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