Documentation for the remove-symbol-file command.
[binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.6
5
6 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
7 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
8
9 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
10 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
11 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
12 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
13 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
14 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
15 "void".
16
17 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
18
19 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
20
21 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
22 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
23 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
24 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
25
26 (gdb) p $rax
27 $1 = <not saved>
28
29 (gdb) info registers rax
30 rax <not saved>
31
32 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
33 "*value not available*".
34
35 * Python scripting
36
37 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
38
39 * New targets
40
41 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
42 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
43 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
44
45 * Removed native configurations
46
47 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
48 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
49
50 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
51 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
52 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
53 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
54 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
55 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
56 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
57
58 * New commands:
59 catch rethrow
60 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
61 maint check-psymtabs
62 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
63 maint check-symtabs
64 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
65 maint expand-symtabs
66 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
67
68 show configuration
69 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
70
71 maint set|show per-command
72 maint set|show per-command space
73 maint set|show per-command time
74 maint set|show per-command symtab
75 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
76
77 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
78 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
79 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
80 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
81 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
82
83 * New options
84
85 set debug symfile off|on
86 show debug symfile
87 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
88 symbol tables within those files
89
90 set print raw frame-arguments
91 show print raw frame-arguments
92 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
93 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
94
95 set remote trace-status-packet
96 show remote trace-status-packet
97 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
98
99 set debug nios2
100 show debug nios2
101 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
102
103 set range-stepping
104 show range-stepping
105 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
106
107 set startup-with-shell
108 show startup-with-shell
109 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
110 directly.
111
112 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
113 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
114 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
115 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
116 "set height 0".
117
118 * New command-line options
119 --configuration
120 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
121
122 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
123 buffer in Common Trace Format.
124
125 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
126 GDB command gcore.
127
128 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
129
130 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
131 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
132
133 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
134 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
135
136 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
137 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
138 due to an uncaught signal.
139
140 * MI changes
141
142 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
143 Trace Format now.
144
145 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
146
147 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
148 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
149 are displayed.
150
151 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
152 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
153
154 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
155 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
156 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
157
158 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
159 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
160 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
161 main subprogram.
162
163 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
164 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
165
166 * New system-wide configuration scripts
167 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
168 configuration scripts for the following systems:
169 ** ElinOS
170 ** Wind River Linux
171
172 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
173 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
174 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
175 below.
176
177 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
178 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
179
180 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
181 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
182 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
183
184 * New remote packets
185
186 vCont;r
187
188 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
189 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
190 involvemement at each single-step.
191
192 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
193 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
194 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
195 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
196 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
197 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
198 speedup.
199
200 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
201
202 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
203 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
204
205 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
206 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
207 trace state variables.
208
209 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
210 target.
211
212 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
213 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
214
215 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
216
217 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
218 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
219 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
220 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
221
222 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
223
224 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
225 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
226 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
227 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
228
229 set|show record full insn-number-max
230 set|show record full stop-at-limit
231 set|show record full memory-query
232
233 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
234 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
235 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
236 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
237 This new recording method can be enabled using:
238
239 record btrace
240
241 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
242 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
243
244 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
245 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
246 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
247
248 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
249 instruction granularity
250
251 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
252 function granularity
253
254 * New native configurations
255
256 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
257 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
258 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
259 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
260
261 * New targets
262
263 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
264 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
265 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
266 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
267 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
268
269 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
270 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
271 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
272 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
273 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
274 --data-directory command-line option.
275
276 * New command line options:
277
278 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
279 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
280
281 * Removed command line options
282
283 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
284 Emacs.
285
286 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
287 type formatting.
288
289 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
290
291 * Python scripting
292
293 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
294
295 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
296
297 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
298
299 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
300
301 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
302 of architecture in the Python API.
303
304 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
305 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
306
307 * New Python-based convenience functions:
308
309 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
310 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
311 ** $_strlen(str)
312 ** $_regex(str, regex)
313
314 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
315 given an argument.
316
317 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
318 default for GCC since November 2000.
319
320 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
321
322 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
323 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
324
325 * New configure options
326
327 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
328 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
329 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
330 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
331 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
332 options allow the user to override that default.
333 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
334 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
335 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
336
337 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
338
339 catch signal
340 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
341 conditions to be attached.
342
343 maint info bfds
344 List the BFDs known to GDB.
345
346 python-interactive [command]
347 pi [command]
348 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
349 and print the result of expressions.
350
351 py [command]
352 "py" is a new alias for "python".
353
354 enable type-printer [name]...
355 disable type-printer [name]...
356 Enable or disable type printers.
357
358 * Removed commands
359
360 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
361 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
362 instead.
363
364 * New options
365
366 set print type methods (on|off)
367 show print type methods
368 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
369 The default is to show them.
370
371 set print type typedefs (on|off)
372 show print type typedefs
373 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
374 The default is to show them.
375
376 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
377 show filename-display
378 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
379 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
380
381 set trace-buffer-size
382 show trace-buffer-size
383 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
384
385 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
386 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
387 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
388
389 set debug aarch64
390 show debug aarch64
391 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
392 The default is off.
393
394 set debug coff-pe-read
395 show debug coff-pe-read
396 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
397 exported symbols.
398
399 set debug mach-o
400 show debug mach-o
401 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
402 processing.
403
404 set debug notification
405 show debug notification
406 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
407
408 * MI changes
409
410 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
411 "=cmd-param-changed".
412 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
413 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
414 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
415 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
416 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
417 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
418 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
419 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
420 "=memory-changed".
421 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
422 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
423 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
424 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
425 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
426 library load/unload events.
427 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
428 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
429 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
430 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
431 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
432 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
433 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
434 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
435
436 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
437 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
438 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
439 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
440
441 * New remote packets
442
443 QTBuffer:size
444 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
445 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
446
447 Qbtrace:bts
448 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
449 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
450 qSupported query.
451
452 Qbtrace:off
453 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
454 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
455
456 qXfer:btrace:read
457 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
458 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
459
460 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
461
462 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
463 for more x32 ABI info.
464
465 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
466
467 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
468
469 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
470 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
471 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
472 "info os files" lists file descriptors
473 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
474 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
475 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
476 "info os msg" lists message queues
477 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
478
479 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
480 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
481 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
482 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
483 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
484 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
485
486 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
487 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
488 record/replay support.
489
490 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
491
492 * Python scripting
493
494 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
495 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
496
497 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
498
499 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
500 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
501
502 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
503
504 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
505 the source at which the symbol was defined.
506
507 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
508 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
509 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
510 symbol's value.
511
512 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
513 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
514
515 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
516 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
517 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
518
519 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
520 object associated with a PC value.
521
522 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
523 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
524
525 * Go language support.
526 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
527 language.
528
529 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
530 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
531
532 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
533 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
534
535 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
536 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
537 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
538 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
539 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
540 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
541
542 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
543 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
544 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
545 build/libcpp/expr.c.
546
547 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
548 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
549
550 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
551 since December 2007.
552
553 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
554 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
555 command does. For instance:
556
557 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
558
559 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
560 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
561 created, using the "condition" command.
562
563 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
564 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
565
566 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
567
568 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
569 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
570 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
571 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
572 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
573 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
574 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
575 files with older .gdb_index sections.
576
577 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
578 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
579 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
580 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
581 the .gdb_index section.
582
583 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
584
585 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
586 target.
587
588 * MI changes
589
590 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
591
592 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
593
594 * New commands
595
596 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
597 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
598 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
599
600 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
601 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
602
603 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
604 several hits.
605
606 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
607 C++ and Java objects.
608
609 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
610 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
611 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
612 configured with '--with-python'.
613
614 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
615 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
616 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
617 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
618 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
619 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
620 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
621
622 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
623 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
624 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
625 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
626
627 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
628 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
629 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
630 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
631
632 ** "set print symbol"
633 "show print symbol"
634 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
635 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
636 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
637
638 * Deprecated commands
639
640 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
641 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
642
643 * New targets
644
645 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
646 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
647
648 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
649 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
650 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
651 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
652 evaluates to true.
653
654 * New options
655
656 set mips compression
657 show mips compression
658 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
659 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
660 mips16
661 micromips
662 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
663
664 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
665 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
666 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
667 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
668 available mode.
669 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
670 target.
671
672 set auto-load off
673 Disable auto-loading globally.
674
675 show auto-load
676 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
677
678 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
679 show auto-load gdb-scripts
680 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
681
682 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
683 show auto-load python-scripts
684 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
685
686 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
687 show auto-load local-gdbinit
688 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
689
690 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
691 show auto-load libthread-db
692 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
693
694 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
695 show auto-load scripts-directory
696 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
697 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
698 of the directories listed by this option.
699 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
700
701 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
702 show auto-load safe-path
703 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
704 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
705
706 set debug auto-load on|off
707 show debug auto-load
708 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
709
710 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
711 show dprintf-style
712 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
713 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
714 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
715 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
716
717 set dprintf-function <expr>
718 show dprintf-function
719 set dprintf-channel <expr>
720 show dprintf-channel
721 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
722 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
723
724 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
725 show disconnected-dprintf
726 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
727 after GDB disconnects.
728
729 * New configure options
730
731 --with-auto-load-dir
732 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
733 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
734 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
735 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
736 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
737
738 --with-auto-load-safe-path
739 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
740 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
741
742 --without-auto-load-safe-path
743 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
744 security feature.
745
746 * New remote packets
747
748 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
749
750 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
751 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
752 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
753 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
754
755 QProgramSignals:
756
757 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
758 program without GDB involvement.
759
760 * New command line options
761
762 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
763 before loading inferior.
764 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
765 execute it before loading inferior.
766
767 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
768
769 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
770 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
771 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
772 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
773 inferior changes.
774
775 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
776 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
777
778 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
779 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
780 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
781 target hardware watchpoint.
782
783 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
784 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
785 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
786 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
787
788 * Python scripting
789
790 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
791 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
792 existing one.
793
794 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
795 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
796 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
797 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
798 now "message", which just prints the error message without
799 the stack trace.
800
801 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
802 Python API.
803
804 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
805 modules library. This module provides functionality for
806 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
807 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
808 corresponding value.
809
810 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
811 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
812 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
813 on GDB start-up.
814
815 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
816 static_block will return the global and static blocks
817 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
818 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
819
820 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
821
822 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
823 "gdb.breakpoints".
824
825 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
826 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
827 available in the CLI.
828
829 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
830 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
831 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
832 "some_type.items()".
833
834 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
835 new object file.
836
837 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
838 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
839 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
840 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
841 any anonymous fields.
842
843 * MI changes
844
845 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
846 "solib-event".
847
848 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
849 "=breakpoint-modified".
850
851 ** New command -ada-task-info.
852
853 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
854 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
855 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
856 lives.
857
858 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
859 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
860 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
861 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
862 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
863
864 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
865 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
866
867 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
868 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
869 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
870 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
871 use this option to specify where to find it.
872
873 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
874 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
875 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
876 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
877 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
878 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
879 section in the user manual for more details.
880
881 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
882 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
883 become available after that.
884
885 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
886
887 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
888 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
889 gcc version 4.7.
890
891 * New commands
892
893 !SHELL COMMAND
894 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
895 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
896
897 * Changed commands
898
899 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
900 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
901 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
902
903 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
904 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
905 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
906
907 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
908 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
909 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
910 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
911 name starts with a hyphen.
912
913 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
914 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
915 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
916 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
917 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
918 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
919 number of bytes that will be collected.
920
921 tstart [NOTES]
922 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
923 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
924 setting the variable trace-notes.
925
926 tstop [NOTES]
927 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
928 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
929 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
930 trace-stop-notes.
931
932 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
933 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
934 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
935 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
936 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
937 is running.
938
939 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
940 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
941 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
942
943 * New options
944
945 set debug dwarf2-read
946 show debug dwarf2-read
947 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
948 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
949
950 set debug symtab-create
951 show debug symtab-create
952 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
953 creation. The default is off.
954
955 set extended-prompt
956 show extended-prompt
957 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
958 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
959 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
960 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
961 prompt is displayed.
962
963 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
964 show print entry-values
965 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
966 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
967 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
968
969 set debug entry-values
970 show debug entry-values
971 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
972 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
973
974 set basenames-may-differ
975 show basenames-may-differ
976 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
977 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
978 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
979 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
980 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
981 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
982 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
983 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
984
985 set trace-user
986 show trace-user
987 set trace-notes
988 show trace-notes
989 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
990 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
991 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
992 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
993
994 set trace-stop-notes
995 show trace-stop-notes
996 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
997 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
998 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
999 started by someone else.
1000
1001 * New remote packets
1002
1003 QTEnable
1004
1005 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1006
1007 QTDisable
1008
1009 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1010
1011 QTNotes
1012
1013 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1014
1015 qTP
1016
1017 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1018
1019 qTMinFTPILen
1020
1021 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1022 be placed.
1023
1024 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1025 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1026
1027 * New targets
1028
1029 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1030
1031 * New Simulators
1032
1033 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1034
1035 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1036
1037 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1038
1039 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1040
1041 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1042 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1043 matches the given regular expression.
1044
1045 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1046
1047 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1048 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1049
1050 * New command line options
1051
1052 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1053 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1054
1055 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1056 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1057
1058 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1059 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1060 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1061
1062 * GDB now understands thread names.
1063
1064 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1065 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1066
1067 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1068 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1069
1070 * OpenCL C
1071 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1072 has been integrated into GDB.
1073
1074 * Python scripting
1075
1076 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1077 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1078 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1079
1080 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1081 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1082 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1083 and allows for more dynamic content.
1084
1085 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1086 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1087 have an is_valid method.
1088
1089 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1090 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1091 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1092
1093 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1094
1095 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1096 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1097 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1098 that function like so:
1099
1100 result = some_value (10,20)
1101
1102 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1103 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1104 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1105
1106 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1107 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1108 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1109 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1110 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1111
1112 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1113 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1114
1115 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1116
1117 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1118 selected thread.
1119
1120 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1121 holds the thread's name.
1122
1123 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1124 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1125 occurring in the process being debugged.
1126 The following events are currently supported:
1127 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1128 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1129 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1130
1131 * C++ Improvements:
1132
1133 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1134 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1135
1136 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1137
1138 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1139 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1140 was added to GCC 4.5.
1141
1142 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1143 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1144 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1145 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1146 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1147 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1148
1149 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1150 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1151 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1152 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1153 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1154
1155 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1156 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1157 execution to a label.
1158
1159 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1160 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1161 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1162 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1163
1164 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1165 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1166 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1167 of scope.
1168
1169 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1170
1171 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1172 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1173 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1174 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1175 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1176 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1177
1178 (gdb) info threads
1179 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1180
1181 While now you see this:
1182
1183 (gdb) info threads
1184 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1185
1186 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1187 dumps.
1188
1189 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1190 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1191 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1192 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1193
1194 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1195 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1196 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1197 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1198 section in the user manual for more details.
1199
1200 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1201
1202 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1203 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1204
1205 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1206
1207 * New native configurations
1208
1209 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1210
1211 * New targets:
1212
1213 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1214
1215 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1216 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1217 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1218 in the GDB user manual.
1219
1220 * Guile support was removed.
1221
1222 * New features in the GNU simulator
1223
1224 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1225
1226 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1227
1228 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1229
1230 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1231
1232 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1233 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1234 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1235 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1236 was always disabled for such configurations.
1237
1238 * C++ Improvements:
1239
1240 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1241
1242 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1243 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1244 For example:
1245 namespace A
1246 {
1247 class B { };
1248 void foo (B) { }
1249 }
1250 ...
1251 A::B b
1252 foo(b)
1253 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1254 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1255 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1256
1257 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1258
1259 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1260 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1261 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1262 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1263 entry.
1264 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1265 mentioned flavors of operators.
1266
1267 ** static const class members
1268
1269 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1270 class definition has been fixed.
1271
1272 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1273
1274 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1275 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1276 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1277 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1278 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1279 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1280
1281 * Static tracepoints
1282
1283 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1284 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1285 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1286 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1287 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1288 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1289 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1290 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1291 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1292 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1293 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1294 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1295 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1296 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1297 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1298 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1299 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1300 the "New remote packets" section below.
1301
1302 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1303
1304 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1305 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1306 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1307 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1308
1309 * Observer mode
1310
1311 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1312 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1313 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1314 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1315 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1316 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1317 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1318
1319 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1320 current thread.
1321
1322 * New remote packets
1323
1324 qGetTIBAddr
1325
1326 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1327
1328 qRelocInsn
1329
1330 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1331 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1332 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1333 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1334 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1335 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1336
1337 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1338
1339 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1340
1341 qTSTMat
1342
1343 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1344 program.
1345
1346 qXfer:statictrace:read
1347
1348 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1349 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1350 to gdb's qSupported query.
1351
1352 QAllow
1353
1354 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1355
1356 QTDPsrc
1357
1358 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1359 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1360
1361 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1362 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1363 a directory.
1364
1365 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1366
1367 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1368 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1369 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1370 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1371
1372 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1373 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1374 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1375 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1376 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1377 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1378 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1379
1380 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1381 for static tracepoints support.
1382
1383 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1384
1385 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1386 it understands register description.
1387
1388 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1389
1390 * X86 general purpose registers
1391
1392 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1393 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1394 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1395 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1396 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1397
1398 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1399 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1400 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1401 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1402 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1403 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1404
1405 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1406 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1407 in the specified file.
1408
1409 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1410 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1411 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1412 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1413 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1414 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1415 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1416 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1417 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1418 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1419
1420 * New commands
1421
1422 eval template, expressions...
1423 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1424 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1425
1426 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1427 show target-file-system-kind
1428 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1429 names.
1430
1431 save breakpoints <filename>
1432 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1433 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1434 definitions, use the `source' command.
1435
1436 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1437 is now deprecated.
1438
1439 info static-tracepoint-markers
1440 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1441
1442 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1443 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1444 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1445
1446 set observer on|off
1447 show observer
1448 Enable and disable observer mode.
1449
1450 set may-write-registers on|off
1451 set may-write-memory on|off
1452 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1453 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1454 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1455 set may-interrupt on|off
1456 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1457 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1458 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1459 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1460 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1461 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1462 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1463
1464 set record memory-query on|off
1465 show record memory-query
1466 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1467 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1468
1469 * Changed commands
1470
1471 disassemble
1472 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1473
1474 * Python scripting
1475
1476 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1477 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1478 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1479 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1480 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1481
1482 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
1483 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1484 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1485 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
1486
1487 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
1488 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1489
1490 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
1491
1492 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
1493
1494 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1495
1496 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1497 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1498 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1499
1500 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1501 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1502 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1503 regular breakpoints.
1504
1505 * New targets
1506
1507 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1508
1509 * D language support.
1510 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1511 language.
1512
1513 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1514 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1515 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1516 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1517 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1518
1519 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1520 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1521 conditions of the form:
1522
1523 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1524
1525 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1526 interface mentioned above.
1527
1528 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
1529
1530 * C++ Improvements
1531
1532 ** Namespace Support
1533
1534 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1535 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1536 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1537 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1538 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1539
1540 ** Bug Fixes
1541
1542 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1543 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1544 qualified name.
1545
1546 ** Cast Operators
1547
1548 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1549 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1550
1551 * New targets
1552
1553 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
1554 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
1555
1556 * New Simulators
1557
1558 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
1559 Renesas RX rx
1560
1561 * Multi-program debugging.
1562
1563 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1564 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1565 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1566 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1567 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1568 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1569 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1570 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1571
1572 * New tracing features
1573
1574 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1575
1576 ** Trace state variables
1577
1578 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1579 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1580 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1581 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1582 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1583 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1584 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1585 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1586 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1587 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
1588
1589 ** Fast tracepoints
1590
1591 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1592 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1593 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1594 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1595 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1596 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1597 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1598 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1599 the regular trace command.
1600
1601 ** Disconnected tracing
1602
1603 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1604 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1605 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1606 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1607 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1608
1609 ** Trace files
1610
1611 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1612 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1613 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1614 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1615 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1616 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1617 <name>".
1618
1619 ** Circular trace buffer
1620
1621 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1622 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1623 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1624 not be available for all target agents.
1625
1626 * Changed commands
1627
1628 disassemble
1629 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1630 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1631
1632 info variables
1633 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1634 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1635
1636 source
1637 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1638 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1639 support.
1640
1641 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1642 "set script-extension" (see below).
1643
1644 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1645
1646 record save [<FILENAME>]
1647 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1648 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1649
1650 record restore <FILENAME>
1651 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1652 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1653
1654 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1655 Add a new inferior.
1656
1657 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1658 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1659 inferior has loaded.
1660
1661 remove-inferior ID
1662 Remove an inferior.
1663
1664 maint info program-spaces
1665 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1666
1667 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1668 show remote interrupt-sequence
1669 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1670 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1671 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1672 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1673 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1674
1675 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1676 show remote interrupt-on-connect
1677 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1678 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1679 Linux kernel.
1680
1681 set remotebreak [on | off]
1682 show remotebreak
1683 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1684
1685 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1686 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1687
1688 info tvariables
1689 List trace state variables and their values.
1690
1691 delete tvariable $NAME ...
1692 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1693
1694 teval EXPR, ...
1695 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1696 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1697
1698 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1699 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1700
1701 * New expression syntax
1702
1703 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1704 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1705
1706 * New options
1707
1708 set follow-exec-mode new|same
1709 show follow-exec-mode
1710 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1711 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1712 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1713
1714 set default-collect EXPR, ...
1715 show default-collect
1716 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1717 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1718 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1719
1720 set disconnected-tracing
1721 show disconnected-tracing
1722 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1723 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1724 upon disconnection.
1725
1726 set circular-trace-buffer
1727 show circular-trace-buffer
1728 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1729 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1730 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1731 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1732
1733 set script-extension off|soft|strict
1734 show script-extension
1735 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1736 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1737 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1738 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1739 evaluation failed.
1740 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1741
1742 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1743 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1744 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1745 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1746 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1747 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1748 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1749 is on.
1750
1751 * Python API Improvements
1752
1753 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1754 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1755 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1756
1757 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1758 `is_base_class' attribute.
1759
1760 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1761
1762 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1763 evaluate an expression.
1764
1765 * New remote packets
1766
1767 QTDV
1768 Define a trace state variable.
1769
1770 qTV
1771 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1772
1773 QTDisconnected
1774 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1775
1776 QTBuffer:circular
1777 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1778
1779 qTfP, qTsP
1780 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1781
1782 * Bug fixes
1783
1784 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1785
1786 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1787 much more reliable. In particular:
1788 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1789 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1790 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1791 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1792 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1793 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1794 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1795 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1796 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1797 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1798 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1799 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1800 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1801 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1802 non-threaded programs.
1803
1804 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1805 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1806 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1807 executable program.
1808
1809 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1810
1811 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1812 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1813 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1814 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1815 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1816
1817 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1818 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1819 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1820 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1821 for tracepoint actions.
1822
1823 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1824 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1825 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1826
1827 * Process record and replay
1828
1829 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1830 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1831 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1832 execute commands.
1833
1834 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1835 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1836 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1837 reverse execution.
1838
1839 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1840 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1841 2.6.28 or later.
1842
1843 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1844 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1845 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1846 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1847 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1848 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1849 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1850 the installation instructions for more information.
1851
1852 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1853 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1854 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1855 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1856
1857 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1858 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1859
1860 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1861 now complete on file names.
1862
1863 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1864 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1865 For instance, consider:
1866
1867 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1868 # struct example variable;
1869 (gdb) p variable.
1870
1871 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1872 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1873
1874 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1875 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1876
1877 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1878 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1879 macros.
1880
1881 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1882 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1883 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1884
1885 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1886 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1887 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1888 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1889
1890 * New remote packets
1891
1892 qSearch:memory:
1893 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1894
1895 QStartNoAckMode
1896 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1897 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1898 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1899
1900 vKill
1901 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1902 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1903
1904 qXfer:osdata:read
1905 Obtains additional operating system information
1906
1907 qXfer:siginfo:read
1908 qXfer:siginfo:write
1909 Read or write additional signal information.
1910
1911 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1912
1913 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1914 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1915 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1916
1917 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1918 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1919
1920 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1921 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1922 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1923
1924 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1925 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1926
1927 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1928
1929 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1930
1931 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1932 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1933
1934 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1935 list of section offsets.
1936
1937 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1938 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1939 have also been fixed.
1940
1941 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1942 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1943 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1944
1945 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1946 example, given:
1947
1948 template<typename T> class C { };
1949 C<char const *> c;
1950
1951 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1952
1953 ptype C<char const *>
1954 ptype C<char const*>
1955 ptype C<const char *>
1956 ptype C<const char*>
1957
1958 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1959
1960 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1961 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1962
1963 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1964 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1965 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1966
1967 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1968 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1969
1970 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1971 gdbserver.
1972
1973 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1974 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1975
1976 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1977 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1978 as appropriate.
1979
1980 * Python scripting
1981
1982 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1983 available is determined at configure time.
1984
1985 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1986
1987 * Ada tasking support
1988
1989 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1990 been introduced:
1991
1992 info tasks
1993 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1994 info task N
1995 Print detailed information about task number N.
1996 task
1997 Print the task number of the current task.
1998 task N
1999 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2000
2001 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2002 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2003
2004 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2005
2006 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2007 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2008 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2009 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2010 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2011 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2012 below.
2013
2014 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2015 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2016 information.
2017
2018 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2019 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2020 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2021 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2022 more information.
2023
2024 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2025
2026 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2027 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2028 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2029 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2030 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2031
2032 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2033 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2034 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2035 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2036 --enable-targets configure option.
2037
2038 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2039
2040 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2041 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2042 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2043 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2044 section in the user manual for more information.
2045
2046 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2047 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2048 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2049 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2050 extensions on linux targets.
2051
2052 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2053
2054 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2055 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2056 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2057 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2058 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2059 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2060 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2061 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2062 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2063
2064 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2065 val1 [, val2, ...]
2066 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2067
2068 maint set python print-stack
2069 maint show python print-stack
2070 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2071
2072 python [CODE]
2073 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2074
2075 macro define
2076 macro list
2077 macro undef
2078 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2079 interactively.
2080
2081 info os processes
2082 Show operating system information about processes.
2083
2084 info inferiors
2085 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2086
2087 inferior NUM
2088 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2089
2090 detach inferior NUM
2091 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2092
2093 kill inferior NUM
2094 Kill inferior number NUM.
2095
2096 * New options
2097
2098 set spu stop-on-load
2099 show spu stop-on-load
2100 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2101
2102 set spu auto-flush-cache
2103 show spu auto-flush-cache
2104 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2105 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2106
2107 set sh calling-convention
2108 show sh calling-convention
2109 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2110
2111 set debug timestamp
2112 show debug timestamp
2113 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2114
2115 set disassemble-next-line
2116 show disassemble-next-line
2117 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2118 the debuggee stops.
2119
2120 set remote noack-packet
2121 show remote noack-packet
2122 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2123 under "New remote packets."
2124
2125 set remote query-attached-packet
2126 show remote query-attached-packet
2127 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2128
2129 set remote read-siginfo-object
2130 show remote read-siginfo-object
2131 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2132 packet.
2133
2134 set remote write-siginfo-object
2135 show remote write-siginfo-object
2136 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2137 packet.
2138
2139 set remote reverse-continue
2140 show remote reverse-continue
2141 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2142
2143 set remote reverse-step
2144 show remote reverse-step
2145 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2146
2147 set displaced-stepping
2148 show displaced-stepping
2149 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2150 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2151 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2152
2153 set debug displaced
2154 show debug displaced
2155 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2156
2157 maint set internal-error
2158 maint show internal-error
2159 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2160
2161 maint set internal-warning
2162 maint show internal-warning
2163 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2164
2165 set exec-wrapper
2166 show exec-wrapper
2167 unset exec-wrapper
2168 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2169
2170 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2171 show multiple-symbols
2172 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2173 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2174 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2175
2176 set breakpoint always-inserted
2177 show breakpoint always-inserted
2178 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2179 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2180 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2181
2182 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2183 show arm fallback-mode
2184 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2185 show arm force-mode
2186 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2187 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2188 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2189 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2190
2191 set disable-randomization
2192 show disable-randomization
2193 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2194 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2195 multiple debugging sessions.
2196
2197 set non-stop
2198 show non-stop
2199 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2200 a breakpoint.
2201
2202 set target-async
2203 show target-async
2204 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2205 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2206 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2207 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2208
2209 set target-wide-charset
2210 show target-wide-charset
2211 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2212 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2213
2214 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2215 show tcp auto-retry
2216 set tcp connect-timeout
2217 show tcp connect-timeout
2218 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2219 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2220 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2221
2222 set libthread-db-search-path
2223 show libthread-db-search-path
2224 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2225 libthread_db.
2226
2227 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2228 show schedule-multiple
2229 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2230 the current process.
2231
2232 set stack-cache
2233 show stack-cache
2234 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2235 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2236 affecting correctness.
2237
2238 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2239 show interactive-mode
2240 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2241 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2242 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2243 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2244 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2245
2246 * Removed commands
2247
2248 info forks
2249 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2250 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2251 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2252 command.
2253
2254 fork NUM
2255 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2256 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2257 alias for the `fork' command.
2258
2259 process PID
2260 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2261 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2262 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2263
2264 delete fork NUM
2265 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2266 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2267 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2268 fork' command.
2269
2270 detach fork NUM
2271 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2272 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2273 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2274 fork' command.
2275
2276 * New native configurations
2277
2278 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2279
2280 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2281
2282 * New targets
2283
2284 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2285 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2286 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2287 S+core 3 score-*-*
2288
2289 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2290 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2291
2292 * Removed commands
2293
2294 catch load
2295 catch unload
2296 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2297
2298 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2299
2300 * New native configurations
2301
2302 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2303 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2304
2305 * New targets
2306
2307 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2308 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2309
2310 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2311
2312 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2313 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2314 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2315 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2316
2317 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2318 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2319
2320 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2321 is resolved.
2322
2323 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2324 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2325 and in inlined functions.
2326
2327 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2328 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2329 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2330
2331 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2332
2333 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2334 registers on PowerPC targets.
2335
2336 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2337 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2338
2339 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2340 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2341
2342 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2343 extended-remote mode.
2344
2345 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2346 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2347 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2348 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2349
2350 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2351 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2352 target architectures.
2353
2354 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2355 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2356 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2357 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2358
2359 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2360 breakpoints now.
2361
2362 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2363 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2364 include:
2365 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2366 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2367 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2368 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2369 of an assignment
2370 - Improved command completion in Ada
2371 - Several bug fixes
2372
2373 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2374 process.
2375
2376 * New commands
2377
2378 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2379 show print frame-arguments
2380 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2381 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2382
2383 remote put
2384 remote get
2385 remote delete
2386 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2387
2388 * New MI commands
2389
2390 -target-file-put
2391 -target-file-get
2392 -target-file-delete
2393 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2394
2395 * New remote packets
2396
2397 vFile:open:
2398 vFile:close:
2399 vFile:pread:
2400 vFile:pwrite:
2401 vFile:unlink:
2402 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2403
2404 vAttach
2405 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2406 mode.
2407
2408 vRun
2409 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2410
2411 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2412
2413 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2414 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2415 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2416
2417 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2418 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2419 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2420
2421 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2422 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2423 is not supported.
2424
2425 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2426 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2427
2428 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2429 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
2430
2431 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2432
2433 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2434 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2435 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2436
2437 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2438 automatically displayed as character or string data.
2439
2440 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2441 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2442 as strings.
2443
2444 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2445 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
2446 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
2447
2448 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2449 iWMMXt coprocessor.
2450
2451 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2452 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2453 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2454
2455 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2456
2457 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2458
2459 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2460 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2461 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2462
2463 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2464 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2465
2466 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2467 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2468 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2469 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2470 Windows and SymbianOS).
2471
2472 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2473 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
2474
2475 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2476 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
2477
2478 * New commands
2479
2480 set remoteflow
2481 show remoteflow
2482 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2483 when debugging using remote targets.
2484
2485 set mem inaccessible-by-default
2486 show mem inaccessible-by-default
2487 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2488 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2489 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2490 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2491 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2492
2493 set breakpoint auto-hw
2494 show breakpoint auto-hw
2495 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2496 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2497 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2498 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2499 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2500 including "next" and "finish".
2501
2502 catch exception
2503 catch exception unhandled
2504 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2505
2506 catch assert
2507 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2508
2509 set sysroot
2510 show sysroot
2511 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2512 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2513 an alias to "set sysroot".
2514
2515 info spu
2516 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2517 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2518 architecture.
2519
2520 * New native configurations
2521
2522 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2523
2524 set tdesc filename
2525 unset tdesc filename
2526 show tdesc filename
2527 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2528 not query the target for its built-in description.
2529
2530 * New targets
2531
2532 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
2533 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
2534 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
2535
2536 * New remote packets
2537
2538 QPassSignals:
2539 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2540 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2541
2542 qXfer:features:read:
2543 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2544 features.
2545
2546 qXfer:spu:read:
2547 qXfer:spu:write:
2548 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2549 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2550
2551 qXfer:libraries:read:
2552 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2553 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2554 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2555 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2556
2557 * Removed targets
2558
2559 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2560
2561 alpha*-*-osf1*
2562 alpha*-*-osf2*
2563 d10v-*-*
2564 hppa*-*-hiux*
2565 i[34567]86-ncr-*
2566 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2567 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2568 i[34567]86-*-netware*
2569 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2570 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2571 i[34567]86-*-sco*
2572 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2573 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2574 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2575 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2576 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2577 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2578 i[34567]86-*-isc*
2579 m68*-cisco*-*
2580 m68*-tandem-*
2581 mips*-*-pe
2582 rs6000-*-lynxos*
2583 sh*-*-pe
2584
2585 * Other removed features
2586
2587 target abug
2588 target cpu32bug
2589 target est
2590 target rom68k
2591
2592 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2593
2594 target hms
2595 target e7000
2596 target sh3
2597 target sh3e
2598
2599 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2600 H8/300.
2601
2602 target ocd
2603
2604 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2605 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2606 interfaces.
2607
2608 DWARF 1 support
2609
2610 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2611 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2612
2613 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2614
2615 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2616 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2617 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2618 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2619
2620 MIPS ".pdr" sections
2621
2622 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2623 in debugging information.
2624
2625 Scheme support
2626
2627 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2628 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2629
2630 set mips stack-arg-size
2631 set mips saved-gpreg-size
2632
2633 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2634
2635 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
2636
2637 * New targets
2638
2639 Xtensa xtensa-elf
2640 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
2641
2642 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2643 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2644 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2645
2646 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2647 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2648 supported.
2649
2650 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2651 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2652
2653 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2654 stub provides the required support.
2655
2656 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2657 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2658
2659 * New commands
2660
2661 set substitute-path
2662 unset substitute-path
2663 show substitute-path
2664 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2665 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2666 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2667 between compilation and debugging.
2668
2669 set trace-commands
2670 show trace-commands
2671 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2672 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2673 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2674
2675 * REMOVED features
2676
2677 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2678
2679 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2680 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2681
2682 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2683
2684 * New remote packets
2685
2686 qSupported:
2687 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2688 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2689 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2690 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2691 target.
2692
2693 qXfer:auxv:read:
2694 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2695 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2696
2697 qXfer:memory-map:read:
2698 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2699 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2700
2701 vFlashErase:
2702 vFlashWrite:
2703 vFlashDone:
2704 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2705
2706 * Removed remote packets
2707
2708 qPart:auxv:read:
2709 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2710 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2711
2712 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
2713
2714 * New targets
2715
2716 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2717
2718 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2719
2720 * New commands
2721
2722 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2723 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2724
2725 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2726
2727 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2728
2729 restart <n> Return the program state to a
2730 previously saved state.
2731
2732 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2733
2734 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2735
2736 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2737 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2738
2739 info forks List forks of the user program that
2740 are available to be debugged.
2741
2742 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2743 forks of the user program that are
2744 available to be debugged.
2745
2746 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2747 that are available to be debugged (and
2748 kill the forked process).
2749
2750 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2751 that are available to be debugged (and
2752 allow the process to continue).
2753
2754 * New architecture
2755
2756 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2757
2758 * Improved Windows host support
2759
2760 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2761 native console support, and remote communications using either
2762 network sockets or serial ports.
2763
2764 * Improved Modula-2 language support
2765
2766 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2767 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2768 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2769 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2770 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2771 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2772
2773 * REMOVED features
2774
2775 The ARM rdi-share module.
2776
2777 The Netware NLM debug server.
2778
2779 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2780
2781 * New native configurations
2782
2783 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2784 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2785
2786 * New targets
2787
2788 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2789
2790 * New command line options
2791
2792 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2793 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2794 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2795 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2796 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2797 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2798 with the --command (-x) option.
2799
2800 * Deprecated commands removed
2801
2802 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2803 removed:
2804
2805 Command Replacement
2806 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2807 othernames set arm disassembler
2808 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2809 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2810 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2811 regs info registers
2812
2813 * New BSD user-level threads support
2814
2815 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2816 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2817 configurations are:
2818
2819 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2820 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2821 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2822
2823 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2824 are not yet supported.
2825
2826 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2827 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2828
2829 * REMOVED configurations and files
2830
2831 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2832 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2833 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2834
2835 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2836
2837 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2838 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2839 behavior.
2840
2841 * VAX floating point support
2842
2843 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2844
2845 * User-defined command support
2846
2847 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2848 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2849 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2850
2851 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2852
2853 * New command line option
2854
2855 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2856 debugging.
2857
2858 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2859
2860 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2861 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2862 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2863 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2864 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2865
2866 * Internationalization
2867
2868 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2869 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2870 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2871
2872 * Ada
2873
2874 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2875 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2876 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2877
2878 * New native configurations
2879
2880 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2881
2882 * Remote 'p' packet
2883
2884 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2885 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2886
2887 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2888
2889 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2890 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2891 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2892 i386 application).
2893
2894 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2895 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2896 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2897 configurations:
2898
2899 hppa-*-hpux
2900 ia64-*-aix
2901 mips-*-irix*
2902 *-*-lynx
2903 mips-*-linux-gnu
2904 sds protocol
2905 xdr protocol
2906 powerpc bdm protocol
2907
2908 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2909 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2910
2911 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2912
2913 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2914 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2915 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2916 permanently REMOVED.
2917
2918 h8300-*-*
2919 mcore-*-*
2920 mn10300-*-*
2921 ns32k-*-*
2922 sh64-*-*
2923 v850-*-*
2924
2925 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2926
2927 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2928
2929 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2930 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2931 been fixed.
2932
2933 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2934
2935 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2936 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2937 IRIX long double values).
2938
2939 * VAX and "next"
2940
2941 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2942 command. This problem has been fixed.
2943
2944 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2945
2946 * Fix for ``many threads''
2947
2948 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2949 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2950 error message:
2951
2952 ptrace: No such process.
2953 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2954
2955 This problem has been fixed.
2956
2957 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2958
2959 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2960 GDB to dump core).
2961
2962 * New ``start'' command.
2963
2964 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2965
2966 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2967
2968 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2969 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2970 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2971
2972 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2973 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2974 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2975 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2976 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2977 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2978 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2979 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2980 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2981
2982 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2983
2984 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2985 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2986 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2987 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2988 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2989
2990 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2991 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2992 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2993
2994 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2995
2996 * New native configurations
2997
2998 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2999 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3000 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3001 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3002 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3003 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3004 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3005
3006 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3007
3008 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3009 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3010 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3011 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3012 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3013 work, was also included.
3014
3015 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3016 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3017
3018 h8300-*-*
3019 mcore-*-*
3020 mn10300-*-*
3021 ns32k-*-*
3022 sh64-*-*
3023 v850-*-*
3024 xstormy16-*-*
3025
3026 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3027 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3028
3029 * REMOVED configurations and files
3030
3031 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3032 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3033 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3034 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3035 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3036 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3037 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3038 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3039 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3040 sonymips mips-sony-*
3041 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3042
3043 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3044
3045 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3046
3047 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3048 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3049 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3050 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3051 with GDB".
3052
3053 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3054
3055 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3056 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3057 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3058 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3059 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3060 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3061 are created.
3062
3063 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3064
3065 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3066
3067 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3068 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3069 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3070
3071 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3072
3073 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3074 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3075
3076 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3077
3078 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3079 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3080 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3081
3082 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3083
3084 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3085 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3086
3087 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3088
3089 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3090 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3091 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3092
3093 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3094
3095 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3096 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3097 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3098
3099 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3100
3101 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3102
3103 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3104 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3105
3106 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3107
3108 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3109 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3110 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3111 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3112
3113 * Revised SPARC target
3114
3115 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3116 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3117 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3118 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3119 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3120
3121 * New C++ demangler
3122
3123 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3124 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3125 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3126 programs.
3127
3128 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3129
3130 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3131 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3132 encountered these.
3133
3134 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3135
3136 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3137 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3138 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3139 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3140 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3141 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3142 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3143 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3144 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3145
3146 * New native configurations
3147
3148 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3149 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3150 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3151 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3152 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3153
3154 * New debugging protocols
3155
3156 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3157
3158 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3159
3160 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3161 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3162 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3163
3164 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3165
3166 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3167 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3168 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3169 permanently REMOVED.
3170
3171 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3172 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3173 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3174 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3175 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3176 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3177 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3178 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3179 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3180 sonymips mips-sony-*
3181 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3182
3183 * REMOVED configurations and files
3184
3185 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3186 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3187 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3188 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3189 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3190 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3191 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3192 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3193 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3194 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3195 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3196 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3197 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3198 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3199 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3200 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3201 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3202
3203 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3204
3205 * Objective-C
3206
3207 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3208 integrated into GDB.
3209
3210 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3211
3212 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3213 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3214 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3215 backtraces.
3216
3217 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3218 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3219 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3220
3221 * Hosted file I/O.
3222
3223 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3224 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3225 remote protocol documentation for details.
3226
3227 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3228
3229 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3230 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3231 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3232 ppc32 on ppc64).
3233
3234 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3235
3236 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3237 per-thread variables.
3238
3239 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3240
3241 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3242 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3243
3244 * Separate debug info.
3245
3246 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3247 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3248 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3249 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3250 and optional debug files.
3251
3252 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3253
3254 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3255 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3256 debugger.
3257
3258 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3259 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3260
3261 * Java
3262
3263 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3264 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3265 considered "useable".
3266
3267 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3268
3269 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3270 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3271 kernel.
3272
3273 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3274
3275 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3276 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3277
3278 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3279
3280 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3281 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3282 command.
3283
3284 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3285
3286 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3287 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3288
3289 * Profiling support
3290
3291 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3292 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3293 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3294 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3295 data, for more informative profiling results.
3296
3297 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3298
3299 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3300 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3301 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3302
3303 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3304 removed.
3305
3306 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3307 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3308 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3309 in a subsequent -var-update.
3310
3311 * New native configurations.
3312
3313 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3314
3315 * Multi-arched targets.
3316
3317 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3318 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3319
3320 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3321
3322 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3323 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3324 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3325 permanently REMOVED.
3326
3327 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3328 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3329 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3330 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3331 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3332 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3333 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3334 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3335 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3336 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3337 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3338 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3339
3340 * REMOVED configurations and files
3341
3342 V850EA ISA
3343 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3344 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3345 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3346 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3347 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3348 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3349 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3350 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3351 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3352 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3353 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3354 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3355 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3356
3357 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3358
3359 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3360 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3361 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3362 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3363 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3364
3365 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3366
3367 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3368
3369 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3370 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3371 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3372 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3373 shared libs like mad''.
3374
3375 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3376
3377 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3378 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3379 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3380 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3381
3382 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3383
3384 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3385 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3386 they expand.
3387
3388 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3389 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3390
3391 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3392 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3393
3394 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3395 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3396 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3397 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3398
3399 * Multi-arched targets.
3400
3401 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3402 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3403 NEC V850 v850-*-*
3404 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3405 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3406 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3407
3408 * New targets.
3409
3410 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3411
3412
3413 * New native configurations
3414
3415 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3416 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3417 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3418 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3419
3420 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3421
3422 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3423 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3424 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3425 permanently REMOVED.
3426
3427 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3428 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3429 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3430 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3431 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3432 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3433 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3434 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3435 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3436 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3437 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3438 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3439 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3440
3441 * OBSOLETE languages
3442
3443 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3444
3445 * REMOVED configurations and files
3446
3447 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3448 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3449 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3450 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3451 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3452
3453 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3454
3455 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3456
3457 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3458 commands. The default is 1024.
3459
3460 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3461
3462 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3463
3464 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3465
3466 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3467 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3468 from a file into memory (restore).
3469
3470 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3471
3472 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3473 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3474 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3475
3476 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3477
3478 * New targets.
3479
3480 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3481
3482 * Bug fixes
3483
3484 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3485 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3486 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3487
3488 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3489 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3490 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3491
3492 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3493 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3494 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3495
3496 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3497 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3498 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3499
3500 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
3501
3502 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3503
3504 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3505 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3506 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3507 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3508 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3509 (notably embedded) targets.
3510
3511 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3512
3513 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3514 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3515 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3516 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
3517
3518 * New command line option
3519
3520 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3521
3522 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3523
3524 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3525 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3526 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3527 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3528 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3529 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3530 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3531 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3532 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3533 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3534
3535 * Changes in ARM configurations.
3536
3537 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3538 configuration is fully multi-arch.
3539
3540 * New native configurations
3541
3542 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
3543 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
3544 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
3545 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
3546
3547 * New targets
3548
3549 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3550
3551 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3552
3553 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3554 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3555 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3556 permanently REMOVED.
3557
3558 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3559 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3560 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3561 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3562 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3563
3564 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3565
3566 * REMOVED configurations and files
3567
3568 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3569 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3570 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3571 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3572 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3573 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3574 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3575 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3576 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3577 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3578 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3579 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3580 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
3581
3582 * Changes to command line processing
3583
3584 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3585 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3586
3587 * Changes to key bindings
3588
3589 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3590
3591 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3592
3593 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3594
3595 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3596 corrupted.
3597
3598 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3599
3600 Numerous documentation fixes.
3601
3602 Numerous testsuite fixes.
3603
3604 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
3605
3606 * New native configurations
3607
3608 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3609 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
3610 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
3611 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3612 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
3613 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
3614
3615 * New targets
3616
3617 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
3618 CRIS cris-axis
3619 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
3620
3621 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3622
3623 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
3624 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3625 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3626 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3627 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3628 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3629 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3630 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3631 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3632 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3633 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3634 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3635 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3636 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
3637
3638 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3639 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3640
3641 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3642 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3643 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3644 permanently REMOVED.
3645
3646 * REMOVED configurations and files
3647
3648 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3649 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3650 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3651 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3652 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
3653 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
3654
3655 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
3656
3657 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
3658 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3659 present.
3660
3661 * Other news:
3662
3663 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3664
3665 * The MI enabled by default.
3666
3667 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3668 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3669 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3670 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3671 which is now deprecated.
3672
3673 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3674
3675 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3676 main features are supported:
3677
3678 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3679
3680 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3681 extension;
3682
3683 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3684
3685 - a Pascal expression parser.
3686
3687 However, some important features are not yet supported.
3688
3689 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3690
3691 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3692
3693 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3694 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3695
3696 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3697
3698 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3699
3700 * Changes in completion.
3701
3702 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3703 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3704 users expect at the shell prompt.
3705
3706 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3707 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3708 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3709 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3710 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3711 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3712 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3713
3714 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3715
3716 * New platform-independent commands:
3717
3718 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3719 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3720 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3721
3722 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3723
3724 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3725 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3726 many threads as your system allows you to have.
3727
3728 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3729
3730 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3731 multi-threaded programs though.
3732
3733 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
3734
3735 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3736
3737 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3738 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3739 supported.)
3740
3741 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3742
3743 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3744 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3745 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3746 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3747 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3748 registers.
3749
3750 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3751 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3752 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3753
3754 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3755
3756 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3757 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3758
3759 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3760 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3761 IDT.
3762
3763 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3764 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3765 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3766 a given linear address.
3767
3768 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3769 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3770 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3771
3772 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3773
3774 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3775
3776 * Changes in documentation.
3777
3778 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3779 Documentation License.
3780
3781 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3782 manual.
3783
3784 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3785
3786 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3787 manual.
3788
3789 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3790 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3791 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3792
3793 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3794
3795 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3796 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3797 contents of this file.
3798
3799 * gdba.el deleted
3800
3801 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3802
3803 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3804
3805 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3806
3807 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3808 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3809 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3810 greater level of detail.
3811
3812 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3813
3814 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3815 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3816 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3817 written.
3818
3819 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3820
3821 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3822 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3823 machines ``out of the box''.
3824
3825 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3826 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3827 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3828 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3829 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3830
3831 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3832 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3833 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3834 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3835 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3836
3837 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3838 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3839 also works.
3840
3841 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3842 GDB.
3843
3844 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3845 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3846 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3847 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3848
3849 * New native configurations
3850
3851 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3852 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3853
3854 * New targets
3855
3856 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3857 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3858 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3859 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3860
3861 * OBSOLETE configurations
3862
3863 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3864 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3865 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3866 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3867 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
3868
3869 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3870 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3871 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3872 be permanently REMOVED.
3873
3874 * Gould support removed
3875
3876 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3877
3878 * New features for SVR4
3879
3880 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3881 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3882 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3883
3884 * Many C++ enhancements
3885
3886 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3887 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3888
3889 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3890
3891 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3892 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3893 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3894 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3895
3896 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3897 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3898
3899 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3900
3901 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3902 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3903 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3904
3905 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3906 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3907
3908 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3909
3910 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3911 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3912 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3913
3914 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3915
3916 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3917 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3918 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3919
3920 * ``apropos'' command added.
3921
3922 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3923 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3924 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3925
3926 * New MI interface
3927
3928 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3929 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3930 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3931 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3932 enabled by configuring with:
3933
3934 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3935
3936 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3937
3938 * New native configurations
3939
3940 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3941 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3942 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3943
3944 * New targets
3945
3946 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3947 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3948 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3949
3950 * OBSOLETE configurations
3951
3952 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3953
3954 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3955 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3956 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3957 be permanently REMOVED.
3958
3959 * ANSI/ISO C
3960
3961 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3962 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3963 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3964 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3965 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3966 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3967 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3968 already.
3969
3970 * Readline 2.2
3971
3972 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3973
3974 * set extension-language
3975
3976 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3977 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3978 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3979 set extension-language .c c++
3980 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3981 and their associated languages.
3982
3983 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3984
3985 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3986 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3987 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3988
3989 set processor NAME
3990
3991 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3992 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3993
3994 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3995 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3996 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3997 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3998 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3999 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4000 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4001 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4002 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4003 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4004 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4005
4006 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4007 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4008 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4009 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4010
4011 * HP-UX support
4012
4013 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4014 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4015 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4016 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4017 for xdb and dbx commands.
4018
4019 * Catchpoints
4020
4021 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4022 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4023 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4024
4025 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4026 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4027 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4028
4029 * Debugging across forks
4030
4031 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4032 in the inferior.
4033
4034 * TUI
4035
4036 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4037 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4038 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4039
4040 * GDB remote protocol additions
4041
4042 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4043 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4044 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4045 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4046
4047 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4048 full 64-bit address. The command
4049
4050 set remoteaddresssize 32
4051
4052 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4053 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4054 will be discarded.
4055
4056 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4057 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4058
4059 maint packet heythere
4060
4061 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4062 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4063 time.
4064
4065 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4066 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4067 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4068
4069 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4070
4071 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4072 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4073 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4074
4075 * mask-address variable for Mips
4076
4077 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4078 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4079 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4080
4081 * Higher serial baud rates
4082
4083 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4084 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4085 to achieve all of these rates.)
4086
4087 * i960 simulator
4088
4089 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4090 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4091
4092
4093 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4094
4095 * New native configurations
4096
4097 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4098 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4099 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4100 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4101 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4102 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4103 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4104
4105 * New targets
4106
4107 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4108 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4109 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4110 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4111 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4112 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4113 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4114 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4115 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4116 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4117 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4118
4119 * New debugging protocols
4120
4121 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4122 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4123 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4124 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4125 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4126 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4127
4128 * DWARF 2
4129
4130 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4131 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4132 information.
4133
4134 * Java frontend
4135
4136 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4137 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4138
4139 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4140
4141 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4142 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4143 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4144
4145 * Live range splitting
4146
4147 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4148 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4149 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4150
4151 * Hurd support
4152
4153 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4154 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4155
4156 * ARM Thumb support
4157
4158 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4159 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4160 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4161 accordingly.
4162
4163 * MIPS16 support
4164
4165 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4166 instruction set.
4167
4168 * Overlay support
4169
4170 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4171 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4172 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4173 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4174 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4175 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4176
4177 * info symbol
4178
4179 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4180 the symbol at the specified address.
4181
4182 * Trace support
4183
4184 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4185 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4186 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4187 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4188 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4189
4190 * MIPS simulator
4191
4192 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4193 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4194 of most MIPS variants.
4195
4196 * Sparc simulator
4197
4198 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4199 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4200 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4201
4202 * set architecture
4203
4204 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4205 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4206 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4207 the possible architectures.
4208
4209 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4210
4211 * New native configurations
4212
4213 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4214 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4215 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4216 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4217 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4218 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4219
4220 * New targets
4221
4222 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4223 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4224 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4225 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4226 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4227 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4228 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4229
4230 * PowerPC simulator
4231
4232 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4233 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4234 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4235 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4236 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4237
4238 * Solaris 2.5
4239
4240 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4241
4242 * Windows 95/NT native
4243
4244 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4245 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4246 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4247 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4248 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4249
4250 * dont-repeat command
4251
4252 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4253 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4254 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4255 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4256
4257 * Send break instead of ^C
4258
4259 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4260 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4261 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4262
4263 * Remote protocol timeout
4264
4265 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4266 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4267 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4268
4269 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4270
4271 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4272 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4273 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4274 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4275 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4276
4277 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4278 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4279 automatically on hpux10.
4280
4281 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4282
4283 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4284
4285 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4286
4287 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4288 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4289 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4290 every character. The default value is 1050.
4291
4292 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4293
4294 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4295 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4296 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4297 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4298 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4299 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4300
4301 * Speedups for remote debugging
4302
4303 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4304 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4305 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4306
4307 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4308
4309 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4310 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4311
4312 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4313
4314 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4315
4316 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4317 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4318
4319 * Remote targets use caching
4320
4321 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4322 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4323 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4324 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4325 off' turns the the data cache off.
4326
4327 * Remote targets may have threads
4328
4329 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4330 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4331 gdb/remote.c for details.
4332
4333 * NetROM support
4334
4335 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4336 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4337 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4338 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4339 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4340 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4341 sequence is something like
4342
4343 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4344 load <prog>
4345 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4346
4347 * Macintosh host
4348
4349 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4350 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4351 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4352 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4353 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4354 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4355 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4356 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4357
4358 * Autoconf
4359
4360 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4361 but does simplify configuration and building.
4362
4363 * hpux10
4364
4365 GDB now supports hpux10.
4366
4367 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4368
4369 * New native configurations
4370
4371 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4372 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4373 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4374 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4375
4376 * New targets
4377
4378 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4379 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4380 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4381 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4382 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4383
4384 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4385
4386 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4387 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4388 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4389 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4390 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4391
4392 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4393
4394 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4395 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4396 trivial example:
4397 define adder
4398 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4399
4400 To execute the command use:
4401 adder 1 2 3
4402
4403 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4404 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4405 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4406
4407 * New `if' and `while' commands
4408
4409 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4410 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4411 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4412 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4413 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4414 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4415 if the expression is zero.
4416
4417 * Fortran source language mode
4418
4419 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4420 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4421 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4422 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4423 Fortran compilers.
4424
4425 * Better HPUX support
4426
4427 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4428 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4429 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4430 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4431 that behavior do the following before running the program:
4432
4433 adb -w a.out
4434 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4435 control-d
4436
4437 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4438 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4439
4440 adb -w a.out
4441 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4442 control-d
4443
4444 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4445 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4446 external linkage.
4447
4448 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4449 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4450
4451 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4452
4453 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4454 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4455 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4456 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4457 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4458 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4459
4460 * New DOS host serial code
4461
4462 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4463 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4464 a PC's serial port.
4465
4466 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4467
4468 * New "complete" command
4469
4470 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4471 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4472
4473 * Trailing space optional in prompt
4474
4475 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4476 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4477
4478 * Breakpoint hit counts
4479
4480 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4481 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4482 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4483 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4484 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4485 that breakpoint.
4486
4487 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4488
4489 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4490 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4491 arrays actually contain only short strings.
4492
4493 * Shared library breakpoints
4494
4495 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4496 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4497
4498 * Hardware watchpoints
4499
4500 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4501 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4502
4503 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
4504
4505 * Annotations
4506
4507 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4508 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4509
4510 * Improved Irix 5 support
4511
4512 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4513
4514 * Improved HPPA support
4515
4516 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4517
4518 * New native configurations
4519
4520 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4521 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4522 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4523 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4524
4525 * New targets
4526
4527 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4528 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4529 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4530
4531 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4532
4533 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4534 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4535
4536 * Fixes
4537
4538 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4539 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4540
4541 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4542
4543 * Irix 5 is now supported
4544
4545 * HPPA support
4546
4547 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4548 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4549 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4550 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4551 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4552
4553
4554 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4555
4556 * User visible changes:
4557
4558 * Remote Debugging
4559
4560 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4561 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4562 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4563 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4564 debugging info for the mips target).
4565
4566 * DEC Alpha native support
4567
4568 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4569 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4570 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4571 Alpha-specific notes.
4572
4573 * Preliminary thread implementation
4574
4575 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4576
4577 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
4578
4579 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4580 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4581 for details).
4582
4583 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4584
4585 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4586 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4587 call methods, ...etc.
4588
4589 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4590
4591 * User visible changes:
4592
4593 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4594 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4595 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4596 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4597
4598 Filename completion now works.
4599
4600 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4601 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4602 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4603
4604 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4605 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4606 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4607 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4608 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4609
4610 * DEC alpha support
4611
4612 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4613 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4614
4615
4616 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4617
4618 * Testsuite
4619
4620 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4621 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4622 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4623
4624 * C++ demangling
4625
4626 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4627 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4628 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4629 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4630 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4631
4632 * Simulators
4633
4634 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4635 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4636 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4637
4638 * New targets supported
4639
4640 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4641 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4642 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4643 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4644 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4645
4646 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4647 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4648 GO32 memory extender.
4649
4650 * New remote protocols
4651
4652 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4653
4654 * New source languages supported
4655
4656 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4657 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4658 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4659
4660
4661 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4662
4663 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4664
4665 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4666 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4667 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4668 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4669 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4670 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4671
4672 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4673
4674 * Faster and better demangling
4675
4676 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4677 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4678 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4679 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4680 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4681 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4682 symbol lookups.
4683
4684 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4685 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4686 compiler does not actually implement.
4687
4688 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4689
4690 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4691 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4692 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4693 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4694 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4695 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4696 fix.
4697
4698 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4699 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4700
4701 * Improved configure script
4702
4703 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4704 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4705 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4706 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4707
4708 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4709 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4710 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4711 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4712 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4713 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4714
4715 * Documentation improvements
4716
4717 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4718 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4719 before submitting changes.
4720
4721 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4722 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4723 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4724 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4725 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4726
4727 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4728 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4729 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4730 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4731 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4732 around this problem.
4733
4734 * New features
4735
4736 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4737 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4738 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4739 the target program.
4740
4741 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4742 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4743
4744 * New native hosts supported
4745
4746 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4747 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4748
4749 * New targets supported
4750
4751 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4752
4753 * New file formats supported
4754
4755 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4756 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4757
4758 * Major bug fixes
4759
4760 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4761
4762 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4763 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4764
4765 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4766 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4767 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4768
4769 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4770 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4771
4772 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4773 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4774 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4775 libraries.
4776
4777 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4778 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4779 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4780 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4781 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4782
4783 * Internal improvements
4784
4785 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4786 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4787
4788 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4789 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4790 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4791 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4792 shared code that handles any of them.
4793
4794 * New command line options
4795
4796 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4797
4798 * Mmalloc licensing
4799
4800 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4801 General Public License.
4802
4803 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4804
4805 * Host/native/target split
4806
4807 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4808 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4809 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4810 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4811 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4812
4813 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4814 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4815 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4816 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4817 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4818 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4819 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4820
4821 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4822 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4823 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4824
4825 * New hosts supported
4826
4827 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4828 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4829 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4830
4831 * New targets supported
4832
4833 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4834 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4835
4836 * New native hosts supported
4837
4838 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4839 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4840 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4841
4842 * New file formats supported
4843
4844 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4845 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4846 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4847
4848 * New commands
4849
4850 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4851 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4852 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4853
4854 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4855
4856 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4857 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4858 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4859 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4860
4861 * C++ improvements
4862
4863 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4864 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4865 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4866
4867 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4868
4869 * Major bug fixes
4870
4871 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4872 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4873 by the compiler.
4874
4875 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4876 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4877
4878 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4879 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4880 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4881 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4882 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4883 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4884
4885 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4886 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4887 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4888 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4889
4890 * AMD 29k support
4891
4892 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4893 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4894 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4895 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4896 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4897
4898 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4899 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4900 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4901 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4902
4903 * Remote interfaces
4904
4905 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4906 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4907 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4908 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4909 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4910 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4911 each instruction being stepped through.
4912
4913 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4914 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4915
4916 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4917 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4918 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4919 processor with a serial port.
4920
4921 * Configuration
4922
4923 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4924 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4925 supported, and what files each one uses.
4926
4927 * Library changes
4928
4929 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4930 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4931 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4932 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4933
4934 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4935 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4936 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4937 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4938
4939 * Documentation
4940
4941 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4942 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4943 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4944 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4945 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4946 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4947
4948 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4949
4950
4951 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4952
4953 * Better support for C++ function names
4954
4955 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4956 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4957 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4958 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4959 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4960
4961 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4962 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4963 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4964 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4965 for the list of formats.
4966
4967 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4968
4969 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4970 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4971 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4972 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4973 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4974 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4975 this problem.)
4976
4977 * New 'maintenance' command
4978
4979 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4980 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4981 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4982
4983 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4984 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4985 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4986 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4987 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4988 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4989
4990 The following commands are new:
4991
4992 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4993 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4994 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4995
4996 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4997
4998 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4999 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5000 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5001 read after argv processing.
5002
5003 * New hosts supported
5004
5005 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5006
5007 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5008
5009 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5010 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5011 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5012 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5013 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5014 It costs extra.
5015
5016 * New targets supported
5017
5018 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5019
5020 * More smarts about finding #include files
5021
5022 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5023 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5024 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5025 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5026 the one that contains your sources.
5027
5028 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5029 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5030 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5031
5032 * Interesting infernals change
5033
5034 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5035 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5036 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5037 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5038
5039 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5040
5041 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5042 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5043 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5044
5045 See the ChangeLog for details.
5046
5047 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5048
5049 * New machines supported (host and target)
5050
5051 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5052
5053 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5054
5055 * New malloc package
5056
5057 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5058 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5059 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5060 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5061 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5062 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5063
5064 * info proc
5065
5066 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5067 'help info proc' for details.
5068
5069 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5070
5071 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5072 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5073 possible.
5074
5075 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5076
5077 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5078 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5079 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5080 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5081 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5082 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5083
5084 * Cross byte order fixes
5085
5086 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5087 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5088
5089 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5090
5091 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5092 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5093 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5094 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5095 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5096 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5097 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5098 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5099 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5100 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5101
5102 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5103 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5104 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5105 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5106
5107 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5108 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5109 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5110 use is:
5111
5112 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5113
5114 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5115 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5116 shared across multiple host platforms.
5117
5118 * longjmp() handling
5119
5120 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5121 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5122 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5123 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5124
5125 * Solaris 2.0
5126
5127 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5128 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5129 reading symbols.
5130
5131 * Bug fixes
5132
5133 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5134 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5135 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5136
5137 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5138
5139 * New machines supported (host and target)
5140
5141 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5142 (except core files)
5143 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5144 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5145
5146 * New machines supported (target)
5147
5148 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5149
5150 * C++ support
5151
5152 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5153 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5154 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5155
5156 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5157 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5158 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5159 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5160 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5161 released.
5162
5163 * New features for SVR4
5164
5165 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5166 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5167 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5168
5169 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5170 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5171 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5172
5173 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5174 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5175
5176 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5177
5178 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5179 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5180 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5181 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5182 same code linked statically.
5183
5184 * New Getopt
5185
5186 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5187 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5188 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5189 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5190 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5191 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5192
5193 * Bugs fixed
5194
5195 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5196 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5197 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5198
5199
5200 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5201
5202 * New machines supported (host and target)
5203
5204 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5205 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5206 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5207
5208 * Almost SCO Unix support
5209
5210 We had hoped to support:
5211 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5212 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5213 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5214 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5215
5216 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5217
5218 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5219 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5220 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5221 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5222 reqired (if any).
5223
5224 * New Readline
5225
5226 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5227 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5228 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5229
5230 * Bugs fixed
5231
5232 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5233 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5234 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5235
5236 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5237
5238 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5239 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5240 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5241
5242 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5243 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5244 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5245 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5246 version 2.
5247
5248 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5249 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5250 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5251 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5252 situation somewhat.
5253
5254 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5255 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5256 methods.
5257
5258 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5259 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5260 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5261
5262
5263 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5264
5265 * Improved configuration
5266
5267 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5268 Porting BFD is simpler.
5269
5270 * Stepping improved
5271
5272 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5273 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5274 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5275 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5276
5277 * Bug fixing
5278
5279 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5280
5281 * New host supported (not target)
5282
5283 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5284
5285
5286 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5287
5288 * Multiple source language support
5289
5290 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5291 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5292 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5293 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5294 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5295 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5296
5297 * GDB and Modula-2
5298
5299 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5300 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5301 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5302 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5303
5304 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5305 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5306 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5307
5308 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5309 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5310
5311 * set write on/off
5312
5313 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5314 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5315 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5316 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5317 effect immediately.
5318
5319 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5320
5321 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5322 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5323 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5324 examining core files.
5325
5326 * set listsize
5327
5328 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5329 The default is 10.
5330
5331 * New machines supported (host and target)
5332
5333 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5334 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5335 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5336
5337 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5338
5339 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5340
5341 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5342
5343 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5344 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5345 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5346
5347 * New remote interfaces
5348
5349 AMD 29000 Adapt
5350 AMD 29000 Minimon
5351
5352
5353 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5354
5355 * New Facilities
5356
5357 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5358
5359 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5360 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5361 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5362 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5363 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5364 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5365 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5366 stub on the target system.
5367
5368 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5369
5370 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5371 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5372 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5373
5374 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5375 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5376
5377
5378 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5379
5380 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5381 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5382
5383 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5384 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5385 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5386
5387 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5388 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5389 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5390 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5391
5392 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5393 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5394 it is already running. Default is ON.
5395
5396 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5397 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5398 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5399 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5400 Default is ON.
5401
5402 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5403 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5404 or the value of the environment variable
5405 GDBHISTFILE.
5406
5407 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5408 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5409 HISTSIZE.
5410
5411 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5412 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5413 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5414
5415 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5416 history expansion will be performed on
5417 command line input. The default is OFF.
5418
5419 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5420 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5421 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5422
5423 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5424 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5425 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5426 variable TERM.
5427
5428 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5429 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5430 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5431 variable TERM.
5432
5433 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5434 ``set width'' instead.
5435
5436 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5437 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5438 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5439 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5440
5441 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5442 is OFF.
5443
5444 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5445 "raw" form if off.
5446
5447 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5448 like instructions.
5449
5450 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5451
5452
5453 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5454
5455 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5456 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5457 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5458 window.
5459
5460
5461 * Support for Shared Libraries
5462
5463 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5464 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5465 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5466 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5467 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5468 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5469 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5470 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5471
5472 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5473 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5474 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5475
5476 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5477
5478
5479 * Watchpoints
5480
5481 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5482 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5483 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5484 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5485 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5486 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5487
5488 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5489
5490 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5491
5492 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5493 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5494 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5495
5496
5497 * C++ multiple inheritance
5498
5499 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5500 for C++ programs.
5501
5502 * C++ exception handling
5503
5504 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5505 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5506 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5507 handler's context).
5508
5509 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5510 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5511 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5512
5513 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5514 current stack frame.
5515
5516
5517 * Minor command changes
5518
5519 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5520 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5521 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5522
5523 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5524 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5525 frames without printing.
5526
5527 * New directory command
5528
5529 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5530 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5531 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5532 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5533 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5534
5535 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5536
5537 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5538 for more details.
5539
5540 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5541 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5542 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5543 where the program that you are debugging will run.