1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.6
6 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
8 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
12 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
16 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
17 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
18 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
22 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
24 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
26 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
28 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
31 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
33 maint set|show per-command
34 maint set|show per-command space
35 maint set|show per-command time
36 maint set|show per-command symtab
37 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
41 set print raw frame-arguments
42 show print raw frame-arguments
43 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
44 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
46 set remote trace-status-packet
47 show remote trace-status-packet
48 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
52 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
56 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
58 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
59 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
60 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
61 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
64 * New command-line options
66 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
68 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
69 buffer in Common Trace Format.
71 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
74 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
76 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
77 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
79 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
80 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
84 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
87 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
89 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
90 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
93 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
94 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
96 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
97 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
98 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
100 * New system-wide configuration scripts
101 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
102 configuration scripts for the following systems:
106 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
107 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
108 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
111 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
112 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
114 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
115 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
116 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
122 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
123 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
124 involvemement at each single-step.
126 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
127 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
128 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
129 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
130 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
131 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
134 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
136 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
137 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
139 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
140 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
141 trace state variables.
143 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
146 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
147 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
149 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
151 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
153 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
154 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
155 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
156 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
158 set|show record full insn-number-max
159 set|show record full stop-at-limit
160 set|show record full memory-query
162 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
163 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
164 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
165 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
166 This new recording method can be enabled using:
170 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
171 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
173 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
174 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
175 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
177 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
178 instruction granularity
180 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
183 * New native configurations
185 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
186 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
187 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
188 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
192 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
193 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
194 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
195 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
196 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
198 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
199 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
200 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
201 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
202 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
203 --data-directory command-line option.
205 * New command line options:
207 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
208 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
210 * Removed command line options
212 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
215 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
218 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
222 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
224 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
226 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
228 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
230 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
231 of architecture in the Python API.
233 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
234 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
236 * New Python-based convenience functions:
238 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
239 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
241 ** $_regex(str, regex)
243 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
246 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
247 default for GCC since November 2000.
249 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
251 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
252 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
254 * New configure options
256 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
257 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
258 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
259 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
260 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
261 options allow the user to override that default.
262 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
263 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
264 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
266 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
269 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
270 conditions to be attached.
273 List the BFDs known to GDB.
275 python-interactive [command]
277 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
278 and print the result of expressions.
281 "py" is a new alias for "python".
283 enable type-printer [name]...
284 disable type-printer [name]...
285 Enable or disable type printers.
289 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
290 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
295 set print type methods (on|off)
296 show print type methods
297 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
298 The default is to show them.
300 set print type typedefs (on|off)
301 show print type typedefs
302 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
303 The default is to show them.
305 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
306 show filename-display
307 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
308 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
310 set trace-buffer-size
311 show trace-buffer-size
312 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
314 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
315 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
316 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
320 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
323 set debug coff-pe-read
324 show debug coff-pe-read
325 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
330 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
333 set debug notification
334 show debug notification
335 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
339 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
340 "=cmd-param-changed".
341 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
342 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
343 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
344 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
345 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
346 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
347 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
348 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
350 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
351 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
352 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
353 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
354 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
355 library load/unload events.
356 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
357 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
358 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
359 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
360 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
361 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
362 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
363 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
365 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
366 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
367 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
368 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
373 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
374 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
377 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
378 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
382 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
383 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
386 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
387 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
389 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
391 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
392 for more x32 ABI info.
394 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
396 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
398 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
399 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
400 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
401 "info os files" lists file descriptors
402 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
403 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
404 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
405 "info os msg" lists message queues
406 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
408 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
409 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
410 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
411 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
412 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
413 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
415 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
416 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
417 record/replay support.
419 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
423 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
426 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
428 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
429 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
431 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
433 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
434 the source at which the symbol was defined.
436 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
437 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
438 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
441 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
442 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
444 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
445 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
446 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
448 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
449 object associated with a PC value.
451 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
452 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
454 * Go language support.
455 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
458 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
459 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
461 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
462 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
464 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
465 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
466 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
467 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
468 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
471 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
472 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
473 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
476 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
477 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
479 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
482 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
483 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
484 command does. For instance:
486 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
488 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
489 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
490 created, using the "condition" command.
492 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
493 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
495 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
497 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
498 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
499 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
500 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
501 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
502 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
503 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
504 files with older .gdb_index sections.
506 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
507 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
508 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
509 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
510 the .gdb_index section.
512 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
514 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
519 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
521 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
525 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
526 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
527 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
529 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
530 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
532 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
535 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
536 C++ and Java objects.
538 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
539 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
540 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
541 configured with '--with-python'.
543 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
544 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
545 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
546 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
547 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
548 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
549 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
551 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
552 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
553 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
554 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
556 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
557 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
558 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
559 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
561 ** "set print symbol"
563 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
564 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
565 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
567 * Deprecated commands
569 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
570 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
574 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
575 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
577 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
578 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
579 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
580 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
586 show mips compression
587 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
588 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
591 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
593 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
594 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
595 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
596 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
598 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
602 Disable auto-loading globally.
605 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
607 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
608 show auto-load gdb-scripts
609 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
611 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
612 show auto-load python-scripts
613 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
615 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
616 show auto-load local-gdbinit
617 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
619 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
620 show auto-load libthread-db
621 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
623 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
624 show auto-load scripts-directory
625 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
626 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
627 of the directories listed by this option.
628 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
630 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
631 show auto-load safe-path
632 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
633 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
635 set debug auto-load on|off
637 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
639 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
641 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
642 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
643 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
644 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
646 set dprintf-function <expr>
647 show dprintf-function
648 set dprintf-channel <expr>
650 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
651 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
653 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
654 show disconnected-dprintf
655 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
656 after GDB disconnects.
658 * New configure options
661 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
662 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
663 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
664 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
665 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
667 --with-auto-load-safe-path
668 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
669 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
671 --without-auto-load-safe-path
672 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
677 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
679 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
680 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
681 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
682 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
686 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
687 program without GDB involvement.
689 * New command line options
691 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
692 before loading inferior.
693 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
694 execute it before loading inferior.
696 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
698 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
699 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
700 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
701 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
704 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
705 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
707 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
708 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
709 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
710 target hardware watchpoint.
712 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
713 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
714 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
715 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
719 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
720 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
723 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
724 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
725 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
726 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
727 now "message", which just prints the error message without
730 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
733 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
734 modules library. This module provides functionality for
735 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
736 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
739 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
740 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
741 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
744 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
745 static_block will return the global and static blocks
746 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
747 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
749 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
751 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
754 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
755 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
756 available in the CLI.
758 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
759 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
760 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
763 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
766 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
767 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
768 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
769 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
770 any anonymous fields.
774 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
777 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
778 "=breakpoint-modified".
780 ** New command -ada-task-info.
782 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
783 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
784 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
787 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
788 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
789 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
790 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
791 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
793 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
794 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
796 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
797 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
798 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
799 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
800 use this option to specify where to find it.
802 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
803 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
804 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
805 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
806 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
807 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
808 section in the user manual for more details.
810 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
811 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
812 become available after that.
814 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
816 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
817 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
823 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
824 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
828 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
829 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
830 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
832 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
833 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
834 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
836 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
837 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
838 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
839 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
840 name starts with a hyphen.
842 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
843 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
844 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
845 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
846 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
847 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
848 number of bytes that will be collected.
851 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
852 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
853 setting the variable trace-notes.
856 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
857 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
858 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
861 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
862 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
863 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
864 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
865 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
868 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
869 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
870 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
874 set debug dwarf2-read
875 show debug dwarf2-read
876 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
877 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
879 set debug symtab-create
880 show debug symtab-create
881 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
882 creation. The default is off.
886 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
887 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
888 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
889 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
892 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
893 show print entry-values
894 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
895 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
896 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
898 set debug entry-values
899 show debug entry-values
900 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
901 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
903 set basenames-may-differ
904 show basenames-may-differ
905 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
906 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
907 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
908 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
909 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
910 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
911 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
912 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
918 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
919 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
920 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
921 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
924 show trace-stop-notes
925 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
926 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
927 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
928 started by someone else.
934 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
938 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
942 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
946 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
950 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
953 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
954 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
958 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
962 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
964 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
966 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
968 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
970 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
971 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
972 matches the given regular expression.
974 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
976 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
977 dumping the instruction opcodes.
979 * New command line options
981 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
982 This is mostly for testing purposes.
984 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
985 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
987 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
988 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
989 source path list instead of augmenting it.
991 * GDB now understands thread names.
993 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
994 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
996 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
997 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1000 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1001 has been integrated into GDB.
1005 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1006 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1007 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1009 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1010 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1011 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1012 and allows for more dynamic content.
1014 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1015 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1016 have an is_valid method.
1018 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1019 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1020 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1022 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1024 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1025 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1026 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1027 that function like so:
1029 result = some_value (10,20)
1031 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1032 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1033 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1035 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1036 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1037 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1038 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1039 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1041 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1042 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1044 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1046 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1049 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1050 holds the thread's name.
1052 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1053 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1054 occurring in the process being debugged.
1055 The following events are currently supported:
1056 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1057 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1058 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1062 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1063 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1065 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1067 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1068 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1069 was added to GCC 4.5.
1071 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1072 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1073 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1074 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1075 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1076 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1078 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1079 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1080 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1081 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1082 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1084 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1085 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1086 execution to a label.
1088 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1089 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1090 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1091 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1093 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1094 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1095 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1098 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1100 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1101 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1102 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1103 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1104 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1105 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1108 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1110 While now you see this:
1113 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1115 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1118 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1119 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1120 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1121 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1123 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1124 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1125 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1126 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1127 section in the user manual for more details.
1129 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1131 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1132 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1134 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1136 * New native configurations
1138 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1142 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1144 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1145 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1146 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1147 in the GDB user manual.
1149 * Guile support was removed.
1151 * New features in the GNU simulator
1153 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1155 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1157 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1159 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1161 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1162 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1163 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1164 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1165 was always disabled for such configurations.
1169 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1171 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1172 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1182 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1183 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1184 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1186 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1188 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1189 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1190 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1191 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1193 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1194 mentioned flavors of operators.
1196 ** static const class members
1198 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1199 class definition has been fixed.
1201 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1203 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1204 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1205 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1206 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1207 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1208 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1210 * Static tracepoints
1212 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1213 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1214 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1215 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1216 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1217 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1218 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1219 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1220 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1221 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1222 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1223 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1224 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1225 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1226 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1227 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1228 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1229 the "New remote packets" section below.
1231 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1233 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1234 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1235 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1236 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1240 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1241 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1242 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1243 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1244 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1245 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1246 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1248 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1251 * New remote packets
1255 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1259 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1260 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1261 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1262 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1263 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1264 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1268 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1272 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1275 qXfer:statictrace:read
1277 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1278 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1279 to gdb's qSupported query.
1283 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1287 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1288 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1290 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1291 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1294 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1296 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1297 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1298 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1299 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1301 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1302 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1303 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1304 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1305 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1306 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1307 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1309 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1310 for static tracepoints support.
1312 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1314 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1315 it understands register description.
1317 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1319 * X86 general purpose registers
1321 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1322 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1323 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1324 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1325 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1327 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1328 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1329 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1330 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1331 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1332 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1334 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1335 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1336 in the specified file.
1338 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1339 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1340 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1341 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1342 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1343 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1344 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1345 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1346 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1347 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1351 eval template, expressions...
1352 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1353 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1355 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1356 show target-file-system-kind
1357 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1360 save breakpoints <filename>
1361 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1362 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1363 definitions, use the `source' command.
1365 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1368 info static-tracepoint-markers
1369 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1371 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1372 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1373 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1377 Enable and disable observer mode.
1379 set may-write-registers on|off
1380 set may-write-memory on|off
1381 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1382 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1383 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1384 set may-interrupt on|off
1385 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1386 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1387 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1388 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1389 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1390 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1391 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1393 set record memory-query on|off
1394 show record memory-query
1395 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1396 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1401 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1405 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1406 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1407 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1408 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1409 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1411 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
1412 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1413 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1414 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
1416 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
1417 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1419 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
1421 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
1423 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1425 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1426 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1427 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1429 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1430 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1431 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1432 regular breakpoints.
1436 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1438 * D language support.
1439 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1442 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1443 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1444 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1445 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1446 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1448 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1449 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1450 conditions of the form:
1452 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1454 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1455 interface mentioned above.
1457 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
1461 ** Namespace Support
1463 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1464 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1465 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1466 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1467 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1471 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1472 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1477 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1478 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1482 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
1487 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
1490 * Multi-program debugging.
1492 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1493 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1494 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1495 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1496 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1497 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1498 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1499 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1501 * New tracing features
1503 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1505 ** Trace state variables
1507 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1508 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1509 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1510 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1511 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1512 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1513 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1514 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1515 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1516 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
1520 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1521 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1522 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1523 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1524 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1525 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1526 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1527 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1528 the regular trace command.
1530 ** Disconnected tracing
1532 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1533 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1534 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1535 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1536 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1540 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1541 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1542 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1543 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1544 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1545 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1548 ** Circular trace buffer
1550 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1551 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1552 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1553 not be available for all target agents.
1558 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1559 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1562 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1563 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1566 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1567 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1570 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1571 "set script-extension" (see below).
1573 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1575 record save [<FILENAME>]
1576 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1577 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1579 record restore <FILENAME>
1580 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1581 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1583 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1586 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1587 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1588 inferior has loaded.
1593 maint info program-spaces
1594 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1596 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1597 show remote interrupt-sequence
1598 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1599 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1600 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1601 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1602 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1604 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1605 show remote interrupt-on-connect
1606 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1607 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1610 set remotebreak [on | off]
1612 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1614 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1615 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1618 List trace state variables and their values.
1620 delete tvariable $NAME ...
1621 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1624 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1625 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1627 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1628 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1630 * New expression syntax
1632 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1633 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1637 set follow-exec-mode new|same
1638 show follow-exec-mode
1639 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1640 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1641 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1643 set default-collect EXPR, ...
1644 show default-collect
1645 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1646 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1647 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1649 set disconnected-tracing
1650 show disconnected-tracing
1651 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1652 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1655 set circular-trace-buffer
1656 show circular-trace-buffer
1657 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1658 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1659 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1660 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1662 set script-extension off|soft|strict
1663 show script-extension
1664 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1665 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1666 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1667 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1669 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1671 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1672 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1673 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1674 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1675 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1676 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1677 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1680 * Python API Improvements
1682 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1683 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1684 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1686 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1687 `is_base_class' attribute.
1689 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1691 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1692 evaluate an expression.
1694 * New remote packets
1697 Define a trace state variable.
1700 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1703 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1706 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1709 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1713 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1715 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1716 much more reliable. In particular:
1717 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1718 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1719 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1720 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1721 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1722 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1723 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1724 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1725 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1726 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1727 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1728 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1729 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1730 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1731 non-threaded programs.
1733 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1734 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1735 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1738 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1740 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1741 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1742 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1743 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1744 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1746 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1747 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1748 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1749 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1750 for tracepoint actions.
1752 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1753 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1754 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1756 * Process record and replay
1758 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1759 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1760 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1763 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1764 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1765 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1768 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1769 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1772 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1773 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1774 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1775 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1776 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1777 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1778 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1779 the installation instructions for more information.
1781 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1782 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1783 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1784 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1786 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1787 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1789 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1790 now complete on file names.
1792 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1793 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1794 For instance, consider:
1796 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1797 # struct example variable;
1800 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1801 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1803 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1804 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1806 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1807 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1810 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1811 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1812 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1814 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1815 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1816 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1817 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1819 * New remote packets
1822 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1825 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1826 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1827 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1830 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1831 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1834 Obtains additional operating system information
1838 Read or write additional signal information.
1840 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1842 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1843 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1844 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1846 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1847 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1849 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1850 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1851 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1853 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1854 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1856 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1858 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1860 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1861 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1863 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1864 list of section offsets.
1866 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1867 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1868 have also been fixed.
1870 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1871 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1872 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1874 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1877 template<typename T> class C { };
1880 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1882 ptype C<char const *>
1883 ptype C<char const*>
1884 ptype C<const char *>
1885 ptype C<const char*>
1887 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1889 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1890 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1892 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1893 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1894 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1896 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1897 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1899 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1902 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1903 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1905 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1906 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1911 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1912 available is determined at configure time.
1914 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1916 * Ada tasking support
1918 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1922 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1924 Print detailed information about task number N.
1926 Print the task number of the current task.
1928 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1930 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1931 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1933 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1935 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1936 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1937 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1938 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1939 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1940 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1943 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1944 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1947 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1948 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1949 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1950 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1953 * Multi-architecture debugging.
1955 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1956 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1957 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1958 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1959 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1961 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1962 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1963 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1964 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1965 --enable-targets configure option.
1967 * Non-stop mode debugging.
1969 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1970 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1971 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1972 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1973 section in the user manual for more information.
1975 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1976 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1977 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1978 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1979 extensions on linux targets.
1981 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1983 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1984 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1985 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1986 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1987 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1988 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1989 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1990 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1991 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1993 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1995 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1997 maint set python print-stack
1998 maint show python print-stack
1999 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2002 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2007 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2011 Show operating system information about processes.
2014 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2017 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2020 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2023 Kill inferior number NUM.
2027 set spu stop-on-load
2028 show spu stop-on-load
2029 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2031 set spu auto-flush-cache
2032 show spu auto-flush-cache
2033 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2034 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2036 set sh calling-convention
2037 show sh calling-convention
2038 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2041 show debug timestamp
2042 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2044 set disassemble-next-line
2045 show disassemble-next-line
2046 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2049 set remote noack-packet
2050 show remote noack-packet
2051 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2052 under "New remote packets."
2054 set remote query-attached-packet
2055 show remote query-attached-packet
2056 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2058 set remote read-siginfo-object
2059 show remote read-siginfo-object
2060 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2063 set remote write-siginfo-object
2064 show remote write-siginfo-object
2065 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2068 set remote reverse-continue
2069 show remote reverse-continue
2070 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2072 set remote reverse-step
2073 show remote reverse-step
2074 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2076 set displaced-stepping
2077 show displaced-stepping
2078 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2079 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2080 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2083 show debug displaced
2084 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2086 maint set internal-error
2087 maint show internal-error
2088 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2090 maint set internal-warning
2091 maint show internal-warning
2092 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2097 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2099 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2100 show multiple-symbols
2101 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2102 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2103 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2105 set breakpoint always-inserted
2106 show breakpoint always-inserted
2107 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2108 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2109 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2111 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2112 show arm fallback-mode
2113 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2115 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2116 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2117 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2118 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2120 set disable-randomization
2121 show disable-randomization
2122 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2123 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2124 multiple debugging sessions.
2128 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2133 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2134 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2135 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2136 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2138 set target-wide-charset
2139 show target-wide-charset
2140 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2141 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2143 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2145 set tcp connect-timeout
2146 show tcp connect-timeout
2147 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2148 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2149 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2151 set libthread-db-search-path
2152 show libthread-db-search-path
2153 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2156 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2157 show schedule-multiple
2158 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2159 the current process.
2163 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2164 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2165 affecting correctness.
2167 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2168 show interactive-mode
2169 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2170 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2171 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2172 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2173 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2178 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2179 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2180 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2184 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2185 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2186 alias for the `fork' command.
2189 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2190 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2191 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2194 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2195 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2196 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2200 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2201 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2202 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2205 * New native configurations
2207 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2209 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2213 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2214 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2215 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2218 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2219 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2225 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2227 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2229 * New native configurations
2231 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2232 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2236 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2237 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2239 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2241 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2242 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2243 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2244 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2246 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2247 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2249 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2252 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2253 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2254 and in inlined functions.
2256 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2257 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2258 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2260 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2262 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2263 registers on PowerPC targets.
2265 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2266 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2268 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2269 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2271 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2272 extended-remote mode.
2274 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2275 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2276 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2277 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2279 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2280 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2281 target architectures.
2283 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2284 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2285 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2286 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2288 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2291 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2292 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2294 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2295 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2296 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2297 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2299 - Improved command completion in Ada
2302 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2307 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2308 show print frame-arguments
2309 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2310 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2315 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2322 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2324 * New remote packets
2331 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2334 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2338 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2340 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2342 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2343 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2344 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2346 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2347 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2348 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2350 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2351 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2354 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2355 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2357 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2358 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
2360 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2362 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2363 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2364 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2366 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2367 automatically displayed as character or string data.
2369 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2370 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2373 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2374 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
2375 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
2377 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2380 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2381 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2382 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2384 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2386 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2388 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2389 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2390 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2392 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2393 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2395 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2396 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2397 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2398 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2399 Windows and SymbianOS).
2401 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2402 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
2404 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2405 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
2411 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2412 when debugging using remote targets.
2414 set mem inaccessible-by-default
2415 show mem inaccessible-by-default
2416 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2417 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2418 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2419 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2420 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2422 set breakpoint auto-hw
2423 show breakpoint auto-hw
2424 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2425 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2426 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2427 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2428 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2429 including "next" and "finish".
2432 catch exception unhandled
2433 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2436 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2440 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2441 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2442 an alias to "set sysroot".
2445 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2446 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2449 * New native configurations
2451 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2454 unset tdesc filename
2456 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2457 not query the target for its built-in description.
2461 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
2462 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
2463 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
2465 * New remote packets
2468 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2469 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2471 qXfer:features:read:
2472 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2477 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2478 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2480 qXfer:libraries:read:
2481 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2482 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2483 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2484 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2488 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2496 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2497 i[34567]86-*-netware*
2498 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2499 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2501 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2504 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2505 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2514 * Other removed features
2521 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2528 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2533 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2534 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2539 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2540 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2542 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2544 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2545 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2546 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2547 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2549 MIPS ".pdr" sections
2551 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2552 in debugging information.
2556 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2557 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2559 set mips stack-arg-size
2560 set mips saved-gpreg-size
2562 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2564 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
2569 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
2571 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2572 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2573 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2575 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2576 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2579 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2580 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2582 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2583 stub provides the required support.
2585 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2586 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2591 unset substitute-path
2592 show substitute-path
2593 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2594 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2595 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2596 between compilation and debugging.
2600 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2601 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2602 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2606 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2608 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2609 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2611 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2613 * New remote packets
2616 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2617 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2618 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2619 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2623 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2624 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2626 qXfer:memory-map:read:
2627 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2628 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2633 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2635 * Removed remote packets
2638 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2639 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2641 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
2645 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2647 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2651 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2652 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2654 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2656 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2658 restart <n> Return the program state to a
2659 previously saved state.
2661 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2663 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2665 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2666 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2668 info forks List forks of the user program that
2669 are available to be debugged.
2671 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2672 forks of the user program that are
2673 available to be debugged.
2675 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2676 that are available to be debugged (and
2677 kill the forked process).
2679 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2680 that are available to be debugged (and
2681 allow the process to continue).
2685 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2687 * Improved Windows host support
2689 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2690 native console support, and remote communications using either
2691 network sockets or serial ports.
2693 * Improved Modula-2 language support
2695 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2696 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2697 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2698 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2699 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2700 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2704 The ARM rdi-share module.
2706 The Netware NLM debug server.
2708 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2710 * New native configurations
2712 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2713 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2717 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2719 * New command line options
2721 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2722 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2723 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2724 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2725 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2726 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2727 with the --command (-x) option.
2729 * Deprecated commands removed
2731 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2735 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2736 othernames set arm disassembler
2737 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2738 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2739 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2742 * New BSD user-level threads support
2744 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2745 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2748 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2749 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2750 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2752 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2753 are not yet supported.
2755 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2756 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2758 * REMOVED configurations and files
2760 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2761 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2762 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2764 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2766 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2767 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2770 * VAX floating point support
2772 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2774 * User-defined command support
2776 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2777 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2778 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2780 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2782 * New command line option
2784 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2787 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2789 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2790 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2791 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2792 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2793 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2795 * Internationalization
2797 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2798 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2799 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2803 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2804 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2805 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2807 * New native configurations
2809 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2813 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2814 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2816 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2818 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2819 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2820 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2823 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2824 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2825 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2835 powerpc bdm protocol
2837 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2838 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2840 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2842 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2843 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2844 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2845 permanently REMOVED.
2854 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2856 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2858 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2859 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2862 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2864 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2865 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2866 IRIX long double values).
2870 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2871 command. This problem has been fixed.
2873 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2875 * Fix for ``many threads''
2877 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2878 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2881 ptrace: No such process.
2882 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2884 This problem has been fixed.
2886 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2888 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2891 * New ``start'' command.
2893 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2895 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2897 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2898 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2899 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2901 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2902 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2903 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2904 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2905 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2906 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2907 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2908 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2909 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2911 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2913 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2914 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2915 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2916 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2917 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2919 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2920 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2921 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2923 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2925 * New native configurations
2927 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2928 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2929 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2930 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2931 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2932 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2933 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2935 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2937 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2938 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2939 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2940 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2941 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2942 work, was also included.
2944 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2945 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2955 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2956 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2958 * REMOVED configurations and files
2960 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2961 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2962 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2963 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2964 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2965 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2966 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2967 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2968 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2969 sonymips mips-sony-*
2970 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2972 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2974 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2976 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2977 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2978 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2979 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2982 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2984 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2985 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2986 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2987 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2988 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2989 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2992 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2994 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
2996 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2997 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2998 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3000 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3002 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3003 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3005 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3007 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3008 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3009 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3011 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3013 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3014 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3016 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3018 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3019 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3020 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3022 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3024 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3025 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3026 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3028 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3030 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3032 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3033 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3035 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3037 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3038 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3039 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3040 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3042 * Revised SPARC target
3044 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3045 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3046 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3047 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3048 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3052 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3053 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3054 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3057 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3059 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3060 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3063 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3065 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3066 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3067 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3068 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3069 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3070 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3071 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3072 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3073 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3075 * New native configurations
3077 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3078 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3079 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3080 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3081 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3083 * New debugging protocols
3085 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3087 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3089 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3090 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3091 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3093 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3095 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3096 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3097 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3098 permanently REMOVED.
3100 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3101 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3102 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3103 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3104 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3105 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3106 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3107 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3108 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3109 sonymips mips-sony-*
3110 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3112 * REMOVED configurations and files
3114 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3115 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3116 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3117 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3118 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3119 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3120 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3121 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3122 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3123 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3124 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3125 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3126 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3127 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3128 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3129 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3130 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3132 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3136 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3137 integrated into GDB.
3139 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3141 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3142 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3143 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3146 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3147 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3148 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3152 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3153 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3154 remote protocol documentation for details.
3156 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3158 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3159 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3160 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3163 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3165 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3166 per-thread variables.
3168 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3170 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3171 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3173 * Separate debug info.
3175 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3176 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3177 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3178 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3179 and optional debug files.
3181 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3183 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3184 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3187 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3188 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3192 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3193 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3194 considered "useable".
3196 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3198 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3199 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3202 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3204 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3205 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3207 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3209 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3210 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3213 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3215 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3216 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3220 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3221 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3222 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3223 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3224 data, for more informative profiling results.
3226 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3228 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3229 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3230 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3232 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3235 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3236 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3237 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3238 in a subsequent -var-update.
3240 * New native configurations.
3242 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3244 * Multi-arched targets.
3246 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3247 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3249 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3251 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3252 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3253 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3254 permanently REMOVED.
3256 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3257 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3258 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3259 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3260 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3261 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3262 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3263 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3264 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3265 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3266 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3267 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3269 * REMOVED configurations and files
3272 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3273 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3274 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3275 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3276 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3277 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3279 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3280 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3281 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3282 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3283 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3284 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3286 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3288 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3289 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3290 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3291 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3292 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3294 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3296 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3298 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3299 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3300 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3301 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3302 shared libs like mad''.
3304 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3306 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3307 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3308 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3309 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3311 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3313 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3314 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3317 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3318 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3320 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3321 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3323 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3324 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3325 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3326 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3328 * Multi-arched targets.
3330 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3331 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3333 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3334 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3335 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3339 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3342 * New native configurations
3344 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3345 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3346 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3347 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3349 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3351 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3352 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3353 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3354 permanently REMOVED.
3356 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3357 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3358 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3359 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3360 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3361 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3362 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3363 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3364 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3365 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3367 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3368 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3370 * OBSOLETE languages
3372 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3374 * REMOVED configurations and files
3376 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3377 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3378 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3379 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3380 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3382 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3384 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3386 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3387 commands. The default is 1024.
3389 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3391 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3393 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3395 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3396 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3397 from a file into memory (restore).
3399 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3401 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3402 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3403 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3405 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3413 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3414 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3415 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3417 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3418 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3419 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3421 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3422 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3423 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3425 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3426 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3427 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3429 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
3431 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3433 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3434 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3435 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3436 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3437 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3438 (notably embedded) targets.
3440 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3442 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3443 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3444 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3445 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
3447 * New command line option
3449 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3451 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3453 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3454 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3455 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3456 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3457 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3458 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3459 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3460 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3461 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3462 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3464 * Changes in ARM configurations.
3466 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3467 configuration is fully multi-arch.
3469 * New native configurations
3471 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
3472 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
3473 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
3474 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
3478 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3480 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3482 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3483 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3484 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3485 permanently REMOVED.
3487 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3488 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3489 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3490 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3491 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3493 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3495 * REMOVED configurations and files
3497 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3499 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3500 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3501 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3502 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3503 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3504 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3505 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3506 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3507 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3508 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3509 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
3511 * Changes to command line processing
3513 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3514 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3516 * Changes to key bindings
3518 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3520 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3522 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3524 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3527 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3529 Numerous documentation fixes.
3531 Numerous testsuite fixes.
3533 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
3535 * New native configurations
3537 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3538 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
3539 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
3540 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3541 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
3542 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
3546 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
3548 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
3550 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3552 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
3553 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3554 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3555 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3556 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3558 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3559 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3560 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3561 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3562 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3563 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3564 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3565 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
3567 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3568 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3570 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3571 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3572 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3573 permanently REMOVED.
3575 * REMOVED configurations and files
3577 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3578 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3580 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3584 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
3586 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
3587 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3592 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3594 * The MI enabled by default.
3596 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3597 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3598 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3599 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3600 which is now deprecated.
3602 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3604 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3605 main features are supported:
3607 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3609 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3612 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3614 - a Pascal expression parser.
3616 However, some important features are not yet supported.
3618 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3620 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3622 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3623 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3625 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3627 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3629 * Changes in completion.
3631 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3632 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3633 users expect at the shell prompt.
3635 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3636 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3637 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3638 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3639 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3640 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3641 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3643 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3645 * New platform-independent commands:
3647 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3648 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3649 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3651 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3653 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3654 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3655 many threads as your system allows you to have.
3657 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3659 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3660 multi-threaded programs though.
3662 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
3664 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3666 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3667 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3670 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3672 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3673 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3674 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3675 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3676 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3679 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3680 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3681 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3683 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3685 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3686 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3688 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3689 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3692 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3693 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3694 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3695 a given linear address.
3697 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3698 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3699 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3701 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3703 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3705 * Changes in documentation.
3707 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3708 Documentation License.
3710 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3713 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3715 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3718 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3719 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3720 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3722 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3724 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3725 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3726 contents of this file.
3730 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3732 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3734 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3736 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3737 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3738 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3739 greater level of detail.
3741 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3743 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3744 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3745 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3748 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3750 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3751 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3752 machines ``out of the box''.
3754 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3755 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3756 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3757 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3758 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3760 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3761 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3762 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3763 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3764 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3766 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3767 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3770 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3773 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3774 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3775 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3776 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3778 * New native configurations
3780 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3781 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3785 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3786 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3787 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3788 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3790 * OBSOLETE configurations
3792 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3793 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3795 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3798 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3799 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3800 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3801 be permanently REMOVED.
3803 * Gould support removed
3805 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3807 * New features for SVR4
3809 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3810 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3811 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3813 * Many C++ enhancements
3815 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3816 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3818 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3820 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3821 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3822 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3823 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3825 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3826 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3828 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3830 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3831 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3832 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3834 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3835 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3837 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3839 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3840 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3841 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3843 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3845 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3846 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3847 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3849 * ``apropos'' command added.
3851 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3852 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3853 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3857 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3858 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3859 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3860 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3861 enabled by configuring with:
3863 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3865 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3867 * New native configurations
3869 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3870 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3871 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3875 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3876 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3877 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3879 * OBSOLETE configurations
3881 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3883 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3884 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3885 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3886 be permanently REMOVED.
3890 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3891 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3892 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3893 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3894 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3895 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3896 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3901 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3903 * set extension-language
3905 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3906 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3907 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3908 set extension-language .c c++
3909 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3910 and their associated languages.
3912 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3914 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3915 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3916 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3920 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3921 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3923 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3924 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3926 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3927 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3928 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3929 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3930 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3931 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3932 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3933 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3935 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3936 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3937 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3938 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3942 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3943 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3944 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3945 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3946 for xdb and dbx commands.
3950 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3951 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3952 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3954 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3955 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3956 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3958 * Debugging across forks
3960 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3965 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3966 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3967 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3969 * GDB remote protocol additions
3971 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3972 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3973 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3974 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3976 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3977 full 64-bit address. The command
3979 set remoteaddresssize 32
3981 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3982 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3985 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3986 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3988 maint packet heythere
3990 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3991 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3994 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3995 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3996 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3998 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4000 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4001 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4002 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4004 * mask-address variable for Mips
4006 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4007 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4008 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4010 * Higher serial baud rates
4012 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4013 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4014 to achieve all of these rates.)
4018 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4019 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4022 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4024 * New native configurations
4026 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4027 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4028 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4029 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4030 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4031 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4032 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4036 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4037 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4038 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4039 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4040 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4041 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4042 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4043 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4044 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4045 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4046 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4048 * New debugging protocols
4050 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4051 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4052 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4053 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4054 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4055 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4059 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4060 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4065 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4066 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4068 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4070 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4071 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4072 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4074 * Live range splitting
4076 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4077 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4078 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4082 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4083 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4087 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4088 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4089 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4094 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4099 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4100 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4101 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4102 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4103 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4104 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4108 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4109 the symbol at the specified address.
4113 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4114 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4115 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4116 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4117 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4121 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4122 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4123 of most MIPS variants.
4127 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4128 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4129 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4133 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4134 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4135 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4136 the possible architectures.
4138 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4140 * New native configurations
4142 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4143 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4144 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4145 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4146 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4147 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4151 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4152 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4153 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4154 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4155 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4157 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4161 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4162 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4163 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4164 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4165 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4169 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4171 * Windows 95/NT native
4173 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4174 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4175 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4176 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4177 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4179 * dont-repeat command
4181 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4182 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4183 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4184 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4186 * Send break instead of ^C
4188 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4189 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4190 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4192 * Remote protocol timeout
4194 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4195 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4196 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4198 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4200 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4201 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4202 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4203 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4204 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4206 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4207 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4208 automatically on hpux10.
4210 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4212 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4214 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4216 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4217 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4218 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4219 every character. The default value is 1050.
4221 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4223 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4224 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4225 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4226 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4227 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4228 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4230 * Speedups for remote debugging
4232 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4233 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4234 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4236 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4238 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4239 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4241 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4243 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4245 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4246 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4248 * Remote targets use caching
4250 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4251 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4252 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4253 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4254 off' turns the the data cache off.
4256 * Remote targets may have threads
4258 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4259 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4260 gdb/remote.c for details.
4264 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4265 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4266 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4267 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4268 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4269 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4270 sequence is something like
4272 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4274 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4278 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4279 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4280 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4281 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4282 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4283 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4284 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4285 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4289 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4290 but does simplify configuration and building.
4294 GDB now supports hpux10.
4296 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4298 * New native configurations
4300 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4301 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4302 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4303 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4307 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4308 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4309 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4310 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4313 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4315 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4316 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4317 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4318 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4319 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4321 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4323 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4324 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4327 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4329 To execute the command use:
4332 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4333 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4334 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4336 * New `if' and `while' commands
4338 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4339 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4340 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4341 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4342 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4343 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4344 if the expression is zero.
4346 * Fortran source language mode
4348 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4349 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4350 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4351 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4354 * Better HPUX support
4356 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4357 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4358 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4359 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4360 that behavior do the following before running the program:
4366 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4367 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4373 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4374 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4377 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4378 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4380 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4382 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4383 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4384 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4385 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4386 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4387 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4389 * New DOS host serial code
4391 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4392 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4395 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4397 * New "complete" command
4399 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4400 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4402 * Trailing space optional in prompt
4404 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4405 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4407 * Breakpoint hit counts
4409 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4410 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4411 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4412 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4413 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4416 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4418 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4419 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4420 arrays actually contain only short strings.
4422 * Shared library breakpoints
4424 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4425 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4427 * Hardware watchpoints
4429 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4430 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4432 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
4436 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4437 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4439 * Improved Irix 5 support
4441 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4443 * Improved HPPA support
4445 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4447 * New native configurations
4449 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4450 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4451 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4452 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4456 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4457 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4460 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4462 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4463 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4467 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4468 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4470 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4472 * Irix 5 is now supported
4476 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4477 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4478 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4479 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4480 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4483 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4485 * User visible changes:
4489 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4490 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4491 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4492 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4493 debugging info for the mips target).
4495 * DEC Alpha native support
4497 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4498 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4499 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4500 Alpha-specific notes.
4502 * Preliminary thread implementation
4504 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4506 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
4508 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4509 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4512 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4514 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4515 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4516 call methods, ...etc.
4518 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4520 * User visible changes:
4522 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4523 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4524 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4525 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4527 Filename completion now works.
4529 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4530 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4531 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4533 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4534 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4535 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4536 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4537 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4541 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4542 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4545 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4549 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4550 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4551 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4555 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4556 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4557 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4558 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4559 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4563 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4564 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4565 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4567 * New targets supported
4569 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4570 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4571 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4572 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4573 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4575 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4576 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4577 GO32 memory extender.
4579 * New remote protocols
4581 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4583 * New source languages supported
4585 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4586 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4587 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4590 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4592 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4594 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4595 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4596 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4597 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4598 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4599 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4601 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4603 * Faster and better demangling
4605 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4606 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4607 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4608 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4609 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4610 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4613 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4614 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4615 compiler does not actually implement.
4617 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4619 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4620 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4621 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4622 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4623 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4624 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4627 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4628 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4630 * Improved configure script
4632 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4633 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4634 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4635 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4637 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4638 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4639 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4640 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4641 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4642 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4644 * Documentation improvements
4646 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4647 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4648 before submitting changes.
4650 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4651 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4652 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4653 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4654 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4656 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4657 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4658 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4659 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4660 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4661 around this problem.
4665 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4666 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4667 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4670 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4671 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4673 * New native hosts supported
4675 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4676 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4678 * New targets supported
4680 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4682 * New file formats supported
4684 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4685 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4689 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4691 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4692 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4694 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4695 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4696 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4698 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4699 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4701 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4702 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4703 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4706 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4707 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4708 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4709 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4710 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4712 * Internal improvements
4714 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4715 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4717 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4718 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4719 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4720 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4721 shared code that handles any of them.
4723 * New command line options
4725 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4729 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4730 General Public License.
4732 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4734 * Host/native/target split
4736 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4737 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4738 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4739 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4740 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4742 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4743 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4744 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4745 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4746 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4747 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4748 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4750 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4751 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4752 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4754 * New hosts supported
4756 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4757 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4758 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4760 * New targets supported
4762 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4763 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4765 * New native hosts supported
4767 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4768 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4769 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4771 * New file formats supported
4773 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4774 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4775 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4779 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4780 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4781 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4783 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4785 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4786 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4787 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4788 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4792 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4793 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4794 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4796 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4800 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4801 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4804 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4805 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4807 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4808 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4809 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4810 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4811 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4812 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4814 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4815 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4816 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4817 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4821 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4822 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4823 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4824 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4825 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4827 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4828 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4829 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4830 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4834 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4835 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4836 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4837 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4838 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4839 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4840 each instruction being stepped through.
4842 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4843 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4845 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4846 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4847 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4848 processor with a serial port.
4852 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4853 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4854 supported, and what files each one uses.
4858 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4859 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4860 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4861 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4863 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4864 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4865 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4866 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4870 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4871 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4872 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4873 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4874 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4875 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4877 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4880 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4882 * Better support for C++ function names
4884 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4885 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4886 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4887 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4888 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4890 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4891 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4892 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4893 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4894 for the list of formats.
4896 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4898 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4899 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4900 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4901 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4902 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4903 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4906 * New 'maintenance' command
4908 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4909 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4910 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4912 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4913 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4914 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4915 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4916 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4917 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4919 The following commands are new:
4921 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4922 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4923 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4925 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4927 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4928 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4929 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4930 read after argv processing.
4932 * New hosts supported
4934 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4936 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4938 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4939 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4940 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4941 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4942 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4945 * New targets supported
4947 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4949 * More smarts about finding #include files
4951 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4952 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4953 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4954 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4955 the one that contains your sources.
4957 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4958 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4959 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4961 * Interesting infernals change
4963 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4964 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4965 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4966 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4968 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4970 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4971 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4972 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4974 See the ChangeLog for details.
4976 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4978 * New machines supported (host and target)
4980 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4982 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4984 * New malloc package
4986 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4987 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4988 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4989 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4990 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4991 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4995 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4996 'help info proc' for details.
4998 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5000 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5001 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5004 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5006 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5007 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5008 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5009 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5010 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5011 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5013 * Cross byte order fixes
5015 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5016 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5018 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5020 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5021 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5022 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5023 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5024 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5025 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5026 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5027 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5028 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5029 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5031 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5032 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5033 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5034 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5036 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5037 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5038 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5041 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5043 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5044 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5045 shared across multiple host platforms.
5047 * longjmp() handling
5049 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5050 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5051 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5052 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5056 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5057 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5062 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5063 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5064 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5066 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5068 * New machines supported (host and target)
5070 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5072 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5073 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5075 * New machines supported (target)
5077 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5081 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5082 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5083 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5085 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5086 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5087 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5088 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5089 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5092 * New features for SVR4
5094 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5095 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5096 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5098 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5099 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5100 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5102 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5103 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5105 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5107 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5108 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5109 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5110 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5111 same code linked statically.
5115 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5116 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5117 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5118 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5119 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5120 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5124 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5125 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5126 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5129 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5131 * New machines supported (host and target)
5133 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5134 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5135 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5137 * Almost SCO Unix support
5139 We had hoped to support:
5140 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5141 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5142 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5143 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5145 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5147 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5148 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5149 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5150 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5155 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5156 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5157 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5161 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5162 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5163 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5165 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5167 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5168 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5169 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5171 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5172 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5173 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5174 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5177 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5178 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5179 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5180 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5183 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5184 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5187 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5188 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5189 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5192 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5194 * Improved configuration
5196 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5197 Porting BFD is simpler.
5201 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5202 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5203 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5204 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5208 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5210 * New host supported (not target)
5212 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5215 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5217 * Multiple source language support
5219 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5220 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5221 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5222 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5223 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5224 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5228 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5229 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5230 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5231 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5233 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5234 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5235 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5237 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5238 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5242 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5243 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5244 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5245 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5248 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5250 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5251 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5252 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5253 examining core files.
5257 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5260 * New machines supported (host and target)
5262 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5263 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5264 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5266 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5268 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5270 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5272 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5273 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5274 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5276 * New remote interfaces
5282 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5286 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5288 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5289 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5290 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5291 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5292 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5293 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5294 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5295 stub on the target system.
5297 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5299 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5300 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5301 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5303 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5304 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5307 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5309 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5310 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5312 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5313 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5314 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5316 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5317 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5318 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5319 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5321 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5322 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5323 it is already running. Default is ON.
5325 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5326 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5327 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5328 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5331 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5332 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5333 or the value of the environment variable
5336 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5337 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5340 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5341 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5342 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5344 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5345 history expansion will be performed on
5346 command line input. The default is OFF.
5348 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5349 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5350 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5352 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5353 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5354 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5357 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5358 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5359 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5362 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5363 ``set width'' instead.
5365 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5366 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5367 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5368 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5370 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5373 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5376 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5379 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5382 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5384 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5385 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5386 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5390 * Support for Shared Libraries
5392 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5393 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5394 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5395 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5396 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5397 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5398 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5399 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5401 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5402 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5403 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5405 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5410 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5411 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5412 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5413 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5414 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5415 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5417 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5419 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5421 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5422 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5423 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5426 * C++ multiple inheritance
5428 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5431 * C++ exception handling
5433 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5434 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5435 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5438 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5439 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5440 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5442 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5443 current stack frame.
5446 * Minor command changes
5448 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5449 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5450 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5452 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5453 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5454 frames without printing.
5456 * New directory command
5458 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5459 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5460 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5461 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5462 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5464 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5466 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5469 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5470 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5471 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5472 where the program that you are debugging will run.