1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.3.1
6 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
7 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
8 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
9 target hardware watchpoint.
11 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
12 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
13 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
14 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
18 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
19 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
22 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
23 deprecated, and a new command: "set python print-stack on|off" has
24 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is now
27 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
30 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
31 modules library. This module provides functionality for
32 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
33 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
36 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
37 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
38 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
41 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
42 static_block will return the global and static blocks
43 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
44 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
46 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
48 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
51 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
52 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
53 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
56 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
59 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
60 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
61 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
64 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
65 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
66 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
67 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
68 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
70 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
71 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
73 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
74 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
75 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
76 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
77 use this option to specify where to find it.
79 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
80 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
81 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
82 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
83 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
84 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
85 section in the user manual for more details.
87 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
88 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
89 become available after that.
91 * New commands "info macros", "info definitions",
92 and "alias" have been added.
94 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
95 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
100 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
101 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
102 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
104 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
105 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
106 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
108 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
109 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
110 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
111 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
112 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
119 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
120 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
121 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
122 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
125 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
126 show print entry-values
127 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
128 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
129 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
131 set debug entry-values
132 show debug entry-values
133 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
134 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
140 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
144 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
146 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
147 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
151 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
153 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
155 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
157 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
159 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
160 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
161 matches the given regular expression.
163 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
165 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
166 dumping the instruction opcodes.
168 * New command line options
170 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
171 This is mostly for testing purposes.
173 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
174 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
176 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
177 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
178 source path list instead of augmenting it.
180 * GDB now understands thread names.
182 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
183 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
185 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
186 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
189 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
190 has been integrated into GDB.
194 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
195 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
196 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
198 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
199 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
200 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
201 and allows for more dynamic content.
203 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
204 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
205 have an is_valid method.
207 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
208 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
209 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
211 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
213 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
214 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
215 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
216 that function like so:
218 result = some_value (10,20)
220 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
221 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
222 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
224 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
225 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
226 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
227 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
228 New function: register_pretty_printer.
230 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
231 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
233 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
235 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
238 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
239 holds the thread's name.
241 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
242 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
243 occurring in the process being debugged.
244 The following events are currently supported:
245 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
246 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
247 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
251 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
252 instantiation. For example, if you have:
254 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
256 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
257 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
258 was added to GCC 4.5.
260 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
261 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
262 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
263 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
264 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
265 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
267 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
268 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
269 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
270 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
271 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
273 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
274 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
275 execution to a label.
277 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
278 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
279 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
280 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
282 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
283 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
284 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
287 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
289 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
290 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
291 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
292 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
293 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
294 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
297 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
299 While now you see this:
302 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
304 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
307 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
308 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
309 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
310 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
312 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
313 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
314 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
315 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
316 section in the user manual for more details.
318 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
320 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
321 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
323 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
325 * New native configurations
327 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
331 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
333 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
334 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
335 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
336 in the GDB user manual.
338 * Guile support was removed.
340 * New features in the GNU simulator
342 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
344 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
346 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
348 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
350 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
351 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
352 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
353 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
354 was always disabled for such configurations.
358 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
360 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
361 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
371 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
372 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
373 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
375 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
377 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
378 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
379 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
380 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
382 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
383 mentioned flavors of operators.
385 ** static const class members
387 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
388 class definition has been fixed.
390 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
392 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
393 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
394 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
395 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
396 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
397 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
401 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
402 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
403 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
404 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
405 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
406 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
407 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
408 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
409 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
410 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
411 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
412 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
413 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
414 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
415 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
416 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
417 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
418 the "New remote packets" section below.
420 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
422 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
423 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
424 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
425 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
429 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
430 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
431 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
432 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
433 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
434 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
435 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
437 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
444 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
448 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
449 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
450 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
451 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
452 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
453 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
457 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
461 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
464 qXfer:statictrace:read
466 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
467 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
468 to gdb's qSupported query.
472 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
476 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
477 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
479 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
480 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
483 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
485 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
486 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
487 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
488 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
490 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
491 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
492 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
493 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
494 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
495 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
496 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
498 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
499 for static tracepoints support.
501 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
503 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
504 it understands register description.
506 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
508 * X86 general purpose registers
510 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
511 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
512 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
513 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
514 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
516 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
517 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
518 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
519 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
520 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
521 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
523 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
524 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
525 in the specified file.
527 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
528 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
529 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
530 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
531 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
532 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
533 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
534 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
535 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
536 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
540 eval template, expressions...
541 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
542 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
544 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
545 show target-file-system-kind
546 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
549 save breakpoints <filename>
550 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
551 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
552 definitions, use the `source' command.
554 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
557 info static-tracepoint-markers
558 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
560 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
561 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
562 function, line, address, or marker ID.
566 Enable and disable observer mode.
568 set may-write-registers on|off
569 set may-write-memory on|off
570 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
571 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
572 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
573 set may-interrupt on|off
574 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
575 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
576 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
577 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
578 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
579 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
580 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
582 set record memory-query on|off
583 show record memory-query
584 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
585 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
590 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
594 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
595 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
596 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
597 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
598 GDB using Python' in the manual.
600 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
601 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
602 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
603 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
605 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
606 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
608 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
610 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
612 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
614 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
615 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
616 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
618 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
619 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
620 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
625 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
627 * D language support.
628 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
631 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
632 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
633 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
634 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
635 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
637 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
638 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
639 conditions of the form:
641 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
643 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
644 interface mentioned above.
646 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
652 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
653 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
654 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
655 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
656 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
660 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
661 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
666 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
667 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
671 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
676 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
679 * Multi-program debugging.
681 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
682 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
683 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
684 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
685 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
686 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
687 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
688 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
690 * New tracing features
692 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
694 ** Trace state variables
696 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
697 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
698 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
699 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
700 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
701 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
702 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
703 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
704 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
705 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
709 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
710 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
711 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
712 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
713 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
714 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
715 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
716 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
717 the regular trace command.
719 ** Disconnected tracing
721 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
722 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
723 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
724 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
725 connection is lost unexpectedly.
729 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
730 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
731 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
732 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
733 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
734 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
737 ** Circular trace buffer
739 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
740 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
741 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
742 not be available for all target agents.
747 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
748 the arguments to be comma-separated.
751 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
752 which only declare a variable are not shown.
755 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
756 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
759 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
760 "set script-extension" (see below).
762 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
764 record save [<FILENAME>]
765 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
766 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
768 record restore <FILENAME>
769 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
770 earlier time, for replay debugging.
772 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
775 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
776 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
782 maint info program-spaces
783 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
785 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
786 show remote interrupt-sequence
787 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
788 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
789 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
790 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
791 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
793 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
794 show remote interrupt-on-connect
795 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
796 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
799 set remotebreak [on | off]
801 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
803 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
804 Create or modify a trace state variable.
807 List trace state variables and their values.
809 delete tvariable $NAME ...
810 Delete one or more trace state variables.
813 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
814 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
816 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
817 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
819 * New expression syntax
821 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
822 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
826 set follow-exec-mode new|same
827 show follow-exec-mode
828 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
829 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
830 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
832 set default-collect EXPR, ...
834 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
835 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
836 such as registers or a critical global variable.
838 set disconnected-tracing
839 show disconnected-tracing
840 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
841 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
844 set circular-trace-buffer
845 show circular-trace-buffer
846 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
847 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
848 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
849 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
851 set script-extension off|soft|strict
852 show script-extension
853 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
854 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
855 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
856 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
858 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
860 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
861 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
862 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
863 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
864 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
865 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
866 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
869 * Python API Improvements
871 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
872 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
873 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
875 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
876 `is_base_class' attribute.
878 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
880 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
881 evaluate an expression.
886 Define a trace state variable.
889 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
892 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
895 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
898 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
902 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
904 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
905 much more reliable. In particular:
906 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
907 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
908 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
909 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
910 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
911 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
912 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
913 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
914 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
915 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
916 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
917 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
918 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
919 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
920 non-threaded programs.
922 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
923 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
924 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
927 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
929 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
930 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
931 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
932 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
933 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
935 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
936 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
937 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
938 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
939 for tracepoint actions.
941 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
942 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
943 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
945 * Process record and replay
947 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
948 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
949 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
952 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
953 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
954 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
957 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
958 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
961 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
962 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
963 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
964 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
965 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
966 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
967 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
968 the installation instructions for more information.
970 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
971 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
972 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
973 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
975 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
976 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
978 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
979 now complete on file names.
981 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
982 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
983 For instance, consider:
985 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
986 # struct example variable;
989 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
990 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
992 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
993 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
995 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
996 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
999 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1000 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1001 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1003 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1004 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1005 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1006 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1008 * New remote packets
1011 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1014 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1015 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1016 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1019 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1020 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1023 Obtains additional operating system information
1027 Read or write additional signal information.
1029 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1031 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1032 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1033 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1035 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1036 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1038 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1039 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1040 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1042 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1043 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1045 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1047 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1049 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1050 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1052 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1053 list of section offsets.
1055 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1056 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1057 have also been fixed.
1059 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1060 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1061 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1063 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1066 template<typename T> class C { };
1069 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1071 ptype C<char const *>
1072 ptype C<char const*>
1073 ptype C<const char *>
1074 ptype C<const char*>
1076 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1078 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1079 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1081 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1082 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1083 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1085 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1086 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1088 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1091 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1092 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1094 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1095 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1100 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1101 available is determined at configure time.
1103 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1105 * Ada tasking support
1107 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1111 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1113 Print detailed information about task number N.
1115 Print the task number of the current task.
1117 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1119 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1120 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1122 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1124 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1125 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1126 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1127 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1128 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1129 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1132 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1133 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1136 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1137 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1138 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1139 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1142 * Multi-architecture debugging.
1144 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1145 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1146 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1147 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1148 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1150 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1151 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1152 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1153 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1154 --enable-targets configure option.
1156 * Non-stop mode debugging.
1158 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1159 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1160 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1161 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1162 section in the user manual for more information.
1164 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1165 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1166 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1167 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1168 extensions on linux targets.
1170 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1172 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1173 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1174 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1175 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1176 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1177 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1178 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1179 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1180 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1182 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1184 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1186 maint set python print-stack
1187 maint show python print-stack
1188 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1191 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1196 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1200 Show operating system information about processes.
1203 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1206 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1209 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1212 Kill inferior number NUM.
1216 set spu stop-on-load
1217 show spu stop-on-load
1218 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1220 set spu auto-flush-cache
1221 show spu auto-flush-cache
1222 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1223 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1225 set sh calling-convention
1226 show sh calling-convention
1227 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1230 show debug timestamp
1231 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1233 set disassemble-next-line
1234 show disassemble-next-line
1235 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1238 set remote noack-packet
1239 show remote noack-packet
1240 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1241 under "New remote packets."
1243 set remote query-attached-packet
1244 show remote query-attached-packet
1245 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1247 set remote read-siginfo-object
1248 show remote read-siginfo-object
1249 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1252 set remote write-siginfo-object
1253 show remote write-siginfo-object
1254 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1257 set remote reverse-continue
1258 show remote reverse-continue
1259 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1261 set remote reverse-step
1262 show remote reverse-step
1263 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1265 set displaced-stepping
1266 show displaced-stepping
1267 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1268 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1269 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1272 show debug displaced
1273 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1275 maint set internal-error
1276 maint show internal-error
1277 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1279 maint set internal-warning
1280 maint show internal-warning
1281 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
1286 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1288 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1289 show multiple-symbols
1290 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1291 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1292 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1294 set breakpoint always-inserted
1295 show breakpoint always-inserted
1296 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1297 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1298 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1300 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1301 show arm fallback-mode
1302 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1304 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1305 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1306 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1307 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1309 set disable-randomization
1310 show disable-randomization
1311 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1312 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1313 multiple debugging sessions.
1317 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1322 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1323 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1324 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1325 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1327 set target-wide-charset
1328 show target-wide-charset
1329 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1330 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1332 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1334 set tcp connect-timeout
1335 show tcp connect-timeout
1336 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1337 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1338 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1340 set libthread-db-search-path
1341 show libthread-db-search-path
1342 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1345 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1346 show schedule-multiple
1347 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1348 the current process.
1352 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1353 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1354 affecting correctness.
1356 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1357 show interactive-mode
1358 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1359 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1360 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1361 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1362 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1367 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1368 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1369 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1373 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1374 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1375 alias for the `fork' command.
1378 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1379 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1380 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1383 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1384 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1385 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1389 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1390 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1391 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1394 * New native configurations
1396 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1398 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1402 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
1403 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
1404 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
1407 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1408 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1414 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1416 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
1418 * New native configurations
1420 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
1421 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
1425 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
1426 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
1428 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1430 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1431 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1432 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1433 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1435 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1436 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1438 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
1441 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
1442 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1443 and in inlined functions.
1445 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1446 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1447 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1449 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1451 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1452 registers on PowerPC targets.
1454 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1455 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1457 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1458 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1460 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1461 extended-remote mode.
1463 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
1464 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1465 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1466 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
1468 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1469 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1470 target architectures.
1472 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1473 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1474 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1475 stored in two consecutive float registers.
1477 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1480 * Improved support for debugging Ada
1481 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1483 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1484 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1485 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1486 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1488 - Improved command completion in Ada
1491 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1496 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1497 show print frame-arguments
1498 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1499 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1504 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1511 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1513 * New remote packets
1520 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
1523 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1527 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1529 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
1531 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1532 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1533 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1535 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1536 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1537 -Bsymbolic linker option.
1539 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1540 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1543 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1544 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1546 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1547 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
1549 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1551 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1552 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1553 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1555 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1556 automatically displayed as character or string data.
1558 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1559 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1562 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1563 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
1564 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
1566 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1569 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1570 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1571 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1573 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1575 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1577 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1578 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1579 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1581 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1582 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1584 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1585 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1586 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1587 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1588 Windows and SymbianOS).
1590 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1591 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
1593 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1594 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
1600 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1601 when debugging using remote targets.
1603 set mem inaccessible-by-default
1604 show mem inaccessible-by-default
1605 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1606 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1607 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1608 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1609 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1611 set breakpoint auto-hw
1612 show breakpoint auto-hw
1613 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1614 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1615 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1616 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1617 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1618 including "next" and "finish".
1621 catch exception unhandled
1622 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1625 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1629 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1630 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1631 an alias to "set sysroot".
1634 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1635 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1638 * New native configurations
1640 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1643 unset tdesc filename
1645 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1646 not query the target for its built-in description.
1650 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
1651 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
1652 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
1654 * New remote packets
1657 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1658 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1660 qXfer:features:read:
1661 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1666 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1667 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1669 qXfer:libraries:read:
1670 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1671 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1672 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1673 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1677 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1685 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1686 i[34567]86-*-netware*
1687 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1688 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1690 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1693 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1694 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1703 * Other removed features
1710 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1717 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1722 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1723 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1728 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1729 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1731 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1733 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1734 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1735 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1736 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1738 MIPS ".pdr" sections
1740 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1741 in debugging information.
1745 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1746 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1748 set mips stack-arg-size
1749 set mips saved-gpreg-size
1751 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1753 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
1758 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
1760 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1761 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1762 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1764 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1765 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1768 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1769 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1771 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1772 stub provides the required support.
1774 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1775 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1780 unset substitute-path
1781 show substitute-path
1782 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1783 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1784 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1785 between compilation and debugging.
1789 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1790 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1791 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1795 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1797 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1798 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1800 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1802 * New remote packets
1805 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1806 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1807 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1808 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1812 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1813 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1815 qXfer:memory-map:read:
1816 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1817 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1822 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1824 * Removed remote packets
1827 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1828 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1830 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
1834 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1836 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1840 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1841 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1843 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1845 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1847 restart <n> Return the program state to a
1848 previously saved state.
1850 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1852 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1854 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1855 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1857 info forks List forks of the user program that
1858 are available to be debugged.
1860 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1861 forks of the user program that are
1862 available to be debugged.
1864 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1865 that are available to be debugged (and
1866 kill the forked process).
1868 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1869 that are available to be debugged (and
1870 allow the process to continue).
1874 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1876 * Improved Windows host support
1878 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1879 native console support, and remote communications using either
1880 network sockets or serial ports.
1882 * Improved Modula-2 language support
1884 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1885 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1886 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1887 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1888 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1889 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1893 The ARM rdi-share module.
1895 The Netware NLM debug server.
1897 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
1899 * New native configurations
1901 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
1902 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1906 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1908 * New command line options
1910 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1911 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1912 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1913 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1914 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1915 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1916 with the --command (-x) option.
1918 * Deprecated commands removed
1920 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1924 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1925 othernames set arm disassembler
1926 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1927 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1928 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1931 * New BSD user-level threads support
1933 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1934 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1937 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1938 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1939 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1941 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1942 are not yet supported.
1944 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1945 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1947 * REMOVED configurations and files
1949 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
1950 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1951 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
1953 * New "set print array-indexes" command
1955 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1956 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1959 * VAX floating point support
1961 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1963 * User-defined command support
1965 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1966 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1967 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1969 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1971 * New command line option
1973 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1976 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1978 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1979 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1980 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1981 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1982 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
1984 * Internationalization
1986 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1987 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1988 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1992 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1993 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1994 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1996 * New native configurations
1998 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2002 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2003 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2005 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2007 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2008 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2009 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2012 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2013 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2014 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2024 powerpc bdm protocol
2026 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2027 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2029 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2031 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2032 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2033 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2034 permanently REMOVED.
2043 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2045 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2047 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2048 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2051 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2053 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2054 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2055 IRIX long double values).
2059 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2060 command. This problem has been fixed.
2062 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2064 * Fix for ``many threads''
2066 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2067 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2070 ptrace: No such process.
2071 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2073 This problem has been fixed.
2075 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2077 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2080 * New ``start'' command.
2082 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2084 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2086 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2087 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2088 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2090 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2091 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2092 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2093 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2094 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2095 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2096 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2097 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2098 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2100 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2102 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2103 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2104 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2105 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2106 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2108 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2109 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2110 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2112 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2114 * New native configurations
2116 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2117 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2118 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2119 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2120 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2121 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2122 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2124 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2126 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2127 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2128 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2129 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2130 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2131 work, was also included.
2133 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2134 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2144 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2145 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2147 * REMOVED configurations and files
2149 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2150 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2151 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2152 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2153 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2154 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2155 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2156 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2157 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2158 sonymips mips-sony-*
2159 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2161 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2163 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2165 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2166 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2167 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2168 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2171 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2173 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2174 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2175 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2176 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2177 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2178 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2181 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2183 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
2185 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2186 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2187 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2189 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2191 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2192 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2194 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2196 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2197 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2198 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2200 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2202 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2203 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2205 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2207 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2208 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2209 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2211 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2213 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2214 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2215 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2217 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
2219 * Removed --with-mmalloc
2221 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2222 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2224 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
2226 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2227 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2228 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2229 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2231 * Revised SPARC target
2233 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2234 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
2235 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2236 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2237 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
2241 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2242 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2243 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2246 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2248 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2249 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2252 * C++ nested types and namespaces
2254 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2255 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2256 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2257 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2258 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2259 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2260 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2261 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2262 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2264 * New native configurations
2266 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
2267 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2268 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
2269 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2270 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
2272 * New debugging protocols
2274 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2276 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2278 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2279 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2280 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2282 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2284 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2285 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2286 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2287 permanently REMOVED.
2289 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2290 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2291 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2292 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2293 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2294 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2295 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2296 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2297 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2298 sonymips mips-sony-*
2299 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2301 * REMOVED configurations and files
2303 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2304 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2305 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2306 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2307 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2308 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2309 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2310 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2311 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2312 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
2313 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2314 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2315 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2316 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2317 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
2318 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2319 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2321 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2325 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2326 integrated into GDB.
2328 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2330 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2331 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2332 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2335 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2336 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2337 DWARF 2 CFI support.
2341 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2342 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2343 remote protocol documentation for details.
2345 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
2347 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2348 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2349 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2352 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2354 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2355 per-thread variables.
2357 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2359 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2360 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2362 * Separate debug info.
2364 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2365 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2366 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2367 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2368 and optional debug files.
2370 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2372 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2373 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2376 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2377 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2381 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2382 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2383 considered "useable".
2385 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2387 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2388 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2391 * GDB supports logging output to a file
2393 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2394 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
2396 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2398 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2399 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2402 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
2404 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2405 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2409 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2410 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2411 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2412 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2413 data, for more informative profiling results.
2415 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2417 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2418 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
2419 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
2421 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2424 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2425 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2426 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2427 in a subsequent -var-update.
2429 * New native configurations.
2431 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2433 * Multi-arched targets.
2435 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
2436 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2438 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2440 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2441 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2442 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2443 permanently REMOVED.
2445 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2446 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2447 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2448 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2449 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2450 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2451 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2452 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2453 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2454 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2455 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2456 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2458 * REMOVED configurations and files
2461 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2462 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2463 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2464 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2465 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2466 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2468 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2469 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2470 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2471 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2472 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2473 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2475 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
2477 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2478 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2479 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2480 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2481 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2483 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
2485 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2487 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2488 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2489 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2490 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2491 shared libs like mad''.
2493 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
2495 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2496 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2497 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2498 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
2500 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2502 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2503 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2506 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2507 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2509 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2510 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2512 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2513 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2514 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2515 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2517 * Multi-arched targets.
2519 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2520 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2522 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
2523 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2524 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2528 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2531 * New native configurations
2533 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
2534 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
2535 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
2536 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
2538 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2540 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2541 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2542 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2543 permanently REMOVED.
2545 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2546 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2547 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2548 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2549 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2550 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2551 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2552 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2553 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2554 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2556 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2557 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2559 * OBSOLETE languages
2561 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2563 * REMOVED configurations and files
2565 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2566 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2567 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2568 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2569 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2571 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2573 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2575 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2576 commands. The default is 1024.
2578 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2580 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2582 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2584 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2585 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2586 from a file into memory (restore).
2588 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2590 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2591 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2592 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2594 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2602 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2603 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2604 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2606 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2607 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2608 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2610 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2611 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2612 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2614 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2615 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2616 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2618 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
2620 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2622 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2623 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2624 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2625 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2626 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2627 (notably embedded) targets.
2629 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2631 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2632 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2633 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2634 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
2636 * New command line option
2638 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2640 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2642 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2643 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2644 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2645 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2646 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2647 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2648 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2649 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2650 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2651 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2653 * Changes in ARM configurations.
2655 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2656 configuration is fully multi-arch.
2658 * New native configurations
2660 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
2661 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
2662 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
2663 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
2667 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2669 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2671 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2672 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2673 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2674 permanently REMOVED.
2676 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2677 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2678 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2679 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2680 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2682 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2684 * REMOVED configurations and files
2686 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2688 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2689 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2690 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2691 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2692 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2693 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2694 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2695 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2696 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2697 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2698 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
2700 * Changes to command line processing
2702 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2703 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2705 * Changes to key bindings
2707 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2709 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2711 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2713 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2716 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2718 Numerous documentation fixes.
2720 Numerous testsuite fixes.
2722 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
2724 * New native configurations
2726 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2727 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2728 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
2729 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2730 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
2731 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
2735 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
2737 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
2739 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2741 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
2742 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2743 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2744 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2745 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2747 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2748 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2749 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2750 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2751 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2752 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2753 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2754 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
2756 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2757 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2759 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2760 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2761 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2762 permanently REMOVED.
2764 * REMOVED configurations and files
2766 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2767 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2769 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2773 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
2775 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
2776 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2781 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2783 * The MI enabled by default.
2785 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2786 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2787 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2788 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2789 which is now deprecated.
2791 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2793 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2794 main features are supported:
2796 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2798 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2801 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2803 - a Pascal expression parser.
2805 However, some important features are not yet supported.
2807 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2809 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2811 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2812 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2814 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2816 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2818 * Changes in completion.
2820 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2821 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2822 users expect at the shell prompt.
2824 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2825 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2826 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2827 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2828 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2829 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2830 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2832 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2834 * New platform-independent commands:
2836 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2837 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2838 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2840 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2842 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2843 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2844 many threads as your system allows you to have.
2846 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2848 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2849 multi-threaded programs though.
2851 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
2853 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2855 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2856 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2859 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2861 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2862 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2863 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2864 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2865 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2868 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2869 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2870 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2872 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2874 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2875 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2877 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2878 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2881 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2882 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2883 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2884 a given linear address.
2886 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2887 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2888 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2890 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2892 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2894 * Changes in documentation.
2896 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2897 Documentation License.
2899 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2902 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2904 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2907 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2908 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2909 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2911 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2913 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2914 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2915 contents of this file.
2919 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
2921 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
2923 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2925 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2926 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2927 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2928 greater level of detail.
2930 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2932 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2933 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2934 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2937 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2939 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2940 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2941 machines ``out of the box''.
2943 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2944 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2945 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2946 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2947 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2949 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2950 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2951 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2952 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2953 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2955 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2956 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2959 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2962 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2963 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2964 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2965 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2967 * New native configurations
2969 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
2970 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2974 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
2975 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2976 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
2977 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2979 * OBSOLETE configurations
2981 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2982 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2984 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2987 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2988 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2989 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2990 be permanently REMOVED.
2992 * Gould support removed
2994 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2996 * New features for SVR4
2998 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2999 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3000 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3002 * Many C++ enhancements
3004 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3005 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3007 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3009 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3010 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3011 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3012 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3014 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3015 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3017 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3019 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3020 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3021 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3023 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3024 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3026 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3028 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3029 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3030 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3032 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3034 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3035 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3036 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3038 * ``apropos'' command added.
3040 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3041 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3042 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3046 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3047 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3048 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3049 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3050 enabled by configuring with:
3052 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3054 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3056 * New native configurations
3058 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3059 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3060 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3064 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3065 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3066 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3068 * OBSOLETE configurations
3070 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3072 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3073 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3074 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3075 be permanently REMOVED.
3079 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3080 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3081 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3082 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3083 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3084 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3085 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3090 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3092 * set extension-language
3094 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3095 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3096 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3097 set extension-language .c c++
3098 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3099 and their associated languages.
3101 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3103 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3104 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3105 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3109 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3110 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3112 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3113 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3115 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3116 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3117 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3118 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3119 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3120 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3121 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3122 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3124 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3125 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3126 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3127 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3131 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3132 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3133 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3134 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3135 for xdb and dbx commands.
3139 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3140 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3141 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3143 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3144 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3145 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3147 * Debugging across forks
3149 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3154 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3155 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3156 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3158 * GDB remote protocol additions
3160 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3161 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3162 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3163 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3165 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3166 full 64-bit address. The command
3168 set remoteaddresssize 32
3170 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3171 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3174 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3175 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3177 maint packet heythere
3179 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3180 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3183 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3184 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3185 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3187 * Tracing can collect general expressions
3189 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3190 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3191 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3193 * mask-address variable for Mips
3195 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3196 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3197 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3199 * Higher serial baud rates
3201 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3202 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3203 to achieve all of these rates.)
3207 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3208 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3211 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3213 * New native configurations
3215 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3216 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3217 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3218 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3219 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3220 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3221 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3225 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3226 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3227 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3228 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3229 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3230 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3231 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3232 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3233 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3234 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3235 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3237 * New debugging protocols
3239 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3240 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3241 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3242 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3243 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3244 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3248 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3249 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3254 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3255 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3257 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3259 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3260 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3261 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3263 * Live range splitting
3265 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3266 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3267 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3271 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3272 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3276 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3277 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3278 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3283 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3288 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3289 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3290 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3291 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3292 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3293 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3297 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3298 the symbol at the specified address.
3302 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3303 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3304 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3305 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3306 file tracepoint.c for more details.
3310 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3311 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3312 of most MIPS variants.
3316 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3317 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3318 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3322 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3323 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3324 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3325 the possible architectures.
3327 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3329 * New native configurations
3331 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3332 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3333 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3334 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3335 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3336 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3340 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3341 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3342 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3343 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3344 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3346 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3350 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3351 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3352 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3353 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3354 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3358 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3360 * Windows 95/NT native
3362 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3363 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3364 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3365 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3366 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3368 * dont-repeat command
3370 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3371 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3372 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3373 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3375 * Send break instead of ^C
3377 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3378 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3379 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3381 * Remote protocol timeout
3383 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3384 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3385 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3387 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3389 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3390 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3391 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3392 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3393 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3395 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3396 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3397 automatically on hpux10.
3399 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3401 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3403 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3405 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3406 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3407 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3408 every character. The default value is 1050.
3410 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3412 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3413 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3414 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3415 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3416 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3417 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3419 * Speedups for remote debugging
3421 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3422 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3423 and more efficient S-record downloading.
3425 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3427 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3428 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3430 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3432 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
3434 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3435 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3437 * Remote targets use caching
3439 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3440 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3441 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3442 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3443 off' turns the the data cache off.
3445 * Remote targets may have threads
3447 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3448 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3449 gdb/remote.c for details.
3453 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3454 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3455 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3456 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3457 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3458 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3459 sequence is something like
3461 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3463 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3467 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3468 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3469 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3470 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3471 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3472 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3473 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3474 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3478 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3479 but does simplify configuration and building.
3483 GDB now supports hpux10.
3485 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3487 * New native configurations
3489 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3490 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3491 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3492 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3496 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3497 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3498 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3499 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3502 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3504 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3505 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3506 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3507 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3508 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3510 * Arguments to user-defined commands
3512 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3513 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3516 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3518 To execute the command use:
3521 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3522 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3523 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3525 * New `if' and `while' commands
3527 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3528 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3529 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3530 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3531 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3532 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3533 if the expression is zero.
3535 * Fortran source language mode
3537 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3538 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3539 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3540 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3543 * Better HPUX support
3545 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3546 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3547 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3548 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3549 that behavior do the following before running the program:
3555 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3556 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3562 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3563 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3566 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3567 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3569 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3571 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3572 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3573 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3574 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3575 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3576 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3578 * New DOS host serial code
3580 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3581 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3584 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3586 * New "complete" command
3588 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3589 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3591 * Trailing space optional in prompt
3593 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3594 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3596 * Breakpoint hit counts
3598 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3599 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3600 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3601 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3602 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3605 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3607 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3608 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3609 arrays actually contain only short strings.
3611 * Shared library breakpoints
3613 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3614 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3616 * Hardware watchpoints
3618 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3619 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3621 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
3625 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3626 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3628 * Improved Irix 5 support
3630 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3632 * Improved HPPA support
3634 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3636 * New native configurations
3638 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3639 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3640 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3641 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3645 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3646 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3649 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3651 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3652 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3656 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3657 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3659 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3661 * Irix 5 is now supported
3665 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3666 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3667 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3668 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3669 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3672 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3674 * User visible changes:
3678 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3679 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3680 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3681 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3682 debugging info for the mips target).
3684 * DEC Alpha native support
3686 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3687 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3688 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3689 Alpha-specific notes.
3691 * Preliminary thread implementation
3693 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3695 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
3697 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3698 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3701 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3703 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3704 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3705 call methods, ...etc.
3707 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3709 * User visible changes:
3711 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3712 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3713 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3714 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3716 Filename completion now works.
3718 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3719 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3720 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3722 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3723 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3724 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3725 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3726 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3730 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3731 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3734 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3738 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3739 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3740 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3744 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3745 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3746 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3747 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3748 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3752 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3753 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3754 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3756 * New targets supported
3758 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3759 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3760 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3761 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3762 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3764 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3765 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3766 GO32 memory extender.
3768 * New remote protocols
3770 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3772 * New source languages supported
3774 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3775 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3776 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3779 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3781 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3783 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3784 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3785 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3786 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3787 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3788 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3790 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3792 * Faster and better demangling
3794 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3795 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3796 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3797 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3798 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3799 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3802 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3803 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3804 compiler does not actually implement.
3806 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3808 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3809 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3810 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3811 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3812 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3813 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3816 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3817 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3819 * Improved configure script
3821 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3822 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3823 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3824 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3826 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3827 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3828 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3829 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3830 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3831 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3833 * Documentation improvements
3835 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3836 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3837 before submitting changes.
3839 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3840 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3841 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3842 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3843 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3845 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3846 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3847 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3848 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3849 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3850 around this problem.
3854 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3855 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3856 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3859 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3860 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3862 * New native hosts supported
3864 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3865 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3867 * New targets supported
3869 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3871 * New file formats supported
3873 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3874 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3878 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3880 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3881 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3883 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3884 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3885 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3887 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3888 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3890 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3891 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3892 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3895 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3896 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3897 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3898 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3899 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3901 * Internal improvements
3903 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3904 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3906 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3907 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3908 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3909 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3910 shared code that handles any of them.
3912 * New command line options
3914 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3918 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3919 General Public License.
3921 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3923 * Host/native/target split
3925 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3926 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3927 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3928 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3929 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3931 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3932 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3933 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3934 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3935 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3936 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3937 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3939 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3940 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3941 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3943 * New hosts supported
3945 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3946 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3947 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3949 * New targets supported
3951 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3952 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3954 * New native hosts supported
3956 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3957 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3958 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3960 * New file formats supported
3962 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3963 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3964 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3968 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3969 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3970 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3972 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3974 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3975 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3976 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3977 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3981 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3982 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3983 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3985 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3989 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3990 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3993 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3994 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3996 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3997 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3998 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3999 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4000 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4001 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4003 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4004 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4005 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4006 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4010 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4011 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4012 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4013 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4014 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4016 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4017 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4018 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4019 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4023 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4024 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4025 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4026 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4027 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4028 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4029 each instruction being stepped through.
4031 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4032 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4034 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4035 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4036 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4037 processor with a serial port.
4041 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4042 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4043 supported, and what files each one uses.
4047 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4048 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4049 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4050 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4052 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4053 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4054 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4055 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4059 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4060 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4061 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4062 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4063 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4064 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4066 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4069 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4071 * Better support for C++ function names
4073 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4074 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4075 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4076 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4077 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4079 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4080 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4081 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4082 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4083 for the list of formats.
4085 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4087 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4088 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4089 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4090 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4091 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4092 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4095 * New 'maintenance' command
4097 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4098 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4099 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4101 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4102 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4103 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4104 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4105 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4106 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4108 The following commands are new:
4110 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4111 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4112 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4114 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4116 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4117 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4118 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4119 read after argv processing.
4121 * New hosts supported
4123 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4125 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4127 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4128 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4129 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4130 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4131 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4134 * New targets supported
4136 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4138 * More smarts about finding #include files
4140 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4141 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4142 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4143 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4144 the one that contains your sources.
4146 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4147 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4148 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4150 * Interesting infernals change
4152 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4153 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4154 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4155 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4157 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4159 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4160 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4161 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4163 See the ChangeLog for details.
4165 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4167 * New machines supported (host and target)
4169 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4171 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4173 * New malloc package
4175 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4176 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4177 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4178 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4179 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4180 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4184 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4185 'help info proc' for details.
4187 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4189 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4190 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4193 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4195 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4196 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4197 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4198 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4199 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4200 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4202 * Cross byte order fixes
4204 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4205 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4207 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4209 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4210 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4211 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4212 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4213 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4214 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4215 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4216 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4217 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4218 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4220 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4221 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4222 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4223 slower, but makes future operations faster.
4225 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4226 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4227 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4230 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4232 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4233 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4234 shared across multiple host platforms.
4236 * longjmp() handling
4238 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4239 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4240 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4241 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4245 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4246 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4251 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4252 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4253 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4255 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4257 * New machines supported (host and target)
4259 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4261 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4262 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4264 * New machines supported (target)
4266 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4270 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4271 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4272 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4274 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4275 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4276 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4277 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4278 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4281 * New features for SVR4
4283 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4284 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4285 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4287 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4288 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4289 it prints the address mappings of the process.
4291 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4292 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4294 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4296 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4297 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4298 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4299 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4300 same code linked statically.
4304 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4305 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4306 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4307 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4308 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4309 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4313 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4314 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4315 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4318 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4320 * New machines supported (host and target)
4322 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4323 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4324 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4326 * Almost SCO Unix support
4328 We had hoped to support:
4329 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4330 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4331 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4332 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4334 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4336 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4337 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4338 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4339 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4344 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4345 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4346 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4350 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4351 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4352 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4354 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4356 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4357 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4358 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4360 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4361 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4362 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4363 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4366 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4367 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4368 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4369 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4372 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4373 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4376 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4377 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4378 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4381 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4383 * Improved configuration
4385 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4386 Porting BFD is simpler.
4390 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4391 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4392 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4393 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4397 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4399 * New host supported (not target)
4401 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4404 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4406 * Multiple source language support
4408 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4409 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4410 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4411 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4412 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4413 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4417 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4418 currently under development at the State University of New York at
4419 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4420 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4422 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4423 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4424 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4426 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4427 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4431 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4432 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4433 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4434 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4437 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4439 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4440 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4441 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4442 examining core files.
4446 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4449 * New machines supported (host and target)
4451 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4452 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4453 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4455 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4457 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4459 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4461 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4462 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4463 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4465 * New remote interfaces
4471 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4475 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4477 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4478 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4479 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4480 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4481 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4482 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4483 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4484 stub on the target system.
4486 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4488 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4489 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4490 object file types such as a.out and coff.
4492 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4493 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4496 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4498 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4499 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4501 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4502 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4503 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4505 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4506 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4507 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4508 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4510 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4511 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4512 it is already running. Default is ON.
4514 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4515 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4516 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4517 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4520 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4521 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4522 or the value of the environment variable
4525 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4526 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4529 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4530 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4531 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4533 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4534 history expansion will be performed on
4535 command line input. The default is OFF.
4537 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4538 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4539 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4541 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4542 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4543 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4546 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4547 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4548 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4551 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4552 ``set width'' instead.
4554 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4555 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4556 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4557 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4559 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4562 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4565 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4568 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4571 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4573 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4574 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4575 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4579 * Support for Shared Libraries
4581 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4582 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4583 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4584 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4585 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4586 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4587 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4588 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4590 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4591 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4592 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4594 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4599 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4600 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4601 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4602 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4603 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4604 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4606 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4608 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4610 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4611 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4612 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4615 * C++ multiple inheritance
4617 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4620 * C++ exception handling
4622 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4623 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4624 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4627 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4628 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4629 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4631 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4632 current stack frame.
4635 * Minor command changes
4637 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4638 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4639 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4641 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4642 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4643 frames without printing.
4645 * New directory command
4647 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4648 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4649 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4650 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4651 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4653 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4655 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4658 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4659 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4660 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4661 where the program that you are debugging will run.