1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.8
9 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
11 * The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
14 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
15 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
17 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
18 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
19 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
21 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
22 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
24 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
26 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
27 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
29 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
30 list of section offsets.
32 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
33 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
36 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
38 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
39 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
43 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
45 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
49 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
54 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
56 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
58 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
59 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
60 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
62 set breakpoint always-inserted
63 show breakpoint always-inserted
64 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
65 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
66 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
68 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
69 show arm fallback-mode
70 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
72 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
73 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
74 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
75 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
77 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
79 * New native configurations
81 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
82 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
86 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
87 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
89 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
91 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
92 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
93 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
94 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
96 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
97 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
99 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
102 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
103 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
104 and in inlined functions.
106 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
107 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
108 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
110 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
112 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
113 registers on PowerPC targets.
115 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
116 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
118 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
119 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
121 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
122 extended-remote mode.
124 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
125 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
126 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
127 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
129 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
130 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
131 target architectures.
133 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
134 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
135 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
136 stored in two consecutive float registers.
138 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
141 * Improved support for debugging Ada
142 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
144 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
145 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
146 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
147 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
149 - Improved command completion in Ada
154 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
155 show print frame-arguments
156 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
157 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
162 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
169 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
178 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
180 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
184 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
188 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
190 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
192 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
193 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
194 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
196 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
197 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
198 -Bsymbolic linker option.
200 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
201 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
204 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
205 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
207 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
208 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
210 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
212 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
213 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
214 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
216 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
217 automatically displayed as character or string data.
219 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
220 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
223 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
224 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
225 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
227 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
230 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
231 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
232 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
234 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
236 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
238 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
239 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
240 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
242 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
243 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
245 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
246 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
247 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
248 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
249 Windows and SymbianOS).
251 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
252 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
254 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
255 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
261 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
262 when debugging using remote targets.
264 set mem inaccessible-by-default
265 show mem inaccessible-by-default
266 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
267 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
268 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
269 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
270 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
272 set breakpoint auto-hw
273 show breakpoint auto-hw
274 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
275 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
276 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
277 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
278 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
279 including "next" and "finish".
282 catch exception unhandled
283 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
286 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
290 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
291 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
292 an alias to "set sysroot".
295 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
296 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
299 * New native configurations
301 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
306 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
307 not query the target for its built-in description.
311 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
312 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
313 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
318 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
319 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
322 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
327 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
328 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
330 qXfer:libraries:read:
331 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
332 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
333 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
334 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
338 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
347 i[34567]86-*-netware*
348 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
349 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
351 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
354 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
355 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
364 * Other removed features
371 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
378 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
383 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
384 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
389 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
390 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
392 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
394 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
395 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
396 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
397 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
401 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
402 in debugging information.
406 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
407 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
409 set mips stack-arg-size
410 set mips saved-gpreg-size
412 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
414 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
419 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
421 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
422 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
423 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
425 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
426 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
429 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
430 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
432 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
433 stub provides the required support.
435 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
436 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
441 unset substitute-path
443 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
444 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
445 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
446 between compilation and debugging.
450 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
451 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
452 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
456 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
458 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
459 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
461 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
466 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
467 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
468 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
469 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
473 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
474 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
476 qXfer:memory-map:read:
477 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
478 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
483 Erase and program a flash memory device.
485 * Removed remote packets
488 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
489 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
491 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
495 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
497 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
501 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
502 only if it doesn't already have a value.
504 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
506 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
508 restart <n> Return the program state to a
509 previously saved state.
511 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
513 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
515 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
516 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
518 info forks List forks of the user program that
519 are available to be debugged.
521 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
522 forks of the user program that are
523 available to be debugged.
525 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
526 that are available to be debugged (and
527 kill the forked process).
529 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
530 that are available to be debugged (and
531 allow the process to continue).
535 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
537 * Improved Windows host support
539 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
540 native console support, and remote communications using either
541 network sockets or serial ports.
543 * Improved Modula-2 language support
545 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
546 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
547 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
548 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
549 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
550 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
554 The ARM rdi-share module.
556 The Netware NLM debug server.
558 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
560 * New native configurations
562 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
563 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
567 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
569 * New command line options
571 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
572 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
573 the child (debugged) program exited with.
574 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
575 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
576 specified multiple times and in conjunction
577 with the --command (-x) option.
579 * Deprecated commands removed
581 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
585 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
586 othernames set arm disassembler
587 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
588 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
589 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
592 * New BSD user-level threads support
594 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
595 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
598 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
599 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
600 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
602 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
603 are not yet supported.
605 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
606 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
608 * REMOVED configurations and files
610 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
611 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
612 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
614 * New "set print array-indexes" command
616 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
617 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
620 * VAX floating point support
622 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
624 * User-defined command support
626 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
627 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
628 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
630 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
632 * New command line option
634 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
637 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
639 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
640 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
641 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
642 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
643 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
645 * Internationalization
647 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
648 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
649 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
653 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
654 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
655 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
657 * New native configurations
659 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
663 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
664 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
666 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
668 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
669 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
670 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
673 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
674 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
675 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
687 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
688 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
690 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
692 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
693 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
694 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
704 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
706 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
708 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
709 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
712 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
714 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
715 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
716 IRIX long double values).
720 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
721 command. This problem has been fixed.
723 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
725 * Fix for ``many threads''
727 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
728 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
731 ptrace: No such process.
732 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
734 This problem has been fixed.
736 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
738 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
741 * New ``start'' command.
743 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
745 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
747 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
748 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
749 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
751 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
752 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
753 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
754 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
755 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
756 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
757 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
758 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
759 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
761 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
763 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
764 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
765 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
766 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
767 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
769 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
770 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
771 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
773 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
775 * New native configurations
777 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
778 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
779 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
780 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
781 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
782 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
783 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
785 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
787 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
788 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
789 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
790 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
791 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
792 work, was also included.
794 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
795 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
805 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
806 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
808 * REMOVED configurations and files
810 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
811 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
812 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
813 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
814 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
815 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
816 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
817 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
818 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
820 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
822 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
824 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
826 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
827 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
828 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
829 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
832 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
834 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
835 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
836 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
837 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
838 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
839 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
842 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
844 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
846 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
847 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
848 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
850 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
852 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
853 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
855 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
857 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
858 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
859 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
861 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
863 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
864 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
866 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
868 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
869 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
870 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
872 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
874 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
875 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
876 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
878 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
880 * Removed --with-mmalloc
882 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
883 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
885 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
887 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
888 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
889 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
890 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
892 * Revised SPARC target
894 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
895 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
896 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
897 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
898 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
902 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
903 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
904 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
907 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
909 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
910 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
913 * C++ nested types and namespaces
915 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
916 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
917 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
918 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
919 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
920 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
921 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
922 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
923 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
925 * New native configurations
927 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
928 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
929 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
930 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
931 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
933 * New debugging protocols
935 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
937 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
939 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
940 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
941 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
943 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
945 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
946 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
947 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
950 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
951 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
952 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
953 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
954 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
955 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
956 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
957 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
958 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
960 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
962 * REMOVED configurations and files
964 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
965 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
966 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
967 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
968 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
969 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
970 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
971 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
972 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
973 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
974 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
975 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
976 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
977 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
978 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
979 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
980 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
982 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
986 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
989 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
991 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
992 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
993 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
996 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
997 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1002 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1003 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1004 remote protocol documentation for details.
1006 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
1008 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1009 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1010 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1013 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1015 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1016 per-thread variables.
1018 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1020 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1021 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1023 * Separate debug info.
1025 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1026 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1027 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1028 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1029 and optional debug files.
1031 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1033 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1034 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1037 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1038 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1042 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1043 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1044 considered "useable".
1046 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1048 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1049 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1052 * GDB supports logging output to a file
1054 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1055 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
1057 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1059 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1060 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1063 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
1065 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1066 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1070 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1071 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1072 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1073 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1074 data, for more informative profiling results.
1076 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1078 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1079 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
1080 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
1082 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1085 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1086 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1087 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1088 in a subsequent -var-update.
1090 * New native configurations.
1092 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1094 * Multi-arched targets.
1096 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
1097 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1099 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1101 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1102 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1103 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1104 permanently REMOVED.
1106 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1107 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1108 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1109 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1110 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1111 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1112 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1113 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1114 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1115 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1116 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1117 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1119 * REMOVED configurations and files
1122 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1123 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1124 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1125 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1126 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1127 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1129 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1130 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1131 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1132 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1133 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1134 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1136 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
1138 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1139 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1140 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1141 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1142 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1144 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
1146 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1148 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1149 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1150 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1151 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1152 shared libs like mad''.
1154 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
1156 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1157 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1158 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1159 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
1161 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1163 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1164 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1167 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1168 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1170 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1171 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1173 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1174 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1175 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1176 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1178 * Multi-arched targets.
1180 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1181 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
1183 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
1184 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1185 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1189 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1192 * New native configurations
1194 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
1195 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
1196 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
1197 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
1199 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1201 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1202 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1203 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1204 permanently REMOVED.
1206 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1207 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1208 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1209 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1210 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1211 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1212 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1213 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1214 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1215 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1217 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1218 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1220 * OBSOLETE languages
1222 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1224 * REMOVED configurations and files
1226 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1227 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1228 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1229 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1230 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1232 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1234 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1236 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1237 commands. The default is 1024.
1239 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1241 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1243 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1245 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1246 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1247 from a file into memory (restore).
1249 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1251 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1252 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1253 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1255 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1263 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1264 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1265 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1267 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1268 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1269 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1271 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1272 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1273 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1275 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1276 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1277 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1279 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
1281 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1283 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1284 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1285 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1286 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1287 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1288 (notably embedded) targets.
1290 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1292 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1293 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1294 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1295 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
1297 * New command line option
1299 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1301 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1303 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1304 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1305 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1306 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1307 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1308 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1309 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1310 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1311 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1312 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1314 * Changes in ARM configurations.
1316 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1317 configuration is fully multi-arch.
1319 * New native configurations
1321 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
1322 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
1323 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
1324 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
1328 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1330 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1332 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1333 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1334 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1335 permanently REMOVED.
1337 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1338 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1339 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1340 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1341 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1343 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1345 * REMOVED configurations and files
1347 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1349 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1350 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1351 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1352 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1353 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1354 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1355 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1356 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1357 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1358 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1359 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
1361 * Changes to command line processing
1363 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1364 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1366 * Changes to key bindings
1368 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1370 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1372 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1374 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1377 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1379 Numerous documentation fixes.
1381 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1383 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1385 * New native configurations
1387 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1388 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1389 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1390 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1391 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1392 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1396 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1398 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1400 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1402 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1403 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1404 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1405 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1406 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1408 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1409 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1410 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1411 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1412 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1413 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1414 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1415 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1417 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1418 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1420 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1421 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1422 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1423 permanently REMOVED.
1425 * REMOVED configurations and files
1427 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1428 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1430 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1434 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1436 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1437 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1442 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1444 * The MI enabled by default.
1446 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1447 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1448 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1449 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1450 which is now deprecated.
1452 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1454 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1455 main features are supported:
1457 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1459 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1462 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1464 - a Pascal expression parser.
1466 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1468 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1470 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1472 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1473 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1475 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1477 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1479 * Changes in completion.
1481 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1482 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1483 users expect at the shell prompt.
1485 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1486 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1487 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1488 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1489 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1490 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1491 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1493 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1495 * New platform-independent commands:
1497 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1498 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1499 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1501 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1503 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1504 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1505 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1507 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1509 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1510 multi-threaded programs though.
1512 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1514 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1516 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1517 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1520 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1522 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1523 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1524 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1525 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1526 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1529 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1530 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1531 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1533 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1535 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1536 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1538 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1539 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1542 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1543 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1544 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1545 a given linear address.
1547 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1548 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1549 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1551 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1553 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1555 * Changes in documentation.
1557 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1558 Documentation License.
1560 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1563 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1565 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1568 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1569 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1570 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1572 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1574 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1575 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1576 contents of this file.
1580 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1582 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1584 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1586 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1587 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1588 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1589 greater level of detail.
1591 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1593 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1594 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1595 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1598 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1600 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1601 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1602 machines ``out of the box''.
1604 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1605 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1606 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1607 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1608 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1610 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1611 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1612 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1613 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1614 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1616 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1617 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1620 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1623 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1624 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1625 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1626 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1628 * New native configurations
1630 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1631 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1635 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1636 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1637 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1638 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1640 * OBSOLETE configurations
1642 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1643 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1645 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1648 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1649 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1650 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1651 be permanently REMOVED.
1653 * Gould support removed
1655 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1657 * New features for SVR4
1659 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1660 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1661 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1663 * Many C++ enhancements
1665 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1666 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1668 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1670 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1671 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1672 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1673 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1675 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1676 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1678 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1680 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1681 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1682 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1684 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1685 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1687 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1689 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1690 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1691 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1693 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1695 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1696 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1697 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1699 * ``apropos'' command added.
1701 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1702 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1703 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1707 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1708 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1709 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1710 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1711 enabled by configuring with:
1713 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1715 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1717 * New native configurations
1719 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1720 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1721 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1725 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1726 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1727 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1729 * OBSOLETE configurations
1731 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1733 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1734 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1735 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1736 be permanently REMOVED.
1740 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1741 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1742 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1743 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1744 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1745 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1746 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1751 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1753 * set extension-language
1755 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1756 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1757 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1758 set extension-language .c c++
1759 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1760 and their associated languages.
1762 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1764 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1765 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1766 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1770 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1771 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1773 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1774 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1776 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1777 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1778 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1779 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1780 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1781 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1782 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1783 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1785 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1786 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1787 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1788 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1792 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1793 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1794 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1795 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1796 for xdb and dbx commands.
1800 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1801 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1802 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1804 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1805 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1806 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1808 * Debugging across forks
1810 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1815 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1816 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1817 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1819 * GDB remote protocol additions
1821 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1822 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1823 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1824 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1826 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1827 full 64-bit address. The command
1829 set remoteaddresssize 32
1831 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1832 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1835 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1836 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1838 maint packet heythere
1840 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1841 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1844 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1845 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1846 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1848 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1850 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1851 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1852 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1854 * mask-address variable for Mips
1856 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1857 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1858 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1860 * Higher serial baud rates
1862 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1863 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1864 to achieve all of these rates.)
1868 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1869 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1872 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1874 * New native configurations
1876 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1877 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1878 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1879 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1880 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1881 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1882 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1886 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1887 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1888 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1889 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1890 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1891 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1892 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1893 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1894 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1895 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1896 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1898 * New debugging protocols
1900 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1901 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1902 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1903 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1904 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1905 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1909 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1910 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1915 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1916 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1918 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1920 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1921 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1922 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1924 * Live range splitting
1926 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1927 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1928 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1932 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1933 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1937 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1938 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1939 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1944 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1949 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1950 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1951 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1952 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1953 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1954 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1958 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1959 the symbol at the specified address.
1963 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1964 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1965 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1966 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1967 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1971 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1972 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1973 of most MIPS variants.
1977 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1978 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1979 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1983 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1984 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1985 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1986 the possible architectures.
1988 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1990 * New native configurations
1992 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1993 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1994 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1995 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1996 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1997 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2001 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2002 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2003 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2004 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2005 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2007 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2011 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2012 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2013 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2014 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2015 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2019 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2021 * Windows 95/NT native
2023 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2024 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2025 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2026 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2027 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2029 * dont-repeat command
2031 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2032 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2033 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2034 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2036 * Send break instead of ^C
2038 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2039 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2040 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2042 * Remote protocol timeout
2044 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2045 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2046 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2048 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2050 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2051 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2052 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2053 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2054 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2056 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2057 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2058 automatically on hpux10.
2060 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2062 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2064 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2066 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2067 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2068 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2069 every character. The default value is 1050.
2071 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2073 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2074 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2075 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2076 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2077 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2078 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2080 * Speedups for remote debugging
2082 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2083 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2084 and more efficient S-record downloading.
2086 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2088 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2089 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2091 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2093 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
2095 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2096 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2098 * Remote targets use caching
2100 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2101 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2102 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2103 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2104 off' turns the the data cache off.
2106 * Remote targets may have threads
2108 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2109 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2110 gdb/remote.c for details.
2114 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2115 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2116 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2117 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2118 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2119 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2120 sequence is something like
2122 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2124 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2128 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2129 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2130 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2131 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2132 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2133 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2134 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2135 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2139 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2140 but does simplify configuration and building.
2144 GDB now supports hpux10.
2146 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2148 * New native configurations
2150 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2151 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2152 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2153 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2157 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2158 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2159 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2160 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2163 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2165 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2166 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2167 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2168 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2169 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2171 * Arguments to user-defined commands
2173 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2174 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2177 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2179 To execute the command use:
2182 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2183 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2184 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2186 * New `if' and `while' commands
2188 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2189 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2190 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2191 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2192 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2193 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2194 if the expression is zero.
2196 * Fortran source language mode
2198 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2199 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2200 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2201 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2204 * Better HPUX support
2206 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2207 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2208 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2209 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2210 that behavior do the following before running the program:
2216 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2217 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2223 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2224 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2227 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2228 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2230 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2232 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2233 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2234 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2235 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2236 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2237 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2239 * New DOS host serial code
2241 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2242 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2245 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2247 * New "complete" command
2249 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2250 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2252 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2254 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2255 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2257 * Breakpoint hit counts
2259 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2260 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2261 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2262 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2263 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2266 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2268 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2269 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2270 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2272 * Shared library breakpoints
2274 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2275 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2277 * Hardware watchpoints
2279 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2280 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2282 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
2286 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2287 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2289 * Improved Irix 5 support
2291 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2293 * Improved HPPA support
2295 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2297 * New native configurations
2299 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2300 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2301 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2302 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2306 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2307 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2310 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2312 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2313 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2317 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2318 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2320 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2322 * Irix 5 is now supported
2326 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2327 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2328 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2329 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2330 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2333 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2335 * User visible changes:
2339 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2340 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2341 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2342 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2343 debugging info for the mips target).
2345 * DEC Alpha native support
2347 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2348 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2349 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2350 Alpha-specific notes.
2352 * Preliminary thread implementation
2354 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2356 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
2358 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2359 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2362 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2364 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2365 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2366 call methods, ...etc.
2368 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2370 * User visible changes:
2372 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2373 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2374 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2375 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2377 Filename completion now works.
2379 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2380 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2381 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2383 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2384 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2385 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2386 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2387 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2391 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2392 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2395 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2399 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2400 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2401 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2405 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2406 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2407 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2408 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2409 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2413 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2414 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2415 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2417 * New targets supported
2419 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2420 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2421 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2422 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2423 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2425 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2426 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2427 GO32 memory extender.
2429 * New remote protocols
2431 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2433 * New source languages supported
2435 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2436 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2437 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2440 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2442 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2444 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2445 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2446 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2447 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2448 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2449 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2451 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2453 * Faster and better demangling
2455 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2456 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2457 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2458 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2459 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2460 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2463 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2464 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2465 compiler does not actually implement.
2467 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2469 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2470 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2471 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2472 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2473 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2474 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2477 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2478 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2480 * Improved configure script
2482 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2483 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2484 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2485 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2487 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2488 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2489 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2490 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2491 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2492 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2494 * Documentation improvements
2496 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2497 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2498 before submitting changes.
2500 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2501 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2502 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2503 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2504 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2506 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2507 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2508 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2509 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2510 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2511 around this problem.
2515 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2516 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2517 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2520 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2521 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2523 * New native hosts supported
2525 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2526 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2528 * New targets supported
2530 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2532 * New file formats supported
2534 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2535 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2539 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2541 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2542 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2544 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2545 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2546 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2548 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2549 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2551 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2552 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2553 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2556 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2557 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2558 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2559 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2560 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2562 * Internal improvements
2564 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2565 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2567 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2568 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2569 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2570 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2571 shared code that handles any of them.
2573 * New command line options
2575 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2579 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2580 General Public License.
2582 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2584 * Host/native/target split
2586 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2587 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2588 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2589 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2590 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2592 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2593 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2594 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2595 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2596 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2597 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2598 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2600 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2601 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2602 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2604 * New hosts supported
2606 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2607 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2608 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2610 * New targets supported
2612 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2613 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2615 * New native hosts supported
2617 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2618 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2619 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2621 * New file formats supported
2623 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2624 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2625 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2629 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2630 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2631 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2633 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2635 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2636 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2637 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2638 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2642 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2643 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2644 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2646 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2650 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2651 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2654 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2655 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2657 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2658 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2659 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2660 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2661 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2662 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2664 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2665 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2666 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2667 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2671 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2672 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2673 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2674 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2675 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2677 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2678 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2679 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2680 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2684 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2685 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2686 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2687 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2688 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2689 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2690 each instruction being stepped through.
2692 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2693 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2695 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2696 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2697 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2698 processor with a serial port.
2702 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2703 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2704 supported, and what files each one uses.
2708 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2709 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2710 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2711 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2713 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2714 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2715 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2716 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2720 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2721 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2722 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2723 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2724 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2725 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2727 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2730 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2732 * Better support for C++ function names
2734 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2735 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2736 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2737 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2738 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2740 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2741 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2742 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2743 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2744 for the list of formats.
2746 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2748 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2749 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2750 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2751 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2752 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2753 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2756 * New 'maintenance' command
2758 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2759 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2760 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2762 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2763 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2764 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2765 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2766 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2767 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2769 The following commands are new:
2771 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2772 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2773 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2775 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2777 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2778 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2779 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2780 read after argv processing.
2782 * New hosts supported
2784 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2786 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2788 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2789 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2790 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2791 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2792 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2795 * New targets supported
2797 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2799 * More smarts about finding #include files
2801 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2802 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2803 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2804 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2805 the one that contains your sources.
2807 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2808 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2809 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2811 * Interesting infernals change
2813 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2814 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2815 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2816 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2818 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2820 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2821 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2822 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2824 See the ChangeLog for details.
2826 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2828 * New machines supported (host and target)
2830 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2832 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2834 * New malloc package
2836 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2837 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2838 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2839 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2840 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2841 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2845 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2846 'help info proc' for details.
2848 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2850 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2851 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2854 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2856 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2857 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2858 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2859 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2860 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2861 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2863 * Cross byte order fixes
2865 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2866 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2868 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2870 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2871 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2872 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2873 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2874 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2875 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2876 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2877 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2878 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2879 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2881 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2882 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2883 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2884 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2886 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2887 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2888 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2891 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2893 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2894 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2895 shared across multiple host platforms.
2897 * longjmp() handling
2899 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2900 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2901 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2902 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2906 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2907 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2912 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2913 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2914 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2916 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2918 * New machines supported (host and target)
2920 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2922 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2923 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2925 * New machines supported (target)
2927 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2931 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2932 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2933 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2935 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2936 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2937 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2938 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2939 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2942 * New features for SVR4
2944 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2945 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2946 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2948 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2949 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2950 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2952 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2953 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2955 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2957 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2958 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2959 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2960 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2961 same code linked statically.
2965 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2966 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2967 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2968 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2969 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2970 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2974 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2975 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2976 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2979 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2981 * New machines supported (host and target)
2983 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2984 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2985 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2987 * Almost SCO Unix support
2989 We had hoped to support:
2990 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2991 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2992 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2993 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2995 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2997 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2998 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2999 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3000 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3005 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3006 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3007 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3011 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3012 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3013 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3015 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3017 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3018 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3019 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3021 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3022 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3023 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3024 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3027 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3028 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3029 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3030 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3033 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3034 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3037 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3038 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3039 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3042 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3044 * Improved configuration
3046 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3047 Porting BFD is simpler.
3051 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3052 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3053 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3054 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3058 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3060 * New host supported (not target)
3062 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3065 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3067 * Multiple source language support
3069 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3070 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3071 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3072 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3073 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3074 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3078 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3079 currently under development at the State University of New York at
3080 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3081 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3083 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3084 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3085 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3087 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3088 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3092 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3093 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3094 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3095 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3098 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3100 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3101 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3102 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3103 examining core files.
3107 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3110 * New machines supported (host and target)
3112 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3113 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3114 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3116 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3118 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3120 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3122 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3123 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3124 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3126 * New remote interfaces
3132 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3136 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3138 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3139 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3140 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3141 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3142 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3143 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3144 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3145 stub on the target system.
3147 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3149 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3150 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3151 object file types such as a.out and coff.
3153 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3154 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3157 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3159 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3160 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3162 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3163 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3164 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3166 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3167 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3168 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3169 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3171 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3172 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3173 it is already running. Default is ON.
3175 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3176 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3177 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3178 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3181 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3182 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3183 or the value of the environment variable
3186 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3187 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3190 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3191 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3192 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3194 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3195 history expansion will be performed on
3196 command line input. The default is OFF.
3198 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3199 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3200 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3202 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3203 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3204 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3207 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3208 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3209 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3212 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3213 ``set width'' instead.
3215 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3216 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3217 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3218 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3220 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3223 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3226 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3229 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3232 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3234 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3235 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3236 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3240 * Support for Shared Libraries
3242 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3243 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3244 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3245 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3246 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3247 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3248 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3249 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3251 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3252 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3253 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3255 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3260 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3261 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3262 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3263 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3264 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3265 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3267 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3269 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3271 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3272 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3273 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3276 * C++ multiple inheritance
3278 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3281 * C++ exception handling
3283 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3284 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3285 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3288 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3289 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3290 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3292 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3293 current stack frame.
3296 * Minor command changes
3298 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3299 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3300 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3302 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3303 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3304 frames without printing.
3306 * New directory command
3308 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3309 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3310 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3311 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3312 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3314 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3316 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3319 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3320 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3321 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3322 where the program that you are debugging will run.