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