1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 5.2:
10 * New native configurations
12 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
14 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
16 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
17 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
18 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
21 * REMOVED configurations and files
23 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
24 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
25 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
26 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
27 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
29 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
31 * Changes in VAX configurations.
33 Multi-arch support is enabled for all VAX configurations.
35 * Changes in Alpha configurations.
37 Multi-arch support is enabled for all Alpha configurations.
39 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
41 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
42 commands. The default is 1024.
44 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
46 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
48 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
50 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
51 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
52 from a file into memory (restore).
54 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
56 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
58 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
59 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
60 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
61 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
62 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
63 (notably embedded) targets.
65 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
67 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
68 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
69 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
70 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
72 * New command line option
74 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
76 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
78 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
79 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
80 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
81 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
82 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
83 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
84 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
85 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
86 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
87 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
89 * Changes in ARM configurations.
91 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
92 configuration is fully multi-arch.
94 * New native configurations
96 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
97 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
98 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
99 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
103 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
105 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
107 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
108 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
109 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
112 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
113 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
114 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
115 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
116 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
118 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
120 * REMOVED configurations and files
122 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
124 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
125 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
126 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
127 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
128 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
129 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
130 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
131 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
132 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
133 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
134 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
136 * Changes to command line processing
138 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
139 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
141 * Changes to key bindings
143 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
145 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
147 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
149 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
152 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
154 Numerous documentation fixes.
156 Numerous testsuite fixes.
158 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
160 * New native configurations
162 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
163 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
164 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
165 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
167 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
171 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
173 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
175 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
177 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
178 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
179 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
180 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
181 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
183 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
184 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
185 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
186 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
187 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
188 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
189 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
190 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
192 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
193 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
195 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
196 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
197 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
200 * REMOVED configurations and files
202 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
203 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
205 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
209 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
211 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
212 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
217 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
219 * The MI enabled by default.
221 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
222 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
223 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
224 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
225 which is now deprecated.
227 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
229 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
230 main features are supported:
232 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
234 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
237 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
239 - a Pascal expression parser.
241 However, some important features are not yet supported.
243 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
245 - there are some problems with boolean types;
247 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
248 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
250 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
252 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
254 * Changes in completion.
256 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
257 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
258 users expect at the shell prompt.
260 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
261 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
262 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
263 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
264 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
265 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
266 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
268 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
270 * New platform-independent commands:
272 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
273 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
274 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
276 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
278 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
279 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
280 many threads as your system allows you to have.
282 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
284 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
285 multi-threaded programs though.
287 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
289 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
291 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
292 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
295 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
297 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
298 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
299 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
300 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
301 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
304 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
305 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
306 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
308 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
310 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
311 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
313 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
314 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
317 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
318 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
319 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
320 a given linear address.
322 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
323 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
324 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
326 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
328 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
330 * Changes in documentation.
332 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
333 Documentation License.
335 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
338 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
340 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
343 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
344 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
345 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
347 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
349 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
350 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
351 contents of this file.
355 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
357 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
359 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
361 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
362 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
363 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
364 greater level of detail.
366 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
368 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
369 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
370 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
373 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
375 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
376 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
377 machines ``out of the box''.
379 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
380 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
381 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
382 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
383 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
385 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
386 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
387 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
388 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
389 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
391 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
392 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
395 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
398 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
399 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
400 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
401 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
403 * New native configurations
405 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
406 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
410 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
411 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
412 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
413 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
415 * OBSOLETE configurations
417 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
418 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
420 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
423 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
424 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
425 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
426 be permanently REMOVED.
428 * Gould support removed
430 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
432 * New features for SVR4
434 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
435 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
436 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
438 * Many C++ enhancements
440 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
441 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
443 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
445 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
446 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
447 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
448 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
450 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
451 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
453 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
455 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
456 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
457 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
459 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
460 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
462 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
464 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
465 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
466 include ``set remote P-packet''.
468 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
470 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
471 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
472 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
474 * ``apropos'' command added.
476 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
477 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
478 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
482 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
483 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
484 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
485 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
486 enabled by configuring with:
488 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
490 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
492 * New native configurations
494 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
495 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
496 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
500 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
501 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
502 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
504 * OBSOLETE configurations
506 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
508 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
509 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
510 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
511 be permanently REMOVED.
515 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
516 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
517 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
518 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
519 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
520 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
521 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
526 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
528 * set extension-language
530 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
531 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
532 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
533 set extension-language .c c++
534 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
535 and their associated languages.
537 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
539 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
540 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
541 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
545 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
546 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
548 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
549 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
551 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
552 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
553 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
554 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
555 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
556 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
557 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
558 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
560 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
561 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
562 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
563 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
567 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
568 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
569 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
570 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
571 for xdb and dbx commands.
575 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
576 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
577 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
579 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
580 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
581 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
583 * Debugging across forks
585 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
590 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
591 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
592 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
594 * GDB remote protocol additions
596 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
597 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
598 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
599 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
601 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
602 full 64-bit address. The command
604 set remoteaddresssize 32
606 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
607 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
610 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
611 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
613 maint packet heythere
615 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
616 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
619 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
620 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
621 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
623 * Tracing can collect general expressions
625 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
626 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
627 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
629 * mask-address variable for Mips
631 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
632 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
633 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
635 * Higher serial baud rates
637 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
638 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
639 to achieve all of these rates.)
643 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
644 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
647 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
649 * New native configurations
651 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
652 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
653 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
654 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
655 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
656 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
657 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
661 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
662 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
663 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
664 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
665 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
666 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
667 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
668 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
669 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
670 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
671 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
673 * New debugging protocols
675 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
676 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
677 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
678 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
679 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
680 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
684 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
685 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
690 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
691 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
693 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
695 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
696 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
697 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
699 * Live range splitting
701 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
702 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
703 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
707 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
708 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
712 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
713 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
714 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
719 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
724 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
725 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
726 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
727 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
728 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
729 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
733 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
734 the symbol at the specified address.
738 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
739 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
740 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
741 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
742 file tracepoint.c for more details.
746 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
747 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
748 of most MIPS variants.
752 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
753 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
754 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
758 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
759 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
760 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
761 the possible architectures.
763 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
765 * New native configurations
767 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
768 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
769 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
770 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
771 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
772 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
776 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
777 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
778 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
779 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
780 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
782 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
786 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
787 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
788 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
789 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
790 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
794 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
796 * Windows 95/NT native
798 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
799 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
800 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
801 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
802 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
804 * dont-repeat command
806 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
807 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
808 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
809 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
811 * Send break instead of ^C
813 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
814 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
815 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
817 * Remote protocol timeout
819 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
820 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
821 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
823 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
825 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
826 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
827 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
828 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
829 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
831 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
832 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
833 automatically on hpux10.
835 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
837 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
839 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
841 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
842 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
843 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
844 every character. The default value is 1050.
846 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
848 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
849 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
850 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
851 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
852 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
853 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
855 * Speedups for remote debugging
857 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
858 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
859 and more efficient S-record downloading.
861 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
863 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
864 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
866 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
870 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
871 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
873 * Remote targets use caching
875 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
876 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
877 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
878 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
879 off' turns the the data cache off.
881 * Remote targets may have threads
883 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
884 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
885 gdb/remote.c for details.
889 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
890 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
891 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
892 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
893 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
894 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
895 sequence is something like
897 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
899 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
903 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
904 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
905 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
906 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
907 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
908 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
909 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
910 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
914 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
915 but does simplify configuration and building.
919 GDB now supports hpux10.
921 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
923 * New native configurations
925 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
926 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
927 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
928 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
932 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
933 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
934 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
935 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
938 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
940 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
941 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
942 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
943 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
944 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
946 * Arguments to user-defined commands
948 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
949 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
952 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
954 To execute the command use:
957 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
958 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
959 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
961 * New `if' and `while' commands
963 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
964 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
965 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
966 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
967 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
968 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
969 if the expression is zero.
971 * Fortran source language mode
973 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
974 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
975 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
976 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
979 * Better HPUX support
981 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
982 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
983 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
984 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
985 that behavior do the following before running the program:
991 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
992 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
998 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
999 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1002 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1003 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1005 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1007 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1008 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1009 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1010 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1011 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1012 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1014 * New DOS host serial code
1016 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1017 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1020 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1022 * New "complete" command
1024 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1025 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1027 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1029 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1030 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1032 * Breakpoint hit counts
1034 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1035 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1036 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1037 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1038 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1041 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1043 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1044 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1045 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1047 * Shared library breakpoints
1049 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1050 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1052 * Hardware watchpoints
1054 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1055 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1057 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1061 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1062 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1064 * Improved Irix 5 support
1066 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1068 * Improved HPPA support
1070 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1072 * New native configurations
1074 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1075 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1076 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1077 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1081 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1082 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1085 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1087 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1088 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1092 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1093 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1095 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1097 * Irix 5 is now supported
1101 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1102 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1103 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1104 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1105 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1108 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1110 * User visible changes:
1114 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1115 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1116 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1117 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1118 debugging info for the mips target).
1120 * DEC Alpha native support
1122 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1123 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1124 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1125 Alpha-specific notes.
1127 * Preliminary thread implementation
1129 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1131 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1133 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1134 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1137 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1139 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1140 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1141 call methods, ...etc.
1143 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1145 * User visible changes:
1147 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1148 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1149 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1150 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1152 Filename completion now works.
1154 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1155 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1156 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1158 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1159 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1160 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1161 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1162 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1166 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1167 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1170 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1174 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1175 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1176 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1180 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1181 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1182 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1183 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1184 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1188 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1189 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1190 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1192 * New targets supported
1194 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1195 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1196 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1197 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1198 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1200 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1201 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1202 GO32 memory extender.
1204 * New remote protocols
1206 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1208 * New source languages supported
1210 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1211 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1212 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1215 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1217 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1219 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1220 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1221 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1222 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1223 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1224 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1226 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1228 * Faster and better demangling
1230 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1231 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1232 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1233 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1234 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1235 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1238 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1239 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1240 compiler does not actually implement.
1242 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1244 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1245 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1246 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1247 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1248 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1249 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1252 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1253 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1255 * Improved configure script
1257 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1258 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1259 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1260 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1262 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1263 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1264 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1265 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1266 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1267 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1269 * Documentation improvements
1271 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1272 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1273 before submitting changes.
1275 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1276 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1277 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1278 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1279 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1281 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1282 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1283 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1284 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1285 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1286 around this problem.
1290 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1291 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1292 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1295 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1296 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1298 * New native hosts supported
1300 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1301 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1303 * New targets supported
1305 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1307 * New file formats supported
1309 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1310 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1314 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1316 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1317 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1319 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1320 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1321 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1323 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1324 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1326 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1327 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1328 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1331 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1332 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1333 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1334 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1335 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1337 * Internal improvements
1339 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1340 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1342 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1343 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1344 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1345 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1346 shared code that handles any of them.
1348 * New command line options
1350 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1354 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1355 General Public License.
1357 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1359 * Host/native/target split
1361 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1362 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1363 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1364 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1365 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1367 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1368 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1369 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1370 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1371 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1372 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1373 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1375 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1376 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1377 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1379 * New hosts supported
1381 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1382 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1383 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1385 * New targets supported
1387 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1388 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1390 * New native hosts supported
1392 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1393 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1394 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1396 * New file formats supported
1398 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1399 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1400 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1404 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1405 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1406 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1408 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1410 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1411 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1412 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1413 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1417 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1418 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1419 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1421 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1425 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1426 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1429 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1430 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1432 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1433 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1434 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1435 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1436 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1437 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1439 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1440 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1441 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1442 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1446 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1447 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1448 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1449 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1450 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1452 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1453 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1454 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1455 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1459 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1460 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1461 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1462 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1463 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1464 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1465 each instruction being stepped through.
1467 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1468 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1470 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1471 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1472 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1473 processor with a serial port.
1477 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1478 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1479 supported, and what files each one uses.
1483 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1484 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1485 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1486 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1488 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1489 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1490 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1491 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1495 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1496 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1497 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1498 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1499 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1500 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1502 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1505 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1507 * Better support for C++ function names
1509 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1510 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1511 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1512 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1513 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1515 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1516 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1517 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1518 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1519 for the list of formats.
1521 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1523 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1524 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1525 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1526 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1527 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1528 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1531 * New 'maintenance' command
1533 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1534 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1535 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1537 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1538 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1539 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1540 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1541 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1542 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1544 The following commands are new:
1546 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1547 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1548 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1550 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1552 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1553 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1554 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1555 read after argv processing.
1557 * New hosts supported
1559 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1561 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1563 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1564 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1565 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1566 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1567 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1570 * New targets supported
1572 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1574 * More smarts about finding #include files
1576 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1577 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1578 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1579 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1580 the one that contains your sources.
1582 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1583 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1584 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1586 * Interesting infernals change
1588 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1589 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1590 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1591 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1593 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1595 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1596 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1597 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1599 See the ChangeLog for details.
1601 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1603 * New machines supported (host and target)
1605 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1607 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1609 * New malloc package
1611 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1612 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1613 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1614 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1615 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1616 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1620 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1621 'help info proc' for details.
1623 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1625 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1626 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1629 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1631 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1632 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1633 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1634 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1635 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1636 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1638 * Cross byte order fixes
1640 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1641 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1643 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1645 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1646 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1647 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1648 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1649 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1650 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1651 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1652 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1653 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1654 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1656 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1657 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1658 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1659 slower, but makes future operations faster.
1661 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1662 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1663 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1666 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1668 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1669 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1670 shared across multiple host platforms.
1672 * longjmp() handling
1674 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1675 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1676 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1677 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1681 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1682 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1687 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1688 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1689 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1691 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1693 * New machines supported (host and target)
1695 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1697 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1698 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1700 * New machines supported (target)
1702 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1706 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1707 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1708 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1710 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1711 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1712 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1713 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1714 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1717 * New features for SVR4
1719 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1720 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1721 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1723 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1724 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1725 it prints the address mappings of the process.
1727 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1728 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1730 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1732 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1733 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1734 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1735 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1736 same code linked statically.
1740 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1741 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1742 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1743 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1744 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1745 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1749 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1750 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1751 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1754 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1756 * New machines supported (host and target)
1758 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1759 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1760 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1762 * Almost SCO Unix support
1764 We had hoped to support:
1765 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1766 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1767 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1768 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1770 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1772 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1773 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1774 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1775 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1780 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1781 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1782 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1786 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1787 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1788 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1790 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1792 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1793 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1794 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1796 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1797 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1798 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1799 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1802 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1803 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1804 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1805 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1808 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1809 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1812 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1813 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1814 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1817 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1819 * Improved configuration
1821 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1822 Porting BFD is simpler.
1826 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1827 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1828 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1829 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1833 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1835 * New host supported (not target)
1837 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1840 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1842 * Multiple source language support
1844 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1845 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1846 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1847 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1848 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1849 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1853 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1854 currently under development at the State University of New York at
1855 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1856 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1858 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1859 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1860 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1862 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1863 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1867 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1868 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1869 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1870 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1873 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1875 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1876 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1877 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1878 examining core files.
1882 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1885 * New machines supported (host and target)
1887 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1888 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1889 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1891 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1893 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1895 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1897 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1898 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1899 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1901 * New remote interfaces
1907 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1911 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1913 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1914 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1915 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1916 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1917 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1918 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1919 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1920 stub on the target system.
1922 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1924 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1925 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1926 object file types such as a.out and coff.
1928 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1929 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1932 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1934 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1935 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1937 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
1938 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
1939 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
1941 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
1942 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
1943 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
1944 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
1946 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
1947 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
1948 it is already running. Default is ON.
1950 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
1951 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
1952 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
1953 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
1956 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
1957 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
1958 or the value of the environment variable
1961 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
1962 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
1965 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
1966 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
1967 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
1969 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
1970 history expansion will be performed on
1971 command line input. The default is OFF.
1973 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
1974 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
1975 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
1977 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
1978 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
1979 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1982 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
1983 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
1984 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1987 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
1988 ``set width'' instead.
1990 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
1991 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
1992 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
1993 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
1995 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
1998 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2001 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2004 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2007 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2009 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2010 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2011 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2015 * Support for Shared Libraries
2017 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2018 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2019 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2020 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2021 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2022 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2023 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2024 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2026 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2027 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2028 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2030 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2035 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2036 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2037 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2038 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2039 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2040 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2042 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2044 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2046 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2047 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2048 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2051 * C++ multiple inheritance
2053 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2056 * C++ exception handling
2058 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2059 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2060 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2063 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2064 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2065 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2067 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2068 current stack frame.
2071 * Minor command changes
2073 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2074 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2075 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2077 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2078 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2079 frames without printing.
2081 * New directory command
2083 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2084 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2085 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2086 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2087 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2089 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2091 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2094 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2095 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2096 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2097 where the program that you are debugging will run.