1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.12
6 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
7 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
8 available in future Intel CPUs.
10 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
14 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
15 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
17 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
20 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
22 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
24 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
25 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
28 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
30 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
31 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
33 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
35 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
36 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
37 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
38 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
41 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
43 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
44 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
47 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
49 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
50 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
52 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
54 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
59 eval "print $arg%d", $i
64 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
66 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
67 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
69 * New native configurations
71 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
76 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
77 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
82 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
87 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
88 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
90 -file-list-shared-libraries
91 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
92 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
96 set disassembler-options
97 show disassembler-options
98 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
99 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
100 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
101 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
102 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
104 maint print arc arc-instruction address
105 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
107 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
109 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
111 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
112 default. One must now explicitly configure with
113 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
114 option will be removed in a future release.
116 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
119 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
120 memory backward from the given address. For example:
123 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
124 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
125 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
126 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
127 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
128 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
129 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
130 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
131 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
133 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
134 arrays of dynamic types.
136 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
137 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
138 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
139 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
140 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
141 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
143 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
146 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
147 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
148 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
150 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
152 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
153 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
154 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
155 signal received and code location.
159 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
160 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
161 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
162 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
164 * Rust language support.
165 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
166 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
169 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
171 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
172 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
173 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
174 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
175 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
176 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
177 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
178 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
179 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
180 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
183 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
185 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
186 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
191 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
192 skip -function function
193 skip -rfunction regular-expression
194 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
195 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
196 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
198 maint info line-table REGEXP
199 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
202 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
205 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
206 using the TTY file for input/output.
210 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
211 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
212 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
213 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
214 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
217 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
218 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
219 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
220 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
223 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
224 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
225 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
227 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
230 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
231 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
232 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
233 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
234 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
235 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
237 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
238 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
239 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
240 bytecode into native code.
242 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
243 recording. For example:
245 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
247 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
249 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
253 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
255 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
257 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
259 * Per-inferior thread numbers
261 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
262 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
263 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
267 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
268 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
269 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
270 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
272 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
273 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
274 are no longer unique between inferiors.
276 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
277 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
278 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
280 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
283 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
284 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
287 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
290 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
291 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
292 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
293 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
296 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
299 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
302 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
305 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
306 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
309 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
310 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
312 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
314 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
316 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
317 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
319 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
320 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
323 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
324 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
327 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
328 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
331 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
333 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
334 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
335 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
337 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
338 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
342 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
343 maint show target-non-stop
344 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
345 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
346 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
348 maint set bfd-sharing
349 maint show bfd-sharing
350 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
354 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
358 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
360 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
361 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
362 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
364 set remote thread-events
365 show remote thread-events
366 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
368 set ada print-signatures on|off
369 show ada print-signatures"
370 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
371 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
375 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
376 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
377 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
379 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
380 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
381 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
382 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
383 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
384 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
386 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
387 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
389 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
390 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
392 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
394 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
395 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
396 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
397 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
398 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
399 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
401 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
402 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
407 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
409 exec-events feature in qSupported
410 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
411 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
412 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
413 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
416 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
419 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
420 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
422 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
423 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
426 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
427 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
428 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
429 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
430 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
431 stop for that same thread.
434 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
435 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
436 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
439 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
440 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
442 syscall_entry stop reason
443 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
445 syscall_return stop reason
446 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
448 * Extended-remote exec events
450 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
451 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
452 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
454 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
455 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
456 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
458 * Thread names in remote protocol
460 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
463 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
465 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
466 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
467 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
468 fork and exec catchpoints.
470 * Remote syscall events
472 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
473 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
475 set remote catch-syscall-packet
476 show remote catch-syscall-packet
477 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
481 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
482 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
487 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
488 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
489 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
490 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
491 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
492 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
494 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
496 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
497 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
498 including advance SIMD instructions.
500 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
502 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
503 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
504 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
505 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
506 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
507 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
508 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
510 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
512 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
514 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
515 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
518 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
519 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
520 and may include things like its command line arguments.
522 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
523 is now available on all platforms.
525 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
526 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
527 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
528 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
529 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
530 backward compatibility.
532 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
533 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
534 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
535 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
537 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
538 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
539 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
540 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
543 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
545 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
547 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
548 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
549 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
550 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
551 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
552 See "New remote packets" below.
554 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
555 available register groups, including target specific groups.
557 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
558 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
559 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
560 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
565 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
569 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
570 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
571 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
572 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
573 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
574 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
575 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
576 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
577 "const" version of the value respectively.
581 maint print symbol-cache
582 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
584 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
585 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
587 maint flush-symbol-cache
588 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
592 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
595 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
599 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
602 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
603 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
607 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
610 Print information about branch tracing internals.
612 maint btrace packet-history
613 Print the raw branch tracing data.
615 maint btrace clear-packet-history
616 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
619 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
620 anew by the next "record" command.
625 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
627 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
630 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
631 show debug dwarf-read
632 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
634 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
635 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
636 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
637 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
639 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
640 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
641 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
642 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
645 show debug dwarf-line
646 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
650 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
651 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
652 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
653 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
655 set history remove-duplicates
656 show history remove-duplicates
657 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
659 maint set symbol-cache-size
660 maint show symbol-cache-size
661 Control the size of the symbol cache.
663 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
664 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
666 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
667 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
669 set debug linux-namespaces
670 show debug linux-namespaces
671 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
673 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
674 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
675 Intel Processor Trace format.
676 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
677 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
679 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
680 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
683 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
684 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
686 * Python/Guile scripting
688 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
689 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
693 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
694 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
696 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
697 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
700 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
701 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
705 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
709 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
710 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
711 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
715 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
716 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
719 Return information about files on the remote system.
722 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
723 create a process running on the remote system.
726 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
727 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
728 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
729 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
732 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
735 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
737 vforkdone stop reason
738 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
739 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
741 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
742 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
743 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
744 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
745 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
746 whether these features are enabled.
748 * Extended-remote fork events
750 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
751 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
752 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
753 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
755 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
756 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
757 the btrace record target.
758 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
760 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
761 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
763 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
766 * Removed command line options
768 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
770 * Removed targets and native configurations
772 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
773 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
775 * New configure options
778 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
779 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
781 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
782 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
783 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
784 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
786 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
790 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
792 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
794 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
798 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
799 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
800 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
801 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
802 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
803 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
804 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
805 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
806 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
807 selecting a new file to debug.
808 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
809 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
811 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
814 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
815 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
816 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
817 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
819 * New Python-based convenience functions:
821 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
822 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
823 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
824 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
826 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
827 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
828 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
829 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
830 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
831 interface with this new feature are:
833 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
834 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
838 demangle [-l language] [--] name
839 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
840 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
841 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
842 as "maint demangler-warning".
844 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
845 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
847 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
848 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
851 maint print user-registers
852 List all currently available "user" registers.
854 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
855 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
856 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
858 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
859 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
860 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
863 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
864 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
865 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
866 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
869 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
870 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
871 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
872 switched threads meanwhile.
874 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
876 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
877 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
878 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
879 is now the default mode.
883 set debug symbol-lookup
884 show debug symbol-lookup
885 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
889 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
890 inferiors that have exited.
894 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
898 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
900 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
901 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
902 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
903 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
904 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
906 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
907 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
908 its alias "share", instead.
910 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
912 * New command line options
915 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
917 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
918 as specified in ISO C99.
920 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
921 with or without disassembly.
925 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
926 available is determined at configure time.
927 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
928 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
930 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
934 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
938 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
940 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
941 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
943 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
944 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
948 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
949 show print symbol-loading
950 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
951 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
952 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
955 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
956 show guile print-stack
957 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
959 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
960 show auto-load guile-scripts
961 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
963 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
964 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
965 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
966 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
967 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
968 usage of this option.
970 set auto-connect-native-target
972 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
973 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
974 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
976 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
977 show record btrace replay-memory-access
978 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
980 maint set target-async (on|off)
981 maint show target-async
982 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
983 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
984 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
985 occurring only in synchronous mode.
987 set mi-async (on|off)
989 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
990 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
992 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
993 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
995 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
996 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
997 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
998 "set target-async on" command.
1000 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1002 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1003 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1004 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1005 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1006 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1008 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1009 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1010 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1012 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1013 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1014 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1015 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1016 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1017 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1018 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1020 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1021 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1023 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1024 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1025 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1027 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1028 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1029 memory or registers.
1031 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1033 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1034 remote. It now works with all targets.
1036 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1037 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1038 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1039 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1040 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1041 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1042 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1043 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1044 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1047 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1048 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1049 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1051 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1053 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1054 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1055 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1057 * New remote packets
1059 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1060 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1061 branch trace incrementally.
1065 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1066 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1068 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1069 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1070 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1071 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1072 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1075 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1077 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1078 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1079 its alias "share", instead.
1081 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1082 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1087 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1088 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1089 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1090 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1091 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1092 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1093 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1094 commands and CLI execution commands.
1096 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1098 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1099 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1100 recording has been added.
1102 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1104 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1105 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1107 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1108 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1109 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1110 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1111 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1112 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1115 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1117 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1119 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1120 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1121 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1122 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1127 (gdb) info registers rax
1130 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1131 "*value not available*".
1133 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1138 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1139 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1140 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1141 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1142 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1143 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1147 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1148 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1149 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1151 * Removed native configurations
1153 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1154 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1156 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1157 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1158 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1159 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1160 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1161 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1162 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1166 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1167 maint check-psymtabs
1168 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1170 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1171 maint expand-symtabs
1172 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1175 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1177 maint set|show per-command
1178 maint set|show per-command space
1179 maint set|show per-command time
1180 maint set|show per-command symtab
1181 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1183 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1184 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1185 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1186 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1187 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1190 info exceptions REGEXP
1191 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1192 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1197 set debug symfile off|on
1199 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1200 symbol tables within those files
1202 set print raw frame-arguments
1203 show print raw frame-arguments
1204 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1205 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1207 set remote trace-status-packet
1208 show remote trace-status-packet
1209 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1213 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1217 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1219 set startup-with-shell
1220 show startup-with-shell
1221 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1226 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1227 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1229 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1230 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1231 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1232 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1235 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1236 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1237 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1239 * New command-line options
1241 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1243 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1244 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1246 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1249 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1251 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1252 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1254 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1255 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1257 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1258 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1259 due to an uncaught signal.
1263 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1264 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1265 command, which should contain "language-option".
1267 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1268 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1270 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1271 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1272 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1273 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1274 "undefined-command-error-code".
1276 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1279 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1281 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1282 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1285 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1286 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1288 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1289 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1290 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1292 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1293 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1294 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1295 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1296 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1297 "exec-run-start-option".
1299 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1300 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1302 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1303 the new "info exceptions" command.
1305 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1306 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1307 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1311 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1312 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1313 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1316 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1317 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1319 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1320 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1321 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1323 * New remote packets
1327 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1328 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1329 involvemement at each single-step.
1331 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1332 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1333 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1334 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1335 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1336 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1339 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1341 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1342 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1344 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1345 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1346 trace state variables.
1348 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1351 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1352 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1354 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1356 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1357 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1358 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1359 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1361 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
1363 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1364 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1365 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1366 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1368 set|show record full insn-number-max
1369 set|show record full stop-at-limit
1370 set|show record full memory-query
1372 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1373 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1374 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1375 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1376 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1380 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1381 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1383 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1384 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1385 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1387 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1388 instruction granularity
1390 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1391 function granularity
1393 * New native configurations
1395 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1396 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1397 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1398 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1402 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1403 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1404 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1405 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1406 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1408 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1409 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1410 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1411 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1412 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1413 --data-directory command-line option.
1415 * New command line options:
1417 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1418 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1420 * Removed command line options
1422 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1425 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1428 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1432 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1434 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1436 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1438 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1440 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1441 of architecture in the Python API.
1443 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1444 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1446 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1448 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1449 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1451 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1453 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1456 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1457 default for GCC since November 2000.
1459 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1461 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1462 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1464 * New configure options
1466 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1467 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1468 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1469 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1470 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1471 options allow the user to override that default.
1472 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1473 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1474 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1476 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1479 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1480 conditions to be attached.
1483 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1485 python-interactive [command]
1487 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1488 and print the result of expressions.
1491 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1493 enable type-printer [name]...
1494 disable type-printer [name]...
1495 Enable or disable type printers.
1499 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1500 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1505 set print type methods (on|off)
1506 show print type methods
1507 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1508 The default is to show them.
1510 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1511 show print type typedefs
1512 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1513 The default is to show them.
1515 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1516 show filename-display
1517 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1518 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1520 set trace-buffer-size
1521 show trace-buffer-size
1522 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1524 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1525 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1526 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1530 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1533 set debug coff-pe-read
1534 show debug coff-pe-read
1535 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1540 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1543 set debug notification
1544 show debug notification
1545 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1549 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1550 "=cmd-param-changed".
1551 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1552 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1553 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1554 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1555 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1556 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1557 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1558 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1560 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1561 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1562 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1563 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1564 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1565 library load/unload events.
1566 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1567 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1568 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1569 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1570 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1571 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1572 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1573 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1575 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1576 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1577 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1578 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1580 * New remote packets
1583 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1584 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1587 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1588 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1592 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1593 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1596 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1597 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1599 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1601 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1602 for more x32 ABI info.
1604 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1606 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1608 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1609 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1610 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1611 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1612 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1613 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1614 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1615 "info os msg" lists message queues
1616 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1618 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1619 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1620 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1621 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1622 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1623 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1625 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1626 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1627 record/replay support.
1629 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1633 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1636 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1638 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1639 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1641 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1643 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1644 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1646 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1647 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1648 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1651 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1652 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1654 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1655 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1656 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1658 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1659 object associated with a PC value.
1661 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1662 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1664 * Go language support.
1665 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1668 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1669 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1671 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1672 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1674 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1675 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1676 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1677 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1678 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1681 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1682 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1683 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1684 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1686 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1687 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1689 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1690 since December 2007.
1692 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1693 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1694 command does. For instance:
1696 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1698 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1699 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1700 created, using the "condition" command.
1702 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1703 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1705 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1707 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1708 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1709 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1710 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1711 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1712 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1713 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1714 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1716 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1717 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1718 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1719 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1720 the .gdb_index section.
1722 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1724 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1729 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1731 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1735 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1736 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1737 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1739 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1740 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1742 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1745 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1746 C++ and Java objects.
1748 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1749 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1750 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1751 configured with '--with-python'.
1753 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1754 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1755 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1756 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1757 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1758 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1759 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1761 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1762 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1763 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1764 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1766 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1767 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1768 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1769 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1771 ** "set print symbol"
1773 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1774 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1775 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1777 * Deprecated commands
1779 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1780 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1784 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1785 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1787 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1788 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1789 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1790 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1795 set mips compression
1796 show mips compression
1797 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1798 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1801 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1803 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1804 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1805 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1806 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1808 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1812 Disable auto-loading globally.
1815 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1817 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1818 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1819 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1821 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1822 show auto-load python-scripts
1823 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1825 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1826 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1827 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1829 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1830 show auto-load libthread-db
1831 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1833 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1834 show auto-load scripts-directory
1835 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1836 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1837 of the directories listed by this option.
1838 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1840 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1841 show auto-load safe-path
1842 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1843 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1845 set debug auto-load on|off
1846 show debug auto-load
1847 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1849 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1851 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1852 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1853 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1854 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1856 set dprintf-function <expr>
1857 show dprintf-function
1858 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1859 show dprintf-channel
1860 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1861 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1863 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1864 show disconnected-dprintf
1865 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1866 after GDB disconnects.
1868 * New configure options
1870 --with-auto-load-dir
1871 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1872 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1873 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1874 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1875 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1877 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1878 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1879 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1881 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1882 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1885 * New remote packets
1887 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1889 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1890 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1891 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1892 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1896 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1897 program without GDB involvement.
1899 * New command line options
1901 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1902 before loading inferior.
1903 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1904 execute it before loading inferior.
1906 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1908 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1909 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1910 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1911 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1914 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1915 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1917 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1918 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1919 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1920 target hardware watchpoint.
1922 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1923 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1924 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1925 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1929 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1930 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1933 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1934 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1935 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1936 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1937 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1940 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1943 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1944 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1945 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1946 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1947 corresponding value.
1949 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1950 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1951 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1954 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1955 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1956 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1957 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1959 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1961 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1964 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1965 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1966 available in the CLI.
1968 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1969 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1970 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1971 "some_type.items()".
1973 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1976 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1977 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1978 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1979 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1980 any anonymous fields.
1984 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1987 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1988 "=breakpoint-modified".
1990 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1992 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1993 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1994 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1997 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1998 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1999 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2000 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2001 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2003 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2004 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2006 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2007 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2008 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2009 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2010 use this option to specify where to find it.
2012 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2013 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2014 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2015 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2016 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2017 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2018 section in the user manual for more details.
2020 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2021 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2022 become available after that.
2024 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2026 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2027 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2033 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2034 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2038 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2039 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2040 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2042 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2043 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2044 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2046 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2047 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2048 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2049 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2050 name starts with a hyphen.
2052 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2053 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2054 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2055 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2056 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2057 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2058 number of bytes that will be collected.
2061 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2062 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2063 setting the variable trace-notes.
2066 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2067 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2068 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2071 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2072 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2073 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2074 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2075 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2078 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2079 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2080 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2084 set debug dwarf2-read
2085 show debug dwarf2-read
2086 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2087 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2089 set debug symtab-create
2090 show debug symtab-create
2091 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2092 creation. The default is off.
2095 show extended-prompt
2096 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2097 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2098 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2099 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2100 prompt is displayed.
2102 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2103 show print entry-values
2104 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2105 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2106 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2108 set debug entry-values
2109 show debug entry-values
2110 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2111 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2113 set basenames-may-differ
2114 show basenames-may-differ
2115 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2116 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2117 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2118 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2119 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2120 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2121 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2122 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2128 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2129 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2130 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2131 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2133 set trace-stop-notes
2134 show trace-stop-notes
2135 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2136 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2137 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2138 started by someone else.
2140 * New remote packets
2144 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2148 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2152 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2156 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2160 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2163 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2164 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2168 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2172 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2174 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2176 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2178 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2180 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2181 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2182 matches the given regular expression.
2184 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2186 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2187 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2189 * New command line options
2191 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2192 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2194 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2195 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2197 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2198 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2199 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2201 * GDB now understands thread names.
2203 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2204 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2206 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2207 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2210 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2211 has been integrated into GDB.
2215 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2216 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2217 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2219 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2220 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2221 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2222 and allows for more dynamic content.
2224 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2225 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2226 have an is_valid method.
2228 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2229 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2230 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2232 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2234 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2235 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2236 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2237 that function like so:
2239 result = some_value (10,20)
2241 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2242 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2243 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2245 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2246 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2247 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2248 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2249 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2251 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2252 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2254 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2256 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2259 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2260 holds the thread's name.
2262 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2263 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2264 occurring in the process being debugged.
2265 The following events are currently supported:
2266 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2267 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2268 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2272 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2273 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2275 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2277 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2278 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2279 was added to GCC 4.5.
2281 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2282 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2283 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2284 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2285 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2286 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2288 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2289 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2290 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2291 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2292 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2294 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2295 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2296 execution to a label.
2298 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2299 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2300 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2301 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2303 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2304 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2305 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2308 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2310 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2311 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2312 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2313 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2314 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2315 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2318 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2320 While now you see this:
2323 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2325 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2328 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2329 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2330 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2331 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2333 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2334 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2335 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2336 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2337 section in the user manual for more details.
2339 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2341 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2342 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2344 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2346 * New native configurations
2348 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2352 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2354 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2355 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2356 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2357 in the GDB user manual.
2359 * Guile support was removed.
2361 * New features in the GNU simulator
2363 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2365 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2367 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
2369 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
2371 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2372 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2373 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2374 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2375 was always disabled for such configurations.
2379 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2381 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2382 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2392 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2393 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2394 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2396 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2398 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2399 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2400 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2401 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2403 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2404 mentioned flavors of operators.
2406 ** static const class members
2408 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2409 class definition has been fixed.
2411 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
2413 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2414 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2415 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2416 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2417 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2418 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2420 * Static tracepoints
2422 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2423 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2424 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2425 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2426 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2427 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2428 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2429 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2430 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2431 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2432 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2433 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2434 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2435 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2436 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2437 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2438 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2439 the "New remote packets" section below.
2441 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2443 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2444 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2445 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2446 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2450 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2451 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2452 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2453 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2454 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2455 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2456 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2458 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2461 * New remote packets
2465 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2469 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2470 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2471 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2472 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2473 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2474 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2478 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2482 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2485 qXfer:statictrace:read
2487 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2488 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2489 to gdb's qSupported query.
2493 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2497 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2498 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2500 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2501 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2504 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2506 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2507 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2508 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2509 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2511 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2512 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2513 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2514 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2515 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2516 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2517 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2519 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2520 for static tracepoints support.
2522 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2524 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2525 it understands register description.
2527 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2529 * X86 general purpose registers
2531 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2532 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2533 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2534 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2535 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2537 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2538 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2539 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2540 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2541 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2542 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2544 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2545 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2546 in the specified file.
2548 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2549 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2550 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2551 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2552 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2553 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2554 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2555 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2556 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2557 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2561 eval template, expressions...
2562 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2563 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2565 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2566 show target-file-system-kind
2567 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2570 save breakpoints <filename>
2571 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2572 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2573 definitions, use the `source' command.
2575 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2578 info static-tracepoint-markers
2579 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2581 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2582 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2583 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2587 Enable and disable observer mode.
2589 set may-write-registers on|off
2590 set may-write-memory on|off
2591 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2592 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2593 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2594 set may-interrupt on|off
2595 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2596 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2597 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2598 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2599 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2600 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2601 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2603 set record memory-query on|off
2604 show record memory-query
2605 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2606 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2611 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2615 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2616 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2617 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2618 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2619 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2621 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2622 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2623 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2624 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2626 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2627 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2629 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2631 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2633 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2635 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2636 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2637 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2639 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2640 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2641 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2642 regular breakpoints.
2646 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2648 * D language support.
2649 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2652 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2653 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2654 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2655 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2656 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2658 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2659 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2660 conditions of the form:
2662 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2664 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2665 interface mentioned above.
2667 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2671 ** Namespace Support
2673 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2674 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2675 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2676 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2677 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2681 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2682 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2687 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2688 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2692 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2697 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2700 * Multi-program debugging.
2702 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2703 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2704 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2705 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2706 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2707 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2708 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2709 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2711 * New tracing features
2713 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2715 ** Trace state variables
2717 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2718 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2719 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2720 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2721 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2722 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2723 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2724 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2725 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2726 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2730 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2731 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2732 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2733 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2734 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2735 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2736 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2737 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2738 the regular trace command.
2740 ** Disconnected tracing
2742 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2743 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2744 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2745 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2746 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2750 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2751 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2752 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2753 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2754 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2755 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2758 ** Circular trace buffer
2760 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2761 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2762 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2763 not be available for all target agents.
2768 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2769 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2772 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2773 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2776 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2777 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2780 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2781 "set script-extension" (see below).
2783 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2785 record save [<FILENAME>]
2786 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2787 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2789 record restore <FILENAME>
2790 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2791 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2793 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2796 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2797 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2798 inferior has loaded.
2803 maint info program-spaces
2804 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2806 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2807 show remote interrupt-sequence
2808 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2809 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2810 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2811 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2812 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2814 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2815 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2816 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2817 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2820 set remotebreak [on | off]
2822 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2824 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2825 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2828 List trace state variables and their values.
2830 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2831 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2834 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2835 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2837 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2838 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2840 * New expression syntax
2842 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2843 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2847 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2848 show follow-exec-mode
2849 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2850 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2851 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2853 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2854 show default-collect
2855 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2856 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2857 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2859 set disconnected-tracing
2860 show disconnected-tracing
2861 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2862 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2865 set circular-trace-buffer
2866 show circular-trace-buffer
2867 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2868 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2869 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2870 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2872 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2873 show script-extension
2874 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2875 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2876 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2877 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2879 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2881 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2882 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2883 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2884 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2885 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2886 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2887 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2890 * Python API Improvements
2892 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2893 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2894 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2896 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2897 `is_base_class' attribute.
2899 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2901 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2902 evaluate an expression.
2904 * New remote packets
2907 Define a trace state variable.
2910 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2913 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2916 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2919 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2923 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2925 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2926 much more reliable. In particular:
2927 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2928 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2929 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2930 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2931 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2932 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2933 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2934 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2935 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2936 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2937 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2938 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2939 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2940 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2941 non-threaded programs.
2943 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2944 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2945 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2948 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2950 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2951 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2952 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2953 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2954 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2956 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2957 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2958 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2959 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2960 for tracepoint actions.
2962 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2963 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2964 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2966 * Process record and replay
2968 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2969 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2970 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2973 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2974 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2975 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2978 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2979 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2982 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2983 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2984 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2985 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2986 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2987 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2988 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2989 the installation instructions for more information.
2991 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2992 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2993 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2994 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2996 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2997 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2999 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3000 now complete on file names.
3002 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3003 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3004 For instance, consider:
3006 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3007 # struct example variable;
3010 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3011 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3013 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3014 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3016 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3017 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3020 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3021 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3022 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3024 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3025 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3026 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3027 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3029 * New remote packets
3032 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3035 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3036 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3037 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3040 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3041 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3044 Obtains additional operating system information
3048 Read or write additional signal information.
3050 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3052 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3053 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3054 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3056 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3057 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3059 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3060 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3061 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3063 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3064 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3066 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3068 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3070 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3071 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3073 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3074 list of section offsets.
3076 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3077 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3078 have also been fixed.
3080 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3081 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3082 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3084 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3087 template<typename T> class C { };
3090 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3092 ptype C<char const *>
3093 ptype C<char const*>
3094 ptype C<const char *>
3095 ptype C<const char*>
3097 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3099 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3100 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3102 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3103 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3104 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3106 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3107 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3109 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3112 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3113 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3115 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3116 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3121 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3122 available is determined at configure time.
3124 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3126 * Ada tasking support
3128 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3132 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3134 Print detailed information about task number N.
3136 Print the task number of the current task.
3138 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3140 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3141 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3143 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3145 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3146 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3147 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3148 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3149 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3150 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3153 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3154 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3157 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3158 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3159 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3160 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3163 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3165 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3166 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3167 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3168 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3169 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3171 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3172 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3173 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3174 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3175 --enable-targets configure option.
3177 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3179 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3180 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3181 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3182 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3183 section in the user manual for more information.
3185 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3186 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3187 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3188 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3189 extensions on linux targets.
3191 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3193 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3194 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3195 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3196 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3197 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3198 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3199 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3200 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3201 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3203 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3205 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3207 maint set python print-stack
3208 maint show python print-stack
3209 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3212 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3217 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3221 Show operating system information about processes.
3224 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3227 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3230 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3233 Kill inferior number NUM.
3237 set spu stop-on-load
3238 show spu stop-on-load
3239 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3241 set spu auto-flush-cache
3242 show spu auto-flush-cache
3243 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3244 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3246 set sh calling-convention
3247 show sh calling-convention
3248 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3251 show debug timestamp
3252 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3254 set disassemble-next-line
3255 show disassemble-next-line
3256 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3259 set remote noack-packet
3260 show remote noack-packet
3261 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3262 under "New remote packets."
3264 set remote query-attached-packet
3265 show remote query-attached-packet
3266 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3268 set remote read-siginfo-object
3269 show remote read-siginfo-object
3270 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3273 set remote write-siginfo-object
3274 show remote write-siginfo-object
3275 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3278 set remote reverse-continue
3279 show remote reverse-continue
3280 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3282 set remote reverse-step
3283 show remote reverse-step
3284 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3286 set displaced-stepping
3287 show displaced-stepping
3288 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3289 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3290 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3293 show debug displaced
3294 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3296 maint set internal-error
3297 maint show internal-error
3298 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3300 maint set internal-warning
3301 maint show internal-warning
3302 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3307 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3309 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3310 show multiple-symbols
3311 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3312 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3313 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3315 set breakpoint always-inserted
3316 show breakpoint always-inserted
3317 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3318 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3319 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3321 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3322 show arm fallback-mode
3323 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3325 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3326 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3327 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3328 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3330 set disable-randomization
3331 show disable-randomization
3332 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3333 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3334 multiple debugging sessions.
3338 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3343 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3344 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3345 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3346 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3348 set target-wide-charset
3349 show target-wide-charset
3350 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3351 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3353 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3355 set tcp connect-timeout
3356 show tcp connect-timeout
3357 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3358 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3359 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3361 set libthread-db-search-path
3362 show libthread-db-search-path
3363 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3366 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3367 show schedule-multiple
3368 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3369 the current process.
3373 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3374 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3375 affecting correctness.
3377 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3378 show interactive-mode
3379 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3380 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3381 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3382 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3383 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3388 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3389 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3390 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3394 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3395 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3396 alias for the `fork' command.
3399 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3400 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3401 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3404 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3405 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3406 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3410 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3411 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3412 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3415 * New native configurations
3417 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3419 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3423 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3424 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3425 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3428 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3429 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3435 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3437 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
3439 * New native configurations
3441 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3442 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3446 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3447 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3449 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3451 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3452 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3453 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3454 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3456 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3457 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3459 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3462 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3463 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3464 and in inlined functions.
3466 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3467 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3468 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3470 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3472 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3473 registers on PowerPC targets.
3475 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3476 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3478 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3479 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3481 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3482 extended-remote mode.
3484 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3485 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3486 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3487 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3489 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3490 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3491 target architectures.
3493 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3494 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3495 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3496 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3498 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3501 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3502 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3504 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3505 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3506 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3507 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3509 - Improved command completion in Ada
3512 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3517 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3518 show print frame-arguments
3519 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3520 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3525 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3532 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3534 * New remote packets
3541 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3544 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3548 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3550 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3552 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3553 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3554 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3556 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3557 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3558 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3560 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3561 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3564 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3565 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3567 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3568 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3570 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3572 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3573 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3574 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3576 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3577 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3579 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3580 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3583 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3584 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3585 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3587 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3590 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3591 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3592 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3594 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3596 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3598 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3599 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3600 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3602 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3603 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3605 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3606 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3607 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3608 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3609 Windows and SymbianOS).
3611 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3612 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3614 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3615 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3621 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3622 when debugging using remote targets.
3624 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3625 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3626 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3627 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3628 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3629 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3630 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3632 set breakpoint auto-hw
3633 show breakpoint auto-hw
3634 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3635 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3636 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3637 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3638 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3639 including "next" and "finish".
3642 catch exception unhandled
3643 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3646 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3650 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3651 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3652 an alias to "set sysroot".
3655 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3656 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3659 * New native configurations
3661 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3664 unset tdesc filename
3666 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3667 not query the target for its built-in description.
3671 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3672 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3673 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3675 * New remote packets
3678 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3679 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3681 qXfer:features:read:
3682 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3687 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3688 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3690 qXfer:libraries:read:
3691 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3692 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3693 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3694 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3698 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3706 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3707 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3708 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3709 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3711 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3714 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3715 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3724 * Other removed features
3731 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3738 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3743 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3744 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3749 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3750 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3752 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3754 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3755 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3756 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3757 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3759 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3761 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3762 in debugging information.
3766 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3767 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3769 set mips stack-arg-size
3770 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3772 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3774 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3779 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3781 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3782 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3783 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3785 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3786 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3789 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3790 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3792 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3793 stub provides the required support.
3795 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3796 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3801 unset substitute-path
3802 show substitute-path
3803 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3804 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3805 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3806 between compilation and debugging.
3810 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3811 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3812 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3816 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3818 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3819 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3821 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3823 * New remote packets
3826 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3827 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3828 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3829 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3833 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3834 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3836 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3837 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3838 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3843 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3845 * Removed remote packets
3848 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3849 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3851 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3855 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3857 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3861 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3862 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3864 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3866 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3868 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3869 previously saved state.
3871 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3873 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3875 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3876 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3878 info forks List forks of the user program that
3879 are available to be debugged.
3881 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3882 forks of the user program that are
3883 available to be debugged.
3885 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3886 that are available to be debugged (and
3887 kill the forked process).
3889 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3890 that are available to be debugged (and
3891 allow the process to continue).
3895 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3897 * Improved Windows host support
3899 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3900 native console support, and remote communications using either
3901 network sockets or serial ports.
3903 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3905 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3906 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3907 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3908 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3909 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3910 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3914 The ARM rdi-share module.
3916 The Netware NLM debug server.
3918 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3920 * New native configurations
3922 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3923 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3927 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3929 * New command line options
3931 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3932 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3933 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3934 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3935 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3936 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3937 with the --command (-x) option.
3939 * Deprecated commands removed
3941 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3945 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3946 othernames set arm disassembler
3947 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3948 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3949 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3952 * New BSD user-level threads support
3954 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3955 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3958 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3959 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3960 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3962 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3963 are not yet supported.
3965 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3966 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3968 * REMOVED configurations and files
3970 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3971 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3972 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3974 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3976 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3977 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3980 * VAX floating point support
3982 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3984 * User-defined command support
3986 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3987 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3988 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3990 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3992 * New command line option
3994 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3997 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3999 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4000 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4001 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4002 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4003 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4005 * Internationalization
4007 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4008 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4009 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4013 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4014 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4015 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4017 * New native configurations
4019 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4023 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4024 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4026 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4028 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4029 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4030 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4033 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4034 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4035 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4045 powerpc bdm protocol
4047 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4048 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4050 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4052 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4053 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4054 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4055 permanently REMOVED.
4064 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4066 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4068 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4069 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4072 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4074 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4075 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4076 IRIX long double values).
4080 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4081 command. This problem has been fixed.
4083 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4085 * Fix for ``many threads''
4087 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4088 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4091 ptrace: No such process.
4092 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4094 This problem has been fixed.
4096 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4098 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4101 * New ``start'' command.
4103 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4105 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4107 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4108 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4109 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4111 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4112 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4113 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4114 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4115 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4116 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4117 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4118 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4119 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4121 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4123 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4124 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4125 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4126 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4127 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4129 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4130 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4131 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4133 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4135 * New native configurations
4137 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4138 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4139 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4140 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4141 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4142 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4143 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4145 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4147 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4148 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4149 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4150 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4151 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4152 work, was also included.
4154 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4155 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4165 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4166 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4168 * REMOVED configurations and files
4170 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4171 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4172 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4173 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4174 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4175 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4176 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4177 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4178 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4179 sonymips mips-sony-*
4180 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4182 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4184 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4186 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4187 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4188 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4189 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4192 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4194 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4195 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4196 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4197 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4198 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4199 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4202 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4204 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4206 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4207 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4208 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4210 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4212 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4213 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4215 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4217 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4218 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4219 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4221 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4223 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4224 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4226 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4228 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4229 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4230 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4232 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4234 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4235 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4236 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4238 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4240 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4242 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4243 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4245 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4247 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4248 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4249 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4250 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4252 * Revised SPARC target
4254 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4255 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4256 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4257 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4258 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4262 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4263 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4264 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4267 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4269 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4270 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4273 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4275 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4276 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4277 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4278 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4279 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4280 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4281 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4282 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4283 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4285 * New native configurations
4287 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4288 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4289 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4290 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4291 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4293 * New debugging protocols
4295 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4297 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4299 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4300 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4301 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4303 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4305 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4306 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4307 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4308 permanently REMOVED.
4310 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4311 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4312 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4313 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4314 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4315 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4316 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4317 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4318 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4319 sonymips mips-sony-*
4320 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4322 * REMOVED configurations and files
4324 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4325 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4326 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4327 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4328 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4329 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4330 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4331 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4332 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4333 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4334 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4335 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4336 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4337 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4338 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4339 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4340 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4342 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4346 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4347 integrated into GDB.
4349 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4351 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4352 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4353 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4356 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4357 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4358 DWARF 2 CFI support.
4362 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4363 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4364 remote protocol documentation for details.
4366 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
4368 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4369 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4370 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4373 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4375 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4376 per-thread variables.
4378 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4380 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4381 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4383 * Separate debug info.
4385 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4386 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4387 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4388 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4389 and optional debug files.
4391 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4393 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4394 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4397 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4398 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4402 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4403 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4404 considered "useable".
4406 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4408 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4409 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4412 * GDB supports logging output to a file
4414 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4415 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4417 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4419 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4420 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4423 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4425 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4426 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4430 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4431 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4432 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4433 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4434 data, for more informative profiling results.
4436 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4438 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4439 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4440 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4442 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4445 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4446 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4447 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4448 in a subsequent -var-update.
4450 * New native configurations.
4452 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4454 * Multi-arched targets.
4456 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4457 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4459 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4461 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4462 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4463 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4464 permanently REMOVED.
4466 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4467 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4468 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4469 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4470 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4471 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4472 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4473 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4474 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4475 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4476 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4477 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4479 * REMOVED configurations and files
4482 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4483 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4484 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4485 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4486 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4487 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4489 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4490 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4491 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4492 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4493 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4494 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4496 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4498 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4499 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4500 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4501 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4502 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4504 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4506 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4508 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4509 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4510 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4511 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4512 shared libs like mad''.
4514 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4516 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4517 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4518 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4519 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4521 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4523 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4524 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4527 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4528 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4530 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4531 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4533 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4534 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4535 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4536 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4538 * Multi-arched targets.
4540 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4541 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4543 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4544 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4545 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4549 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4552 * New native configurations
4554 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4555 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4556 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4557 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4559 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4561 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4562 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4563 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4564 permanently REMOVED.
4566 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4567 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4568 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4569 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4570 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4571 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4572 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4573 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4574 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4575 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4577 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4578 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4580 * OBSOLETE languages
4582 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4584 * REMOVED configurations and files
4586 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4587 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4588 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4589 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4590 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4592 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4594 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4596 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4597 commands. The default is 1024.
4599 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4601 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4603 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4605 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4606 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4607 from a file into memory (restore).
4609 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4611 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4612 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4613 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4615 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4623 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4624 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4625 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4627 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4628 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4629 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4631 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4632 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4633 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4635 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4636 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4637 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4639 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4641 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4643 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4644 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4645 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4646 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4647 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4648 (notably embedded) targets.
4650 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4652 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4653 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4654 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4655 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4657 * New command line option
4659 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4661 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4663 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4664 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4665 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4666 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4667 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4668 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4669 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4670 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4671 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4672 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4674 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4676 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4677 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4679 * New native configurations
4681 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4682 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4683 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4684 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4688 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4690 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4692 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4693 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4694 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4695 permanently REMOVED.
4697 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4698 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4699 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4700 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4701 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4703 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4705 * REMOVED configurations and files
4707 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4709 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4710 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4711 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4712 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4713 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4714 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4715 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4716 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4717 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4718 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4719 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4721 * Changes to command line processing
4723 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4724 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4726 * Changes to key bindings
4728 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4730 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4732 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4734 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4737 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4739 Numerous documentation fixes.
4741 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4743 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4745 * New native configurations
4747 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4748 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4749 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4750 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4751 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4752 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4756 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4758 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4760 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4762 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4763 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4764 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4765 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4766 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4768 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4769 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4770 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4771 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4772 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4773 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4774 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4775 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4777 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4778 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4780 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4781 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4782 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4783 permanently REMOVED.
4785 * REMOVED configurations and files
4787 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4788 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4790 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4794 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4796 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4797 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4802 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4804 * The MI enabled by default.
4806 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4807 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4808 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4809 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4810 which is now deprecated.
4812 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4814 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4815 main features are supported:
4817 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4819 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4822 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4824 - a Pascal expression parser.
4826 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4828 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4830 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4832 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4833 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4835 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4837 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4839 * Changes in completion.
4841 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4842 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4843 users expect at the shell prompt.
4845 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4846 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4847 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4848 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4849 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4850 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4851 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4853 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4855 * New platform-independent commands:
4857 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4858 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4859 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4861 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4863 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4864 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4865 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4867 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4869 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4870 multi-threaded programs though.
4872 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4874 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4876 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4877 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4880 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4882 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4883 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4884 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4885 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4886 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4889 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4890 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4891 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4893 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4895 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4896 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4898 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4899 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4902 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4903 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4904 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4905 a given linear address.
4907 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4908 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4909 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4911 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4913 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4915 * Changes in documentation.
4917 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4918 Documentation License.
4920 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4923 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4925 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4928 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4929 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4930 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4932 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4934 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4935 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4936 contents of this file.
4940 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4942 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4944 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4946 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4947 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4948 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4949 greater level of detail.
4951 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4953 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4954 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4955 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4958 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4960 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4961 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4962 machines ``out of the box''.
4964 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4965 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4966 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4967 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4968 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4970 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4971 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4972 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4973 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4974 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4976 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4977 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4980 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4983 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4984 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4985 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4986 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4988 * New native configurations
4990 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4991 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4995 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4996 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4997 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4998 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5000 * OBSOLETE configurations
5002 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5003 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5005 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5008 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5009 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5010 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5011 be permanently REMOVED.
5013 * Gould support removed
5015 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5017 * New features for SVR4
5019 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5020 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5021 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5023 * Many C++ enhancements
5025 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5026 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5028 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5030 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5031 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5032 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5033 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5035 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5036 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5038 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5040 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5041 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5042 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5044 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5045 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5047 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5049 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5050 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5051 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5053 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5055 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5056 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5057 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5059 * ``apropos'' command added.
5061 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5062 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5063 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5067 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5068 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5069 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5070 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5071 enabled by configuring with:
5073 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5075 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5077 * New native configurations
5079 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5080 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5081 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5085 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5086 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5087 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5089 * OBSOLETE configurations
5091 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5093 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5094 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5095 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5096 be permanently REMOVED.
5100 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5101 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5102 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5103 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5104 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5105 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5106 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5111 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5113 * set extension-language
5115 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5116 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5117 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5118 set extension-language .c c++
5119 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5120 and their associated languages.
5122 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5124 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5125 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5126 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5130 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5131 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5133 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5134 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5136 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5137 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5138 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5139 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5140 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5141 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5142 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5143 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5145 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5146 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5147 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5148 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5152 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5153 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5154 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5155 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5156 for xdb and dbx commands.
5160 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5161 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5162 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5164 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5165 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5166 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5168 * Debugging across forks
5170 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5175 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5176 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5177 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5179 * GDB remote protocol additions
5181 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5182 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5183 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5184 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5186 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5187 full 64-bit address. The command
5189 set remoteaddresssize 32
5191 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5192 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5195 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5196 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5198 maint packet heythere
5200 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5201 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5204 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5205 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5206 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5208 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5210 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5211 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5212 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5214 * mask-address variable for Mips
5216 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5217 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5218 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5220 * Higher serial baud rates
5222 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5223 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5224 to achieve all of these rates.)
5228 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5229 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5232 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5234 * New native configurations
5236 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5237 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5238 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5239 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5240 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5241 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5242 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5246 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5247 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5248 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5249 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5250 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5251 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5252 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5253 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5254 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5255 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5256 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5258 * New debugging protocols
5260 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5261 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5262 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5263 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5264 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5265 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5269 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5270 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5275 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5276 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5278 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5280 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5281 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5282 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5284 * Live range splitting
5286 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5287 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5288 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5292 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5293 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5297 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5298 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5299 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5304 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5309 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5310 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5311 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5312 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5313 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5314 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5318 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5319 the symbol at the specified address.
5323 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5324 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5325 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5326 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5327 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5331 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5332 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5333 of most MIPS variants.
5337 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5338 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5339 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5343 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5344 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5345 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5346 the possible architectures.
5348 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5350 * New native configurations
5352 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5353 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5354 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5355 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5356 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5357 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5361 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5362 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5363 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5364 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5365 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5367 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5371 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5372 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5373 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5374 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5375 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5379 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5381 * Windows 95/NT native
5383 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5384 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5385 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5386 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5387 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5389 * dont-repeat command
5391 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5392 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5393 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5394 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5396 * Send break instead of ^C
5398 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5399 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5400 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5402 * Remote protocol timeout
5404 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5405 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5406 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5408 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5410 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5411 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5412 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5413 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5414 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5416 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5417 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5418 automatically on hpux10.
5420 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5422 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5424 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5426 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5427 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5428 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5429 every character. The default value is 1050.
5431 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5433 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5434 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5435 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5436 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5437 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5438 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5440 * Speedups for remote debugging
5442 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5443 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5444 and more efficient S-record downloading.
5446 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5448 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5449 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5451 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5453 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
5455 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5456 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5458 * Remote targets use caching
5460 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5461 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5462 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5463 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5464 off' turns the the data cache off.
5466 * Remote targets may have threads
5468 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5469 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5470 gdb/remote.c for details.
5474 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5475 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5476 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5477 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5478 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5479 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5480 sequence is something like
5482 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5484 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5488 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5489 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5490 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5491 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5492 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5493 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5494 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5495 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5499 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5500 but does simplify configuration and building.
5504 GDB now supports hpux10.
5506 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5508 * New native configurations
5510 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5511 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5512 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5513 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5517 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5518 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5519 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5520 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5523 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5525 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5526 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5527 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5528 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5529 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5531 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5533 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5534 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5537 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5539 To execute the command use:
5542 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5543 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5544 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5546 * New `if' and `while' commands
5548 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5549 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5550 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5551 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5552 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5553 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5554 if the expression is zero.
5556 * Fortran source language mode
5558 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5559 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5560 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5561 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5564 * Better HPUX support
5566 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5567 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5568 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5569 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5570 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5576 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5577 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5583 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5584 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5587 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5588 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5590 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5592 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5593 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5594 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5595 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5596 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5597 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5599 * New DOS host serial code
5601 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5602 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5605 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5607 * New "complete" command
5609 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5610 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5612 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5614 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5615 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5617 * Breakpoint hit counts
5619 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5620 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5621 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5622 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5623 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5626 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5628 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5629 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5630 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5632 * Shared library breakpoints
5634 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5635 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5637 * Hardware watchpoints
5639 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5640 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5642 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5646 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5647 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5649 * Improved Irix 5 support
5651 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5653 * Improved HPPA support
5655 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5657 * New native configurations
5659 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5660 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5661 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5662 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5666 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5667 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5670 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5672 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5673 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5677 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5678 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5680 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5682 * Irix 5 is now supported
5686 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5687 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5688 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5689 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5690 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5693 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5695 * User visible changes:
5699 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5700 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5701 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5702 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5703 debugging info for the mips target).
5705 * DEC Alpha native support
5707 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5708 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5709 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5710 Alpha-specific notes.
5712 * Preliminary thread implementation
5714 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5716 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5718 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5719 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5722 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5724 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5725 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5726 call methods, ...etc.
5728 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5730 * User visible changes:
5732 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5733 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5734 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5735 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5737 Filename completion now works.
5739 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5740 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5741 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5743 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5744 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5745 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5746 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5747 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5751 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5752 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5755 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5759 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5760 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5761 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5765 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5766 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5767 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5768 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5769 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5773 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5774 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5775 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5777 * New targets supported
5779 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5780 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5781 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5782 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5783 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5785 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5786 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5787 GO32 memory extender.
5789 * New remote protocols
5791 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5793 * New source languages supported
5795 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5796 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5797 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5800 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5802 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5804 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5805 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5806 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5807 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5808 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5809 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5811 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5813 * Faster and better demangling
5815 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5816 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5817 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5818 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5819 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5820 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5823 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5824 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5825 compiler does not actually implement.
5827 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5829 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5830 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5831 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5832 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5833 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5834 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5837 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5838 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5840 * Improved configure script
5842 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5843 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5844 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5845 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5847 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5848 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5849 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5850 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5851 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5852 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5854 * Documentation improvements
5856 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5857 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5858 before submitting changes.
5860 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5861 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5862 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5863 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5864 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5866 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5867 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5868 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5869 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5870 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5871 around this problem.
5875 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5876 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5877 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5880 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5881 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5883 * New native hosts supported
5885 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5886 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5888 * New targets supported
5890 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5892 * New file formats supported
5894 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5895 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5899 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5901 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5902 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5904 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5905 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5906 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5908 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5909 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5911 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5912 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5913 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5916 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5917 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5918 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5919 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5920 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5922 * Internal improvements
5924 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5925 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5927 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5928 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5929 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5930 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5931 shared code that handles any of them.
5933 * New command line options
5935 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5939 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5940 General Public License.
5942 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5944 * Host/native/target split
5946 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5947 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5948 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5949 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5950 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5952 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5953 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5954 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5955 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5956 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5957 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5958 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5960 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5961 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5962 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5964 * New hosts supported
5966 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5967 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5968 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5970 * New targets supported
5972 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5973 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5975 * New native hosts supported
5977 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5978 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5979 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5981 * New file formats supported
5983 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5984 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5985 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5989 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5990 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5991 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5993 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5995 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5996 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5997 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5998 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6002 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6003 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6004 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6006 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6010 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6011 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6014 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6015 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6017 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6018 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6019 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6020 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6021 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6022 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6024 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6025 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6026 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6027 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6031 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6032 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6033 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6034 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6035 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6037 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6038 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6039 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6040 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6044 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6045 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6046 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6047 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6048 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6049 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6050 each instruction being stepped through.
6052 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6053 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6055 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6056 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6057 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6058 processor with a serial port.
6062 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6063 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6064 supported, and what files each one uses.
6068 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6069 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6070 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6071 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6073 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6074 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6075 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6076 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6080 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6081 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6082 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6083 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6084 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6085 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6087 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6090 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6092 * Better support for C++ function names
6094 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6095 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6096 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6097 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6098 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6100 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6101 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6102 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6103 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6104 for the list of formats.
6106 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6108 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6109 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6110 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6111 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6112 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6113 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6116 * New 'maintenance' command
6118 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6119 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6120 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6122 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6123 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6124 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6125 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6126 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6127 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6129 The following commands are new:
6131 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6132 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6133 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6135 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6137 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6138 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6139 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6140 read after argv processing.
6142 * New hosts supported
6144 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6146 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6148 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6149 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6150 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6151 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6152 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6155 * New targets supported
6157 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6159 * More smarts about finding #include files
6161 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6162 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6163 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6164 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6165 the one that contains your sources.
6167 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6168 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6169 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6171 * Interesting infernals change
6173 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6174 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6175 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6176 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6178 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6180 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6181 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6182 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6184 See the ChangeLog for details.
6186 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6188 * New machines supported (host and target)
6190 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6192 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6194 * New malloc package
6196 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6197 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6198 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6199 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6200 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6201 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6205 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6206 'help info proc' for details.
6208 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6210 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6211 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6214 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6216 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6217 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6218 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6219 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6220 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6221 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6223 * Cross byte order fixes
6225 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6226 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6228 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6230 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6231 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6232 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6233 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6234 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6235 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6236 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6237 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6238 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6239 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6241 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6242 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6243 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6244 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6246 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6247 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6248 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6251 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6253 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6254 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6255 shared across multiple host platforms.
6257 * longjmp() handling
6259 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6260 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6261 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6262 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6266 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6267 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6272 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6273 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6274 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6276 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6278 * New machines supported (host and target)
6280 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6282 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6283 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6285 * New machines supported (target)
6287 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6291 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6292 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6293 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6295 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6296 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6297 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6298 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6299 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6302 * New features for SVR4
6304 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6305 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6306 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6308 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6309 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6310 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6312 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6313 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6315 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6317 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6318 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6319 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6320 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6321 same code linked statically.
6325 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6326 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6327 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6328 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6329 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6330 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6334 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6335 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6336 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6339 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6341 * New machines supported (host and target)
6343 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6344 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6345 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6347 * Almost SCO Unix support
6349 We had hoped to support:
6350 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6351 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6352 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6353 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6355 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6357 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6358 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6359 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6360 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6365 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6366 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6367 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6371 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6372 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6373 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6375 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6377 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6378 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6379 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6381 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6382 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6383 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6384 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6387 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6388 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6389 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6390 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6393 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6394 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6397 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6398 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6399 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6402 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6404 * Improved configuration
6406 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6407 Porting BFD is simpler.
6411 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6412 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6413 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6414 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6418 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6420 * New host supported (not target)
6422 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6425 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6427 * Multiple source language support
6429 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6430 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6431 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6432 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6433 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6434 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6438 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6439 currently under development at the State University of New York at
6440 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6441 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6443 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6444 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6445 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6447 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6448 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6452 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6453 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6454 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6455 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6458 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6460 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6461 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6462 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6463 examining core files.
6467 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6470 * New machines supported (host and target)
6472 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6473 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6474 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6476 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6478 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6480 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6482 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6483 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6484 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6486 * New remote interfaces
6492 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6496 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6498 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6499 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6500 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6501 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6502 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6503 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6504 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6505 stub on the target system.
6507 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6509 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6510 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6511 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6513 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6514 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6517 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6519 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6520 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6522 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6523 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6524 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6526 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6527 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6528 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6529 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6531 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6532 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6533 it is already running. Default is ON.
6535 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6536 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6537 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6538 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6541 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6542 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6543 or the value of the environment variable
6546 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6547 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6550 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6551 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6552 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6554 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6555 history expansion will be performed on
6556 command line input. The default is OFF.
6558 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6559 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6560 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6562 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6563 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6564 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6567 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6568 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6569 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6572 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6573 ``set width'' instead.
6575 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6576 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6577 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6578 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6580 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6583 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6586 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6589 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6592 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6594 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6595 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6596 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6600 * Support for Shared Libraries
6602 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6603 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6604 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6605 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6606 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6607 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6608 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6609 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6611 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6612 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6613 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6615 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6620 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6621 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6622 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6623 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6624 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6625 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6627 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6629 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6631 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6632 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6633 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6636 * C++ multiple inheritance
6638 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6641 * C++ exception handling
6643 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6644 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6645 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6648 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6649 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6650 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6652 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6653 current stack frame.
6656 * Minor command changes
6658 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6659 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6660 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6662 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6663 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6664 frames without printing.
6666 * New directory command
6668 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6669 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6670 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6671 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6672 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6674 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6676 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6679 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6680 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6681 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6682 where the program that you are debugging will run.