is mostly for testing purposes.
3154
3155 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
3156 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
3157
3158 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
3159 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
3160 source path list instead of augmenting it.
3161
3162 * GDB now understands thread names.
3163
3164 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
3165 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
3166
3167 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
3168 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
3169
3170 * OpenCL C
3171 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
3172 has been integrated into GDB.
3173
3174 * Python scripting
3175
3176 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
3177 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
3178 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
3179
3180 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3181 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
3182 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
3183 and allows for more dynamic content.
3184
3185 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
3186 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
3187 have an is_valid method.
3188
3189 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3190 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
3191 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
3192
3193 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
3194
3195 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
3196 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
3197 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
3198 that function like so:
3199
3200 result = some_value (10,20)
3201
3202 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
3203 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
3204 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
3205
3206 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
3207 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
3208 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
3209 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
3210 New function: register_pretty_printer.
3211
3212 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
3213 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
3214
3215 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
3216
3217 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
3218 selected thread.
3219
3220 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
3221 holds the thread's name.
3222
3223 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
3224 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
3225 occurring in the process being debugged.
3226 The following events are currently supported:
3227 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
3228 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
3229 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
3230
3231 * C++ Improvements:
3232
3233 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
3234 instantiation. For example, if you have:
3235
3236 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
3237
3238 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
3239 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
3240 was added to GCC 4.5.
3241
3242 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
3243 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
3244 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
3245 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
3246 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
3247 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
3248
3249 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
3250 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
3251 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
3252 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
3253 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
3254
3255 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
3256 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
3257 execution to a label.
3258
3259 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
3260 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
3261 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
3262 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
3263
3264 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
3265 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
3266 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
3267 of scope.
3268
3269 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
3270
3271 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
3272 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
3273 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
3274 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
3275 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
3276 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
3277
3278 (gdb) info threads
3279 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
3280
3281 While now you see this:
3282
3283 (gdb) info threads
3284 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
3285
3286 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
3287 dumps.
3288
3289 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
3290 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
3291 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
3292 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
3293
3294 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3295 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
3296 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
3297 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3298 section in the user manual for more details.
3299
3300 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3301
3302 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
3303 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
3304
3305 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
3306
3307 * New native configurations
3308
3309 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
3310
3311 * New targets:
3312
3313 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
3314
3315 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
3316 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
3317 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
3318 in the GDB user manual.
3319
3320 * Guile support was removed.
3321
3322 * New features in the GNU simulator
3323
3324 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
3325
3326 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
3327
3328 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
3329
3330 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
3331
3332 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
3333 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
3334 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
3335 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
3336 was always disabled for such configurations.
3337
3338 * C++ Improvements:
3339
3340 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3341
3342 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3343 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3344 For example:
3345 namespace A
3346 {
3347 class B { };
3348 void foo (B) { }
3349 }
3350 ...
3351 A::B b
3352 foo(b)
3353 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3354 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3355 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3356
3357 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3358
3359 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3360 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3361 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3362 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3363 entry.
3364 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3365 mentioned flavors of operators.
3366
3367 ** static const class members
3368
3369 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3370 class definition has been fixed.
3371
3372 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3373
3374 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3375 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3376 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3377 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3378 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3379 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3380
3381 * Static tracepoints
3382
3383 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3384 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3385 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3386 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3387 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3388 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3389 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3390 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3391 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3392 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3393 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3394 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3395 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3396 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3397 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3398 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3399 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3400 the "New remote packets" section below.
3401
3402 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3403
3404 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3405 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3406 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3407 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
3408
3409 * Observer mode
3410
3411 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
3412 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
3413 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
3414 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
3415 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
3416 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
3417 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
3418
3419 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
3420 current thread.
3421
3422 * New remote packets
3423
3424 qGetTIBAddr
3425
3426 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
3427
3428 qRelocInsn
3429
3430 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
3431 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
3432 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
3433 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
3434 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
3435 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
3436
3437 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
3438
3439 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
3440
3441 qTSTMat
3442
3443 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
3444 program.
3445
3446 qXfer:statictrace:read
3447
3448 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
3449 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
3450 to gdb's qSupported query.
3451
3452 QAllow
3453
3454 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
3455
3456 QTDPsrc
3457
3458 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
3459 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
3460
3461 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
3462 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
3463 a directory.
3464
3465 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3466
3467 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
3468 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
3469 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
3470 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
3471
3472 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
3473 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
3474 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
3475 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
3476 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
3477 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
3478 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
3479
3480 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
3481 for static tracepoints support.
3482
3483 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
3484
3485 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
3486 it understands register description.
3487
3488 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
3489
3490 * X86 general purpose registers
3491
3492 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
3493 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
3494 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
3495 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
3496 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
3497
3498 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
3499 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
3500 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
3501 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
3502 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
3503 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
3504
3505 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
3506 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
3507 in the specified file.
3508
3509 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
3510 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
3511 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
3512 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
3513 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
3514 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
3515 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
3516 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
3517 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
3518 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
3519
3520 * New commands
3521
3522 eval template, expressions...
3523 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
3524 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
3525
3526 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
3527 show target-file-system-kind
3528 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
3529 names.
3530
3531 save breakpoints <filename>
3532 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
3533 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
3534 definitions, use the `source' command.
3535
3536 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
3537 is now deprecated.
3538
3539 info static-tracepoint-markers
3540 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
3541
3542 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
3543 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
3544 function, line, address, or marker ID.
3545
3546 set observer on|off
3547 show observer
3548 Enable and disable observer mode.
3549
3550 set may-write-registers on|off
3551 set may-write-memory on|off
3552 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
3553 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
3554 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
3555 set may-interrupt on|off
3556 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
3557 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
3558 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
3559 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
3560 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
3561 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
3562 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
3563
3564 set record memory-query on|off
3565 show record memory-query
3566 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
3567 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
3568
3569 * Changed commands
3570
3571 disassemble
3572 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
3573
3574 * Python scripting
3575
3576 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
3577 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
3578 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
3579 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
3580 GDB using Python' in the manual.
3581
3582 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
3583 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
3584 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
3585 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
3586
3587 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
3588 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
3589
3590 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
3591
3592 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
3593
3594 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
3595
3596 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
3597 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
3598 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
3599
3600 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
3601 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
3602 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
3603 regular breakpoints.
3604
3605 * New targets
3606
3607 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
3608
3609 * D language support.
3610 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
3611 language.
3612
3613 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
3614 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
3615 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
3616 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
3617 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
3618
3619 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
3620 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
3621 conditions of the form:
3622
3623 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
3624
3625 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
3626 interface mentioned above.
3627
3628 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
3629
3630 * C++ Improvements
3631
3632 ** Namespace Support
3633
3634 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
3635 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
3636 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
3637 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
3638 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
3639
3640 ** Bug Fixes
3641
3642 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
3643 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
3644 qualified name.
3645
3646 ** Cast Operators
3647
3648 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
3649 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
3650
3651 * New targets
3652
3653 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
3654 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
3655
3656 * New Simulators
3657
3658 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
3659 Renesas RX rx
3660
3661 * Multi-program debugging.
3662
3663 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
3664 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
3665 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
3666 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
3667 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
3668 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
3669 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
3670 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
3671
3672 * New tracing features
3673
3674 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
3675
3676 ** Trace state variables
3677
3678 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
3679 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
3680 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
3681 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
3682 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
3683 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
3684 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
3685 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
3686 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
3687 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
3688
3689 ** Fast tracepoints
3690
3691 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3692 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3693 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3694 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3695 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3696 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3697 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3698 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3699 the regular trace command.
3700
3701 ** Disconnected tracing
3702
3703 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3704 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3705 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3706 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3707 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3708
3709 ** Trace files
3710
3711 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3712 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3713 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3714 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3715 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3716 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3717 <name>".
3718
3719 ** Circular trace buffer
3720
3721 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3722 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3723 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3724 not be available for all target agents.
3725
3726 * Changed commands
3727
3728 disassemble
3729 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3730 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3731
3732 info variables
3733 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3734 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3735
3736 source
3737 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3738 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3739 support.
3740
3741 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3742 "set script-extension" (see below).
3743
3744 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3745
3746 record save [<FILENAME>]
3747 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3748 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3749
3750 record restore <FILENAME>
3751 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3752 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3753
3754 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3755 Add a new inferior.
3756
3757 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3758 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3759 inferior has loaded.
3760
3761 remove-inferior ID
3762 Remove an inferior.
3763
3764 maint info program-spaces
3765 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3766
3767 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3768 show remote interrupt-sequence
3769 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3770 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3771 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3772 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3773 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3774
3775 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3776 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3777 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3778 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3779 Linux kernel.
3780
3781 set remotebreak [on | off]
3782 show remotebreak
3783 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3784
3785 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3786 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3787
3788 info tvariables
3789 List trace state variables and their values.
3790
3791 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3792 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3793
3794 teval EXPR, ...
3795 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3796 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3797
3798 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3799 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3800
3801 * New expression syntax
3802
3803 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3804 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3805
3806 * New options
3807
3808 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3809 show follow-exec-mode
3810 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3811 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3812 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3813
3814 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3815 show default-collect
3816 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3817 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3818 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3819
3820 set disconnected-tracing
3821 show disconnected-tracing
3822 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3823 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3824 upon disconnection.
3825
3826 set circular-trace-buffer
3827 show circular-trace-buffer
3828 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3829 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3830 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3831 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3832
3833 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3834 show script-extension
3835 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3836 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3837 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3838 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3839 evaluation failed.
3840 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3841
3842 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3843 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3844 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3845 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3846 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3847 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3848 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3849 is on.
3850
3851 * Python API Improvements
3852
3853 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3854 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3855 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3856
3857 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3858 `is_base_class' attribute.
3859
3860 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3861
3862 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3863 evaluate an expression.
3864
3865 * New remote packets
3866
3867 QTDV
3868 Define a trace state variable.
3869
3870 qTV
3871 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3872
3873 QTDisconnected
3874 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3875
3876 QTBuffer:circular
3877 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3878
3879 qTfP, qTsP
3880 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3881
3882 * Bug fixes
3883
3884 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3885
3886 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3887 much more reliable. In particular:
3888 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3889 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3890 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3891 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3892 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3893 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3894 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3895 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3896 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3897 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3898 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3899 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3900 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3901 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3902 non-threaded programs.
3903
3904 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3905 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3906 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3907 executable program.
3908
3909 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3910
3911 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3912 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3913 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3914 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3915 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3916
3917 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3918 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3919 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3920 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3921 for tracepoint actions.
3922
3923 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3924 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3925 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3926
3927 * Process record and replay
3928
3929 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3930 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3931 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3932 execute commands.
3933
3934 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3935 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3936 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3937 reverse execution.
3938
3939 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3940 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3941 2.6.28 or later.
3942
3943 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3944 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3945 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3946 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3947 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3948 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3949 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3950 the installation instructions for more information.
3951
3952 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3953 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3954 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3955 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3956
3957 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3958 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3959
3960 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3961 now complete on file names.
3962
3963 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3964 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3965 For instance, consider:
3966
3967 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3968 # struct example variable;
3969 (gdb) p variable.
3970
3971 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3972 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3973
3974 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3975 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3976
3977 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3978 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3979 macros.
3980
3981 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3982 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3983 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3984
3985 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3986 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3987 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3988 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3989
3990 * New remote packets
3991
3992 qSearch:memory:
3993 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3994
3995 QStartNoAckMode
3996 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3997 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3998 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3999
4000 vKill
4001 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
4002 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
4003
4004 qXfer:osdata:read
4005 Obtains additional operating system information
4006
4007 qXfer:siginfo:read
4008 qXfer:siginfo:write
4009 Read or write additional signal information.
4010
4011 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
4012
4013 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
4014 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
4015 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
4016
4017 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
4018 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
4019
4020 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
4021 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
4022 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
4023
4024 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
4025 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
4026
4027 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
4028
4029 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
4030
4031 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
4032 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
4033
4034 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
4035 list of section offsets.
4036
4037 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
4038 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
4039 have also been fixed.
4040
4041 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
4042 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
4043 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
4044
4045 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
4046 example, given:
4047
4048 template<typename T> class C { };
4049 C<char const *> c;
4050
4051 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
4052
4053 ptype C<char const *>
4054 ptype C<char const*>
4055 ptype C<const char *>
4056 ptype C<const char*>
4057
4058 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
4059
4060 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
4061 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4062
4063 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
4064 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4065 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
4066
4067 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
4068 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
4069
4070 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
4071 gdbserver.
4072
4073 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
4074 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4075
4076 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
4077 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
4078 as appropriate.
4079
4080 * Python scripting
4081
4082 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
4083 available is determined at configure time.
4084
4085 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
4086
4087 * Ada tasking support
4088
4089 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
4090 been introduced:
4091
4092 info tasks
4093 Print the list of Ada tasks.
4094 info task N
4095 Print detailed information about task number N.
4096 task
4097 Print the task number of the current task.
4098 task N
4099 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
4100
4101 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
4102 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
4103
4104 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
4105
4106 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
4107 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
4108 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
4109 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
4110 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
4111 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
4112 below.
4113
4114 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
4115 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
4116 information.
4117
4118 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
4119 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
4120 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
4121 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
4122 more information.
4123
4124 * Multi-architecture debugging.
4125
4126 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
4127 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
4128 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
4129 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
4130 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
4131
4132 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
4133 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
4134 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
4135 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
4136 --enable-targets configure option.
4137
4138 * Non-stop mode debugging.
4139
4140 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
4141 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
4142 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
4143 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
4144 section in the user manual for more information.
4145
4146 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
4147 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
4148 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
4149 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
4150 extensions on linux targets.
4151
4152 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4153
4154 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
4155 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
4156 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
4157 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
4158 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
4159 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
4160 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
4161 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
4162 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
4163
4164 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
4165 val1 [, val2, ...]
4166 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4167
4168 maint set python print-stack
4169 maint show python print-stack
4170 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
4171
4172 python [CODE]
4173 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
4174
4175 macro define
4176 macro list
4177 macro undef
4178 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
4179 interactively.
4180
4181 info os processes
4182 Show operating system information about processes.
4183
4184 info inferiors
4185 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
4186
4187 inferior NUM
4188 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
4189
4190 detach inferior NUM
4191 Detach from inferior number NUM.
4192
4193 kill inferior NUM
4194 Kill inferior number NUM.
4195
4196 * New options
4197
4198 set spu stop-on-load
4199 show spu stop-on-load
4200 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4201
4202 set spu auto-flush-cache
4203 show spu auto-flush-cache
4204 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
4205 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4206
4207 set sh calling-convention
4208 show sh calling-convention
4209 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
4210
4211 set debug timestamp
4212 show debug timestamp
4213 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
4214
4215 set disassemble-next-line
4216 show disassemble-next-line
4217 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
4218 the debuggee stops.
4219
4220 set remote noack-packet
4221 show remote noack-packet
4222 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
4223 under "New remote packets."
4224
4225 set remote query-attached-packet
4226 show remote query-attached-packet
4227 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
4228
4229 set remote read-siginfo-object
4230 show remote read-siginfo-object
4231 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
4232 packet.
4233
4234 set remote write-siginfo-object
4235 show remote write-siginfo-object
4236 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
4237 packet.
4238
4239 set remote reverse-continue
4240 show remote reverse-continue
4241 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
4242
4243 set remote reverse-step
4244 show remote reverse-step
4245 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
4246
4247 set displaced-stepping
4248 show displaced-stepping
4249 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
4250 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
4251 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
4252
4253 set debug displaced
4254 show debug displaced
4255 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
4256
4257 maint set internal-error
4258 maint show internal-error
4259 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
4260
4261 maint set internal-warning
4262 maint show internal-warning
4263 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
4264
4265 set exec-wrapper
4266 show exec-wrapper
4267 unset exec-wrapper
4268 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4269
4270 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
4271 show multiple-symbols
4272 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
4273 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
4274 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
4275
4276 set breakpoint always-inserted
4277 show breakpoint always-inserted
4278 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
4279 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
4280 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
4281
4282 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4283 show arm fallback-mode
4284 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4285 show arm force-mode
4286 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
4287 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
4288 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
4289 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
4290
4291 set disable-randomization
4292 show disable-randomization
4293 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
4294 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
4295 multiple debugging sessions.
4296
4297 set non-stop
4298 show non-stop
4299 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
4300 a breakpoint.
4301
4302 set target-async
4303 show target-async
4304 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
4305 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
4306 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
4307 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
4308
4309 set target-wide-charset
4310 show target-wide-charset
4311 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
4312 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
4313
4314 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
4315 show tcp auto-retry
4316 set tcp connect-timeout
4317 show tcp connect-timeout
4318 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
4319 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
4320 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
4321
4322 set libthread-db-search-path
4323 show libthread-db-search-path
4324 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
4325 libthread_db.
4326
4327 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
4328 show schedule-multiple
4329 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
4330 the current process.
4331
4332 set stack-cache
4333 show stack-cache
4334 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
4335 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
4336 affecting correctness.
4337
4338 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4339 show interactive-mode
4340 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4341 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4342 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4343 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4344 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4345
4346 * Removed commands
4347
4348 info forks
4349 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4350 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4351 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4352 command.
4353
4354 fork NUM
4355 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4356 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4357 alias for the `fork' command.
4358
4359 process PID
4360 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4361 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4362 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4363
4364 delete fork NUM
4365 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4366 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4367 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4368 fork' command.
4369
4370 detach fork NUM
4371 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4372 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4373 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4374 fork' command.
4375
4376 * New native configurations
4377
4378 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4379
4380 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4381
4382 * New targets
4383
4384 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4385 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4386 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4387 S+core 3 score-*-*
4388
4389 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4390 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4391
4392 * Removed commands
4393
4394 catch load
4395 catch unload
4396 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4397
4398 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4399
4400 * New native configurations
4401
4402 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4403 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4404
4405 * New targets
4406
4407 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
4408 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
4409
4410 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4411
4412 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
4413 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
4414 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
4415 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
4416
4417 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
4418 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
4419
4420 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
4421 is resolved.
4422
4423 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
4424 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
4425 and in inlined functions.
4426
4427 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
4428 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
4429 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
4430
4431 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
4432
4433 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
4434 registers on PowerPC targets.
4435
4436 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
4437 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
4438
4439 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
4440 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
4441
4442 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
4443 extended-remote mode.
4444
4445 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
4446 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
4447 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
4448 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
4449
4450 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
4451 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
4452 target architectures.
4453
4454 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
4455 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
4456 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
4457 stored in two consecutive float registers.
4458
4459 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
4460 breakpoints now.
4461
4462 * Improved support for debugging Ada
4463 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
4464 include:
4465 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
4466 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
4467 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
4468 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
4469 of an assignment
4470 - Improved command completion in Ada
4471 - Several bug fixes
4472
4473 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
4474 process.
4475
4476 * New commands
4477
4478 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
4479 show print frame-arguments
4480 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
4481 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
4482
4483 remote put
4484 remote get
4485 remote delete
4486 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4487
4488 * New MI commands
4489
4490 -target-file-put
4491 -target-file-get
4492 -target-file-delete
4493 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4494
4495 * New remote packets
4496
4497 vFile:open:
4498 vFile:close:
4499 vFile:pread:
4500 vFile:pwrite:
4501 vFile:unlink:
4502 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
4503
4504 vAttach
4505 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
4506 mode.
4507
4508 vRun
4509 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
4510
4511 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
4512
4513 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
4514 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
4515 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
4516
4517 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
4518 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
4519 -Bsymbolic linker option.
4520
4521 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
4522 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
4523 is not supported.
4524
4525 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
4526 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
4527
4528 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
4529 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
4530
4531 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
4532
4533 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
4534 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
4535 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
4536
4537 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
4538 automatically displayed as character or string data.
4539
4540 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
4541 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
4542 as strings.
4543
4544 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
4545 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
4546 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
4547
4548 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
4549 iWMMXt coprocessor.
4550
4551 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
4552 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
4553 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
4554
4555 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
4556
4557 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
4558
4559 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
4560 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
4561 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
4562
4563 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
4564 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
4565
4566 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
4567 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
4568 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
4569 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
4570 Windows and SymbianOS).
4571
4572 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
4573 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
4574
4575 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
4576 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
4577
4578 * New commands
4579
4580 set remoteflow
4581 show remoteflow
4582 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
4583 when debugging using remote targets.
4584
4585 set mem inaccessible-by-default
4586 show mem inaccessible-by-default
4587 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4588 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4589 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
4590 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
4591 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
4592
4593 set breakpoint auto-hw
4594 show breakpoint auto-hw
4595 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4596 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4597 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
4598 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
4599 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
4600 including "next" and "finish".
4601
4602 catch exception
4603 catch exception unhandled
4604 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
4605
4606 catch assert
4607 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
4608
4609 set sysroot
4610 show sysroot
4611 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
4612 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
4613 an alias to "set sysroot".
4614
4615 info spu
4616 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
4617 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
4618 architecture.
4619
4620 * New native configurations
4621
4622 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
4623
4624 set tdesc filename
4625 unset tdesc filename
4626 show tdesc filename
4627 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
4628 not query the target for its built-in description.
4629
4630 * New targets
4631
4632 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
4633 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
4634 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
4635
4636 * New remote packets
4637
4638 QPassSignals:
4639 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
4640 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
4641
4642 qXfer:features:read:
4643 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
4644 features.
4645
4646 qXfer:spu:read:
4647 qXfer:spu:write:
4648 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
4649 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
4650
4651 qXfer:libraries:read:
4652 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
4653 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
4654 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
4655 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
4656
4657 * Removed targets
4658
4659 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
4660
4661 alpha*-*-osf1*
4662 alpha*-*-osf2*
4663 d10v-*-*
4664 hppa*-*-hiux*
4665 i[34567]86-ncr-*
4666 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
4667 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
4668 i[34567]86-*-netware*
4669 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
4670 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
4671 i[34567]86-*-sco*
4672 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
4673 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
4674 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
4675 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
4676 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
4677 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
4678 i[34567]86-*-isc*
4679 m68*-cisco*-*
4680 m68*-tandem-*
4681 mips*-*-pe
4682 rs6000-*-lynxos*
4683 sh*-*-pe
4684
4685 * Other removed features
4686
4687 target abug
4688 target cpu32bug
4689 target est
4690 target rom68k
4691
4692 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4693
4694 target hms
4695 target e7000
4696 target sh3
4697 target sh3e
4698
4699 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4700 H8/300.
4701
4702 target ocd
4703
4704 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4705 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4706 interfaces.
4707
4708 DWARF 1 support
4709
4710 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4711 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4712
4713 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4714
4715 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4716 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4717 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4718 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4719
4720 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4721
4722 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4723 in debugging information.
4724
4725 Scheme support
4726
4727 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4728 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4729
4730 set mips stack-arg-size
4731 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4732
4733 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4734
4735 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4736
4737 * New targets
4738
4739 Xtensa xtensa-elf
4740 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4741
4742 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4743 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4744 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4745
4746 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4747 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4748 supported.
4749
4750 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4751 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4752
4753 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4754 stub provides the required support.
4755
4756 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4757 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4758
4759 * New commands
4760
4761 set substitute-path
4762 unset substitute-path
4763 show substitute-path
4764 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4765 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4766 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4767 between compilation and debugging.
4768
4769 set trace-commands
4770 show trace-commands
4771 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4772 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4773 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4774
4775 * REMOVED features
4776
4777 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4778
4779 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4780 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4781
4782 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4783
4784 * New remote packets
4785
4786 qSupported:
4787 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4788 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4789 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4790 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4791 target.
4792
4793 qXfer:auxv:read:
4794 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4795 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4796
4797 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4798 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4799 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4800
4801 vFlashErase:
4802 vFlashWrite:
4803 vFlashDone:
4804 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4805
4806 * Removed remote packets
4807
4808 qPart:auxv:read:
4809 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4810 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4811
4812 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4813
4814 * New targets
4815
4816 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4817
4818 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4819
4820 * New commands
4821
4822 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4823 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4824
4825 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4826
4827 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4828
4829 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4830 previously saved state.
4831
4832 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4833
4834 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4835
4836 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4837 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4838
4839 info forks List forks of the user program that
4840 are available to be debugged.
4841
4842 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4843 forks of the user program that are
4844 available to be debugged.
4845
4846 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4847 that are available to be debugged (and
4848 kill the forked process).
4849
4850 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4851 that are available to be debugged (and
4852 allow the process to continue).
4853
4854 * New architecture
4855
4856 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4857
4858 * Improved Windows host support
4859
4860 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4861 native console support, and remote communications using either
4862 network sockets or serial ports.
4863
4864 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4865
4866 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4867 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4868 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4869 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4870 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4871 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4872
4873 * REMOVED features
4874
4875 The ARM rdi-share module.
4876
4877 The Netware NLM debug server.
4878
4879 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4880
4881 * New native configurations
4882
4883 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4884 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4885
4886 * New targets
4887
4888 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4889
4890 * New command line options
4891
4892 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4893 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4894 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4895 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4896 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4897 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4898 with the --command (-x) option.
4899
4900 * Deprecated commands removed
4901
4902 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4903 removed:
4904
4905 Command Replacement
4906 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4907 othernames set arm disassembler
4908 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4909 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4910 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4911 regs info registers
4912
4913 * New BSD user-level threads support
4914
4915 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4916 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4917 configurations are:
4918
4919 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4920 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4921 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4922
4923 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4924 are not yet supported.
4925
4926 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4927 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4928
4929 * REMOVED configurations and files
4930
4931 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4932 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4933 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4934
4935 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4936
4937 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4938 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4939 behavior.
4940
4941 * VAX floating point support
4942
4943 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4944
4945 * User-defined command support
4946
4947 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4948 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4949 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4950
4951 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4952
4953 * New command line option
4954
4955 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4956 debugging.
4957
4958 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4959
4960 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4961 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4962 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4963 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4964 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4965
4966 * Internationalization
4967
4968 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4969 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4970 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4971
4972 * Ada
4973
4974 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4975 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4976 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4977
4978 * New native configurations
4979
4980 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4981
4982 * Remote 'p' packet
4983
4984 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4985 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4986
4987 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4988
4989 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4990 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4991 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4992 i386 application).
4993
4994 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4995 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4996 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4997 configurations:
4998
4999 hppa-*-hpux
5000 ia64-*-aix
5001 mips-*-irix*
5002 *-*-lynx
5003 mips-*-linux-gnu
5004 sds protocol
5005 xdr protocol
5006 powerpc bdm protocol
5007
5008 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5009 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
5010
5011 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5012
5013 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5014 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5015 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5016 permanently REMOVED.
5017
5018 h8300-*-*
5019 mcore-*-*
5020 mn10300-*-*
5021 ns32k-*-*
5022 sh64-*-*
5023 v850-*-*
5024
5025 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
5026
5027 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
5028
5029 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
5030 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
5031 been fixed.
5032
5033 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
5034
5035 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
5036 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
5037 IRIX long double values).
5038
5039 * VAX and "next"
5040
5041 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
5042 command. This problem has been fixed.
5043
5044 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
5045
5046 * Fix for ``many threads''
5047
5048 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
5049 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
5050 error message:
5051
5052 ptrace: No such process.
5053 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
5054
5055 This problem has been fixed.
5056
5057 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
5058
5059 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
5060 GDB to dump core).
5061
5062 * New ``start'' command.
5063
5064 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
5065
5066 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
5067
5068 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
5069 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
5070 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
5071
5072 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5073 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
5074 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
5075 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
5076 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
5077 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5078 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
5079 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
5080 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5081
5082 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
5083
5084 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
5085 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
5086 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
5087 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
5088 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
5089
5090 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
5091 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
5092 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
5093
5094 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
5095
5096 * New native configurations
5097
5098 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
5099 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
5100 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
5101 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
5102 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
5103 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
5104 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
5105
5106 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
5107
5108 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5109 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
5110 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
5111 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
5112 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
5113 work, was also included.
5114
5115 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
5116 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
5117
5118 h8300-*-*
5119 mcore-*-*
5120 mn10300-*-*
5121 ns32k-*-*
5122 sh64-*-*
5123 v850-*-*
5124 xstormy16-*-*
5125
5126 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5127 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
5128
5129 * REMOVED configurations and files
5130
5131 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5132 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5133 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5134 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5135 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5136 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5137 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5138 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5139 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5140 sonymips mips-sony-*
5141 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5142
5143 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
5144
5145 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
5146
5147 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
5148 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
5149 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
5150 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
5151 with GDB".
5152
5153 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
5154
5155 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
5156 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
5157 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
5158 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
5159 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
5160 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
5161 are created.
5162
5163 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
5164
5165 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
5166
5167 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
5168 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
5169 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
5170
5171 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
5172
5173 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
5174 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
5175
5176 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
5177
5178 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
5179 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
5180 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
5181
5182 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
5183
5184 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
5185 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
5186
5187 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
5188
5189 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
5190 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
5191 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
5192
5193 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
5194
5195 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
5196 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
5197 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
5198
5199 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
5200
5201 * Removed --with-mmalloc
5202
5203 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
5204 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
5205
5206 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
5207
5208 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
5209 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
5210 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
5211 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
5212
5213 * Revised SPARC target
5214
5215 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
5216 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
5217 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
5218 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
5219 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
5220
5221 * New C++ demangler
5222
5223 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
5224 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
5225 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
5226 programs.
5227
5228 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5229
5230 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
5231 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
5232 encountered these.
5233
5234 * C++ nested types and namespaces
5235
5236 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
5237 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
5238 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
5239 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
5240 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
5241 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
5242 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
5243 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
5244 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
5245
5246 * New native configurations
5247
5248 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
5249 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5250 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
5251 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5252 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
5253
5254 * New debugging protocols
5255
5256 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
5257
5258 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
5259
5260 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
5261 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
5262 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
5263
5264 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5265
5266 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5267 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5268 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5269 permanently REMOVED.
5270
5271 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5272 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5273 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5274 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5275 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5276 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5277 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5278 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5279 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5280 sonymips mips-sony-*
5281 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5282
5283 * REMOVED configurations and files
5284
5285 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5286 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5287 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5288 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5289 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5290 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5291 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5292 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5293 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5294 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
5295 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5296 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5297 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5298 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
5299 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
5300 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5301 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5302
5303 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
5304
5305 * Objective-C
5306
5307 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
5308 integrated into GDB.
5309
5310 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
5311
5312 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
5313 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
5314 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
5315 backtraces.
5316
5317 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
5318 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
5319 DWARF 2 CFI support.
5320
5321 * Hosted file I/O.
5322
5323 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
5324 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
5325 remote protocol documentation for details.
5326
5327 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
5328
5329 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
5330 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
5331 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
5332 ppc32 on ppc64).
5333
5334 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
5335
5336 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5337 per-thread variables.
5338
5339 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5340
5341 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5342 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5343
5344 * Separate debug info.
5345
5346 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5347 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5348 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5349 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5350 and optional debug files.
5351
5352 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5353
5354 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5355 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5356 debugger.
5357
5358 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5359 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5360
5361 * Java
5362
5363 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5364 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5365 considered "useable".
5366
5367 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5368
5369 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5370 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5371 kernel.
5372
5373 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5374
5375 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5376 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5377
5378 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5379
5380 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5381 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5382 command.
5383
5384 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5385
5386 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5387 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5388
5389 * Profiling support
5390
5391 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5392 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5393 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5394 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5395 data, for more informative profiling results.
5396
5397 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5398
5399 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5400 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5401 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5402
5403 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5404 removed.
5405
5406 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5407 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
5408 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
5409 in a subsequent -var-update.
5410
5411 * New native configurations.
5412
5413 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5414
5415 * Multi-arched targets.
5416
5417 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
5418 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5419
5420 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5421
5422 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5423 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5424 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5425 permanently REMOVED.
5426
5427 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5428 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5429 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5430 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5431 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5432 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5433 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5434 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5435 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5436 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5437 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5438 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5439
5440 * REMOVED configurations and files
5441
5442 V850EA ISA
5443 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5444 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5445 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5446 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5447 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5448 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5449 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5450 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5451 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5452 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5453 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5454 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5455 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5456
5457 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
5458
5459 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
5460 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
5461 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
5462 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
5463 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
5464
5465 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
5466
5467 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
5468
5469 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
5470 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
5471 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
5472 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
5473 shared libs like mad''.
5474
5475 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
5476
5477 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
5478 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
5479 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
5480 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
5481
5482 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
5483
5484 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
5485 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
5486 they expand.
5487
5488 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
5489 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
5490
5491 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
5492 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
5493
5494 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
5495 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
5496 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
5497 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
5498
5499 * Multi-arched targets.
5500
5501 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
5502 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
5503 NEC V850 v850-*-*
5504 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
5505 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
5506 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5507
5508 * New targets.
5509
5510 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
5511
5512
5513 * New native configurations
5514
5515 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
5516 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
5517 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
5518 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
5519
5520 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5521
5522 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5523 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5524 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5525 permanently REMOVED.
5526
5527 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5528 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5529 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5530 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5531 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5532 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5533 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5534 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5535 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5536 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5537 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5538 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5539 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5540
5541 * OBSOLETE languages
5542
5543 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
5544
5545 * REMOVED configurations and files
5546
5547 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5548 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5549 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5550 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5551 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5552
5553 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5554
5555 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
5556
5557 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
5558 commands. The default is 1024.
5559
5560 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
5561
5562 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
5563
5564 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
5565
5566 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
5567 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
5568 from a file into memory (restore).
5569
5570 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
5571
5572 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
5573 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
5574 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
5575
5576 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
5577
5578 * New targets.
5579
5580 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
5581
5582 * Bug fixes
5583
5584 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
5585 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
5586 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
5587
5588 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
5589 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
5590 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
5591
5592 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
5593 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
5594 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
5595
5596 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
5597 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
5598 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
5599
5600 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
5601
5602 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
5603
5604 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
5605 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
5606 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
5607 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
5608 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
5609 (notably embedded) targets.
5610
5611 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
5612
5613 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
5614 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
5615 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
5616 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
5617
5618 * New command line option
5619
5620 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
5621
5622 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
5623
5624 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
5625 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
5626 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
5627 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
5628 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
5629 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
5630 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
5631 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
5632 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
5633 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
5634
5635 * Changes in ARM configurations.
5636
5637 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
5638 configuration is fully multi-arch.
5639
5640 * New native configurations
5641
5642 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
5643 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
5644 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
5645 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
5646
5647 * New targets
5648
5649 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
5650
5651 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5652
5653 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5654 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5655 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5656 permanently REMOVED.
5657
5658 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5659 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5660 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5661 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5662 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5663
5664 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5665
5666 * REMOVED configurations and files
5667
5668 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5669 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5670 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5671 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5672 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5673 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5674 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5675 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5676 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5677 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5678 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5679 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5680 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
5681
5682 * Changes to command line processing
5683
5684 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
5685 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
5686
5687 * Changes to key bindings
5688
5689 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5690
5691 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5692
5693 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5694
5695 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5696 corrupted.
5697
5698 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5699
5700 Numerous documentation fixes.
5701
5702 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5703
5704 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5705
5706 * New native configurations
5707
5708 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5709 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5710 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5711 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5712 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5713 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5714
5715 * New targets
5716
5717 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5718 CRIS cris-axis
5719 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5720
5721 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5722
5723 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5724 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5725 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5726 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5727 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5728 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5729 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5730 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5731 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5732 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5733 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5734 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5735 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5736 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5737
5738 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5739 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5740
5741 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5742 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5743 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5744 permanently REMOVED.
5745
5746 * REMOVED configurations and files
5747
5748 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5749 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5750 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5751 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5752 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5753 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
5754
5755 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5756
5757 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5758 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5759 present.
5760
5761 * Other news:
5762
5763 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5764
5765 * The MI enabled by default.
5766
5767 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5768 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5769 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5770 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5771 which is now deprecated.
5772
5773 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5774
5775 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5776 main features are supported:
5777
5778 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5779
5780 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5781 extension;
5782
5783 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5784
5785 - a Pascal expression parser.
5786
5787 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5788
5789 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5790
5791 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5792
5793 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5794 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5795
5796 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5797
5798 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5799
5800 * Changes in completion.
5801
5802 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5803 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5804 users expect at the shell prompt.
5805
5806 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5807 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5808 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5809 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5810 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5811 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5812 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5813
5814 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5815
5816 * New platform-independent commands:
5817
5818 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5819 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5820 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5821
5822 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5823
5824 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5825 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5826 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5827
5828 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5829
5830 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5831 multi-threaded programs though.
5832
5833 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5834
5835 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5836
5837 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5838 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5839 supported.)
5840
5841 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5842
5843 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5844 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5845 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5846 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5847 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5848 registers.
5849
5850 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5851 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5852 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5853
5854 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5855
5856 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5857 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5858
5859 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5860 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5861 IDT.
5862
5863 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5864 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5865 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5866 a given linear address.
5867
5868 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5869 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5870 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5871
5872 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5873
5874 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5875
5876 * Changes in documentation.
5877
5878 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5879 Documentation License.
5880
5881 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5882 manual.
5883
5884 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5885
5886 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5887 manual.
5888
5889 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5890 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5891 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5892
5893 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5894
5895 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5896 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5897 contents of this file.
5898
5899 * gdba.el deleted
5900
5901 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5902
5903 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5904
5905 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5906
5907 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5908 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5909 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5910 greater level of detail.
5911
5912 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5913
5914 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5915 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5916 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5917 written.
5918
5919 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5920
5921 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5922 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5923 machines ``out of the box''.
5924
5925 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5926 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5927 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5928 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5929 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5930
5931 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5932 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5933 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5934 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5935 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5936
5937 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5938 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5939 also works.
5940
5941 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5942 GDB.
5943
5944 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5945 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5946 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5947 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5948
5949 * New native configurations
5950
5951 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5952 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5953
5954 * New targets
5955
5956 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5957 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5958 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5959 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5960
5961 * OBSOLETE configurations
5962
5963 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5964 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5965 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5966 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5967 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5968
5969 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5970 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5971 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5972 be permanently REMOVED.
5973
5974 * Gould support removed
5975
5976 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5977
5978 * New features for SVR4
5979
5980 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5981 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5982 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5983
5984 * Many C++ enhancements
5985
5986 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5987 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5988
5989 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5990
5991 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5992 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5993 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5994 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5995
5996 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5997 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5998
5999 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
6000
6001 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
6002 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
6003 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
6004
6005 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
6006 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
6007
6008 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
6009
6010 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
6011 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
6012 include ``set remote P-packet''.
6013
6014 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
6015
6016 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
6017 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
6018 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
6019
6020 * ``apropos'' command added.
6021
6022 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
6023 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
6024 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
6025
6026 * New MI interface
6027
6028 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
6029 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
6030 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
6031 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
6032 enabled by configuring with:
6033
6034 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
6035
6036 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
6037
6038 * New native configurations
6039
6040 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
6041 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
6042 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
6043
6044 * New targets
6045
6046 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6047 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
6048 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6049
6050 * OBSOLETE configurations
6051
6052 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
6053
6054 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6055 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6056 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6057 be permanently REMOVED.
6058
6059 * ANSI/ISO C
6060
6061 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
6062 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
6063 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
6064 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
6065 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
6066 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
6067 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
6068 already.
6069
6070 * Readline 2.2
6071
6072 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
6073
6074 * set extension-language
6075
6076 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
6077 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
6078 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
6079 set extension-language .c c++
6080 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
6081 and their associated languages.
6082
6083 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
6084
6085 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
6086 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
6087 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
6088
6089 set processor NAME
6090
6091 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
6092 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
6093
6094 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
6095 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
6096 403 IBM PowerPC 403
6097 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
6098 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
6099 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
6100 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
6101 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
6102 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
6103 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
6104 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
6105
6106 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
6107 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
6108 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
6109 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
6110
6111 * HP-UX support
6112
6113 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
6114 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
6115 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
6116 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
6117 for xdb and dbx commands.
6118
6119 * Catchpoints
6120
6121 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
6122 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
6123 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
6124
6125 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
6126 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
6127 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
6128
6129 * Debugging across forks
6130
6131 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
6132 in the inferior.
6133
6134 * TUI
6135
6136 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
6137 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
6138 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
6139
6140 * GDB remote protocol additions
6141
6142 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
6143 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
6144 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
6145 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
6146
6147 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
6148 full 64-bit address. The command
6149
6150 set remoteaddresssize 32
6151
6152 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
6153 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
6154 will be discarded.
6155
6156 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
6157 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
6158
6159 maint packet heythere
6160
6161 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
6162 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
6163 time.
6164
6165 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
6166 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
6167 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
6168
6169 * Tracing can collect general expressions
6170
6171 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
6172 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
6173 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
6174
6175 * mask-address variable for Mips
6176
6177 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
6178 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
6179 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
6180
6181 * Higher serial baud rates
6182
6183 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
6184 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
6185 to achieve all of these rates.)
6186
6187 * i960 simulator
6188
6189 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
6190 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
6191
6192
6193 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
6194
6195 * New native configurations
6196
6197 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
6198 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
6199 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6200 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6201 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6202 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
6203 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
6204
6205 * New targets
6206
6207 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6208 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
6209 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
6210 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
6211 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
6212 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
6213 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
6214 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
6215 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6216 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6217 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
6218
6219 * New debugging protocols
6220
6221 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
6222 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
6223 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
6224 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6225 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6226 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6227
6228 * DWARF 2
6229
6230 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
6231 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
6232 information.
6233
6234 * Java frontend
6235
6236 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
6237 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
6238
6239 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
6240
6241 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
6242 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
6243 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
6244
6245 * Live range splitting
6246
6247 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
6248 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
6249 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
6250
6251 * Hurd support
6252
6253 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
6254 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
6255
6256 * ARM Thumb support
6257
6258 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
6259 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
6260 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
6261 accordingly.
6262
6263 * MIPS16 support
6264
6265 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
6266 instruction set.
6267
6268 * Overlay support
6269
6270 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
6271 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
6272 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
6273 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
6274 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
6275 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
6276
6277 * info symbol
6278
6279 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
6280 the symbol at the specified address.
6281
6282 * Trace support
6283
6284 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
6285 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
6286 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
6287 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
6288 file tracepoint.c for more details.
6289
6290 * MIPS simulator
6291
6292 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
6293 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
6294 of most MIPS variants.
6295
6296 * Sparc simulator
6297
6298 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
6299 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
6300 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
6301
6302 * set architecture
6303
6304 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
6305 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
6306 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
6307 the possible architectures.
6308
6309 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
6310
6311 * New native configurations
6312
6313 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
6314 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
6315 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
6316 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
6317 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6318 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
6319
6320 * New targets
6321
6322 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
6323 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6324 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
6325 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
6326 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
6327 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
6328 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6329
6330 * PowerPC simulator
6331
6332 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
6333 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
6334 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
6335 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
6336 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6337
6338 * Solaris 2.5
6339
6340 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6341
6342 * Windows 95/NT native
6343
6344 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6345 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6346 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6347 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6348 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6349
6350 * dont-repeat command
6351
6352 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6353 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6354 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6355 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6356
6357 * Send break instead of ^C
6358
6359 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6360 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6361 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6362
6363 * Remote protocol timeout
6364
6365 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6366 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6367 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6368
6369 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6370
6371 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6372 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6373 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6374 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6375 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6376
6377 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6378 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6379 automatically on hpux10.
6380
6381 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6382
6383 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6384
6385 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6386
6387 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6388 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6389 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6390 every character. The default value is 1050.
6391
6392 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6393
6394 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6395 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6396 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6397 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6398 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6399 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6400
6401 * Speedups for remote debugging
6402
6403 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6404 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6405 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6406
6407 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
6408
6409 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
6410 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
6411
6412 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
6413
6414 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
6415
6416 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
6417 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
6418
6419 * Remote targets use caching
6420
6421 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
6422 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
6423 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
6424 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
6425 off' turns the the data cache off.
6426
6427 * Remote targets may have threads
6428
6429 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
6430 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
6431 gdb/remote.c for details.
6432
6433 * NetROM support
6434
6435 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
6436 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
6437 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
6438 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
6439 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
6440 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
6441 sequence is something like
6442
6443 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
6444 load <prog>
6445 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
6446
6447 * Macintosh host
6448
6449 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
6450 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
6451 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
6452 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
6453 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
6454 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
6455 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
6456 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
6457
6458 * Autoconf
6459
6460 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
6461 but does simplify configuration and building.
6462
6463 * hpux10
6464
6465 GDB now supports hpux10.
6466
6467 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
6468
6469 * New native configurations
6470
6471 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
6472 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
6473 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
6474 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
6475
6476 * New targets
6477
6478 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6479 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
6480 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
6481 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
6482 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
6483
6484 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
6485
6486 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
6487 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
6488 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
6489 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
6490 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
6491
6492 * Arguments to user-defined commands
6493
6494 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
6495 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
6496 trivial example:
6497 define adder
6498 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
6499
6500 To execute the command use:
6501 adder 1 2 3
6502
6503 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
6504 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
6505 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
6506
6507 * New `if' and `while' commands
6508
6509 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
6510 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
6511 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
6512 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
6513 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
6514 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
6515 if the expression is zero.
6516
6517 * Fortran source language mode
6518
6519 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
6520 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
6521 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
6522 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
6523 Fortran compilers.
6524
6525 * Better HPUX support
6526
6527 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
6528 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
6529 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
6530 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
6531 that behavior do the following before running the program:
6532
6533 adb -w a.out
6534 __dld_flags?W 0x5
6535 control-d
6536
6537 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
6538 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
6539
6540 adb -w a.out
6541 __dld_flags?W 0x4
6542 control-d
6543
6544 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
6545 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
6546 external linkage.
6547
6548 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
6549 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
6550
6551 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
6552
6553 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
6554 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
6555 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
6556 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
6557 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
6558 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
6559
6560 * New DOS host serial code
6561
6562 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
6563 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
6564 a PC's serial port.
6565
6566 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
6567
6568 * New "complete" command
6569
6570 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
6571 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
6572
6573 * Trailing space optional in prompt
6574
6575 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
6576 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
6577
6578 * Breakpoint hit counts
6579
6580 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
6581 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
6582 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
6583 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
6584 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
6585 that breakpoint.
6586
6587 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
6588
6589 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
6590 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
6591 arrays actually contain only short strings.
6592
6593 * Shared library breakpoints
6594
6595 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
6596 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
6597
6598 * Hardware watchpoints
6599
6600 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
6601 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
6602
6603 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
6604
6605 * Annotations
6606
6607 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
6608 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
6609
6610 * Improved Irix 5 support
6611
6612 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
6613
6614 * Improved HPPA support
6615
6616 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
6617
6618 * New native configurations
6619
6620 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
6621 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
6622 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
6623 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
6624
6625 * New targets
6626
6627 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6628 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
6629 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
6630
6631 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
6632
6633 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
6634 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
6635
6636 * Fixes
6637
6638 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
6639 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
6640
6641 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
6642
6643 * Irix 5 is now supported
6644
6645 * HPPA support
6646
6647 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
6648 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
6649 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
6650 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
6651 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
6652
6653
6654 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
6655
6656 * User visible changes:
6657
6658 * Remote Debugging
6659
6660 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
6661 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
6662 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
6663 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
6664 debugging info for the mips target).
6665
6666 * DEC Alpha native support
6667
6668 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
6669 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
6670 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
6671 Alpha-specific notes.
6672
6673 * Preliminary thread implementation
6674
6675 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
6676
6677 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
6678
6679 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
6680 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
6681 for details).
6682
6683 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
6684
6685 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
6686 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
6687 call methods, ...etc.
6688
6689 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6690
6691 * User visible changes:
6692
6693 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6694 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6695 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6696 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6697
6698 Filename completion now works.
6699
6700 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6701 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6702 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6703
6704 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6705 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6706 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6707 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6708 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6709
6710 * DEC alpha support
6711
6712 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6713 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6714
6715
6716 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6717
6718 * Testsuite
6719
6720 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6721 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6722 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6723
6724 * C++ demangling
6725
6726 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6727 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6728 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6729 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6730 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6731
6732 * Simulators
6733
6734 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6735 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6736 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6737
6738 * New targets supported
6739
6740 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6741 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6742 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6743 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6744 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6745
6746 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6747 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6748 GO32 memory extender.
6749
6750 * New remote protocols
6751
6752 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6753
6754 * New source languages supported
6755
6756 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6757 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6758 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6759
6760
6761 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6762
6763 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6764
6765 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6766 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6767 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6768 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6769 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6770 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6771
6772 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6773
6774 * Faster and better demangling
6775
6776 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6777 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6778 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6779 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6780 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6781 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6782 symbol lookups.
6783
6784 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6785 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6786 compiler does not actually implement.
6787
6788 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6789
6790 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6791 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6792 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6793 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6794 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6795 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6796 fix.
6797
6798 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6799 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6800
6801 * Improved configure script
6802
6803 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6804 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6805 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6806 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6807
6808 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6809 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6810 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6811 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6812 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6813 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6814
6815 * Documentation improvements
6816
6817 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6818 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6819 before submitting changes.
6820
6821 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6822 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6823 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6824 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6825 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6826
6827 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6828 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6829 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6830 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6831 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6832 around this problem.
6833
6834 * New features
6835
6836 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6837 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6838 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6839 the target program.
6840
6841 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6842 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6843
6844 * New native hosts supported
6845
6846 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6847 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6848
6849 * New targets supported
6850
6851 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6852
6853 * New file formats supported
6854
6855 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6856 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6857
6858 * Major bug fixes
6859
6860 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6861
6862 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6863 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6864
6865 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6866 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6867 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6868
6869 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6870 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6871
6872 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6873 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6874 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6875 libraries.
6876
6877 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6878 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6879 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6880 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6881 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6882
6883 * Internal improvements
6884
6885 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6886 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6887
6888 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6889 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6890 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6891 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6892 shared code that handles any of them.
6893
6894 * New command line options
6895
6896 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6897
6898 * Mmalloc licensing
6899
6900 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6901 General Public License.
6902
6903 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6904
6905 * Host/native/target split
6906
6907 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6908 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6909 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6910 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6911 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6912
6913 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6914 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6915 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6916 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6917 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6918 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6919 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6920
6921 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6922 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6923 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6924
6925 * New hosts supported
6926
6927 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6928 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6929 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6930
6931 * New targets supported
6932
6933 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6934 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6935
6936 * New native hosts supported
6937
6938 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6939 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6940 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6941
6942 * New file formats supported
6943
6944 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6945 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6946 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6947
6948 * New commands
6949
6950 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6951 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6952 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6953
6954 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6955
6956 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6957 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6958 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6959 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6960
6961 * C++ improvements
6962
6963 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6964 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6965 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6966
6967 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6968
6969 * Major bug fixes
6970
6971 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6972 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6973 by the compiler.
6974
6975 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6976 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6977
6978 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6979 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6980 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6981 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6982 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6983 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6984
6985 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6986 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6987 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6988 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6989
6990 * AMD 29k support
6991
6992 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6993 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6994 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6995 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6996 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6997
6998 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6999 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
7000 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
7001 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
7002
7003 * Remote interfaces
7004
7005 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
7006 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
7007 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
7008 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
7009 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
7010 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
7011 each instruction being stepped through.
7012
7013 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
7014 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
7015
7016 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
7017 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
7018 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
7019 processor with a serial port.
7020
7021 * Configuration
7022
7023 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
7024 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
7025 supported, and what files each one uses.
7026
7027 * Library changes
7028
7029 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
7030 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
7031 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
7032 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
7033
7034 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
7035 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
7036 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
7037 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
7038
7039 * Documentation
7040
7041 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
7042 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
7043 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
7044 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
7045 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
7046 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
7047
7048 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
7049
7050
7051 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
7052
7053 * Better support for C++ function names
7054
7055 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
7056 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
7057 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
7058 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
7059 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
7060
7061 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
7062 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
7063 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
7064 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
7065 for the list of formats.
7066
7067 * G++ symbol mangling problem
7068
7069 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
7070 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
7071 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
7072 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
7073 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
7074 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
7075 this problem.)
7076
7077 * New 'maintenance' command
7078
7079 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
7080 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
7081 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
7082
7083 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
7084 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
7085 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
7086 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
7087 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
7088 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
7089
7090 The following commands are new:
7091
7092 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
7093 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
7094 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
7095
7096 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
7097
7098 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
7099 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
7100 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
7101 read after argv processing.
7102
7103 * New hosts supported
7104
7105 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
7106
7107 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
7108
7109 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
7110 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
7111 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
7112 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
7113 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
7114 It costs extra.
7115
7116 * New targets supported
7117
7118 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7119
7120 * More smarts about finding #include files
7121
7122 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
7123 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
7124 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
7125 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
7126 the one that contains your sources.
7127
7128 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
7129 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
7130 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
7131
7132 * Interesting infernals change
7133
7134 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
7135 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
7136 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
7137 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
7138
7139 * Bug fixes (of course!)
7140
7141 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
7142 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
7143 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
7144
7145 See the ChangeLog for details.
7146
7147 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
7148
7149 * New machines supported (host and target)
7150
7151 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
7152
7153 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
7154
7155 * New malloc package
7156
7157 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
7158 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
7159 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
7160 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
7161 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
7162 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
7163
7164 * info proc
7165
7166 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
7167 'help info proc' for details.
7168
7169 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
7170
7171 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
7172 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
7173 possible.
7174
7175 * File name changes for MS-DOS
7176
7177 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
7178 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
7179 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
7180 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
7181 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
7182 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
7183
7184 * Cross byte order fixes
7185
7186 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
7187 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
7188
7189 * New -mapped and -readnow options
7190
7191 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
7192 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
7193 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
7194 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
7195 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
7196 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
7197 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
7198 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
7199 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
7200 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
7201
7202 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
7203 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
7204 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
7205 slower, but makes future operations faster.
7206
7207 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
7208 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
7209 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
7210 use is:
7211
7212 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
7213
7214 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
7215 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
7216 shared across multiple host platforms.
7217
7218 * longjmp() handling
7219
7220 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
7221 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
7222 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
7223 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
7224
7225 * Solaris 2.0
7226
7227 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
7228 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
7229 reading symbols.
7230
7231 * Bug fixes
7232
7233 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
7234 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
7235 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
7236
7237 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
7238
7239 * New machines supported (host and target)
7240
7241 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7242 (except core files)
7243 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
7244 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
7245
7246 * New machines supported (target)
7247
7248 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
7249
7250 * C++ support
7251
7252 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
7253 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
7254 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
7255
7256 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
7257 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
7258 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
7259 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
7260 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
7261 released.
7262
7263 * New features for SVR4
7264
7265 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
7266 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
7267 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
7268
7269 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
7270 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
7271 it prints the address mappings of the process.
7272
7273 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
7274 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
7275
7276 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
7277
7278 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
7279 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
7280 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
7281 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
7282 same code linked statically.
7283
7284 * New Getopt
7285
7286 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
7287 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
7288 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
7289 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
7290 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
7291 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
7292
7293 * Bugs fixed
7294
7295 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7296 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7297 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7298
7299
7300 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
7301
7302 * New machines supported (host and target)
7303
7304 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
7305 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
7306 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7307
7308 * Almost SCO Unix support
7309
7310 We had hoped to support:
7311 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7312 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
7313 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
7314 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
7315
7316 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
7317
7318 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
7319 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
7320 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
7321 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
7322 reqired (if any).
7323
7324 * New Readline
7325
7326 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
7327 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
7328 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
7329
7330 * Bugs fixed
7331
7332 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7333 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7334 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7335
7336 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7337
7338 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7339 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7340 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7341
7342 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7343 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7344 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7345 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7346 version 2.
7347
7348 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7349 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7350 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7351 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7352 situation somewhat.
7353
7354 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7355 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7356 methods.
7357
7358 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7359 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7360 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7361
7362
7363 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7364
7365 * Improved configuration
7366
7367 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7368 Porting BFD is simpler.
7369
7370 * Stepping improved
7371
7372 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7373 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7374 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7375 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7376
7377 * Bug fixing
7378
7379 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7380
7381 * New host supported (not target)
7382
7383 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7384
7385
7386 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7387
7388 * Multiple source language support
7389
7390 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7391 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7392 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7393 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7394 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7395 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7396
7397 * GDB and Modula-2
7398
7399 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7400 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7401 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7402 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7403
7404 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7405 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7406 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
7407
7408 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
7409 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
7410
7411 * set write on/off
7412
7413 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
7414 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
7415 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
7416 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
7417 effect immediately.
7418
7419 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
7420
7421 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
7422 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
7423 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
7424 examining core files.
7425
7426 * set listsize
7427
7428 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
7429 The default is 10.
7430
7431 * New machines supported (host and target)
7432
7433 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7434 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
7435 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
7436
7437 * New hosts supported (not targets)
7438
7439 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
7440
7441 * New targets supported (not hosts)
7442
7443 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7444 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7445 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
7446
7447 * New remote interfaces
7448
7449 AMD 29000 Adapt
7450 AMD 29000 Minimon
7451
7452
7453 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
7454
7455 * New Facilities
7456
7457 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
7458
7459 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
7460 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
7461 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
7462 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
7463 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
7464 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
7465 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
7466 stub on the target system.
7467
7468 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
7469
7470 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
7471 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
7472 object file types such as a.out and coff.
7473
7474 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
7475 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
7476
7477
7478 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
7479
7480 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
7481 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
7482
7483 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
7484 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
7485 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
7486
7487 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
7488 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
7489 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
7490 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
7491
7492 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
7493 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
7494 it is already running. Default is ON.
7495
7496 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
7497 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
7498 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
7499 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
7500 Default is ON.
7501
7502 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
7503 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
7504 or the value of the environment variable
7505 GDBHISTFILE.
7506
7507 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
7508 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
7509 HISTSIZE.
7510
7511 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
7512 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
7513 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
7514
7515 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
7516 history expansion will be performed on
7517 command line input. The default is OFF.
7518
7519 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
7520 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
7521 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
7522
7523 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
7524 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
7525 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7526 variable TERM.
7527
7528 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
7529 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
7530 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7531 variable TERM.
7532
7533 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
7534 ``set width'' instead.
7535
7536 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
7537 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
7538 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
7539 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
7540
7541 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
7542 is OFF.
7543
7544 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
7545 "raw" form if off.
7546
7547 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
7548 like instructions.
7549
7550 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
7551
7552
7553 * Support for Epoch Environment.
7554
7555 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
7556 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
7557 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
7558 window.
7559
7560
7561 * Support for Shared Libraries
7562
7563 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
7564 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
7565 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
7566 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
7567 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
7568 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
7569 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
7570 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
7571
7572 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
7573 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
7574 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
7575
7576 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
7577
7578
7579 * Watchpoints
7580
7581 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
7582 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
7583 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
7584 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
7585 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
7586 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
7587
7588 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
7589
7590 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
7591
7592 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7593 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7594 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7595
7596
7597 * C++ multiple inheritance
7598
7599 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
7600 for C++ programs.
7601
7602 * C++ exception handling
7603
7604 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
7605 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
7606 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
7607 handler's context).
7608
7609 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
7610 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
7611 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
7612
7613 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
7614 current stack frame.
7615
7616
7617 * Minor command changes
7618
7619 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
7620 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
7621 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
7622
7623 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
7624 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
7625 frames without printing.
7626
7627 * New directory command
7628
7629 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
7630 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
7631 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
7632 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
7633 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
7634
7635 * Configuring GDB for compilation
7636
7637 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
7638 for more details.
7639
7640 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
7641 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
7642 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
7643 where the program that you are debugging will run.