1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.3
8 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
9 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
12 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
13 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
14 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
17 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
20 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
21 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
22 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
24 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
25 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
27 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
28 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
29 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
30 in the GDB user manual.
32 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
35 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
37 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
38 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
39 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
40 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
41 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
42 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
43 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
44 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
45 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
46 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
47 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
48 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
50 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
51 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
52 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
55 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
60 set debug compile-cplus-types
61 show debug compile-cplus-types
62 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
63 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiliong
68 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
71 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
72 Apply a command to some frames.
73 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
74 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
77 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
78 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
81 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
82 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
85 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
87 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
89 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
90 maint show dwarf unwinders
91 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
94 Display a list of open files for a process.
98 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
99 These commands all now take a frame specification which
100 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
101 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
102 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
103 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
104 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
106 target remote FILENAME
107 target extended-remote FILENAME
108 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
109 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
111 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
112 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
113 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
114 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
115 These commands can now print only the searched entities
116 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
117 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
118 printing headers or informations messages.
124 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
125 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
126 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
129 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
130 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
131 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
132 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
134 set tui tab-width NCHARS
135 show tui tab-width NCHARS
136 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
138 set style enabled [on|off]
140 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
141 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
143 set style sources [on|off]
145 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
146 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
147 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
149 set style filename foreground COLOR
150 set style filename background COLOR
151 set style filename intensity VALUE
152 Control the styling of file names.
154 set style function foreground COLOR
155 set style function background COLOR
156 set style function intensity VALUE
157 Control the styling of function names.
159 set style variable foreground COLOR
160 set style variable background COLOR
161 set style variable intensity VALUE
162 Control the styling of variable names.
164 set style address foreground COLOR
165 set style address background COLOR
166 set style address intensity VALUE
167 Control the styling of addresses.
171 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
173 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
174 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
175 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
176 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
177 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
179 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
180 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
182 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
183 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
184 the following commands and events:
188 - =breakpoint-created
189 - =breakpoint-modified
191 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
192 this behavior with previous MI versions.
194 * New native configurations
196 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
197 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
201 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
203 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
204 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
206 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
210 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
215 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
217 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
218 space associated to that inferior.
220 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
221 of objfiles associated to that program space.
223 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
224 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
227 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
228 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
229 correct and did not work properly.
231 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
232 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
238 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
239 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
240 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
241 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
242 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
244 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
246 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
249 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
250 offset to all sections.
252 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
253 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
254 address of individual sections using '-s'.
256 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
257 (address of the text section).
259 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
260 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
261 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
262 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
265 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
266 for the rest of the current command.
268 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
269 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
271 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
272 files created on FreeBSD systems.
274 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
277 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
278 the vector length while the process is running.
284 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
286 set|show varsize-limit
287 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
288 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
289 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
291 set|show record btrace cpu
292 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
295 maint check libthread-db
296 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
299 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
300 maint show check-libthread-db
301 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
302 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
307 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
309 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
310 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
312 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
314 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
315 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
316 of convenience variables.
318 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
319 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
320 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
324 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
326 * Removed targets and native configurations
328 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
329 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
330 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
331 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
333 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
335 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
336 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
337 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
338 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
339 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
340 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
345 --enable-codesign=CERT
346 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
347 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
348 gdb to work properly.
350 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
351 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
353 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
355 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
356 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
357 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
359 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
360 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
362 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
363 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
364 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
365 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
366 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
368 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
369 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
370 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
371 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
373 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
374 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
376 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
377 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
378 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
380 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
381 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
382 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
384 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
385 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
386 environment" command.
388 * Completion improvements
390 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
391 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
392 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
393 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
396 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
397 (gdb) b function(int)
399 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
400 C++ anonymous namespaces:
403 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
404 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
405 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
407 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
408 completion support, that better understands what you're
409 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
410 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
411 setting a breakpoint.
413 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
415 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
417 * New command line options (gcore)
420 Dump all memory mappings.
422 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
424 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
425 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
426 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
428 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
433 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
436 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
437 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
438 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
439 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
440 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
441 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
442 a breakpoint from Python.
444 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
446 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
447 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
448 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
450 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
452 function[abi:cxx11](int)
455 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
458 (gdb) b function(int)
460 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
462 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
464 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
468 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
469 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
470 description of these.
472 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
473 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
474 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
476 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
477 manual for a further description of this feature.
480 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
482 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
483 specified initial working directory.
485 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
486 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
488 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
489 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
491 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
492 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
494 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
495 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
496 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
497 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
498 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
500 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
501 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
502 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
504 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
505 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
506 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
507 in the *stopped notification.
509 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
510 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
514 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
515 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
516 the inferior when starting it.
519 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
520 before starting the remote inferior.
523 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
524 user-set environment variables should be unset).
527 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
530 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
533 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
534 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
536 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
537 filter the tests to be run.
539 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
540 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
545 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
548 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
549 with the 'compile' commands.
551 set debug separate-debug-file
552 show debug separate-debug-file
553 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
555 set dump-excluded-mappings
556 show dump-excluded-mappings
557 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
558 dumped when generating a core file.
561 List the registered selftests.
564 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
567 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
569 set|show print type nested-type-limit
570 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
571 type printer will show.
573 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
576 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
578 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
581 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
582 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
583 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
584 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
586 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
587 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
588 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
589 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
590 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
591 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
593 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
594 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
595 unless you tell it the variable's type:
598 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
602 * New native configurations
604 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
605 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
609 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
610 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
611 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
613 * Removed targets and native configurations
615 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
617 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
619 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
620 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
621 available in future Intel CPUs.
623 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
627 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
628 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
630 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
633 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
635 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
637 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
638 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
641 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
643 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
644 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
646 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
648 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
649 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
650 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
651 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
654 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
656 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
657 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
660 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
662 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
663 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
665 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
667 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
672 eval "print $arg%d", $i
677 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
679 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
680 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
682 * New native configurations
684 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
688 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
689 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
691 * Removed targets and native configurations
693 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
694 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
699 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
701 maint print arc arc-instruction address
702 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
706 set disassembler-options
707 show disassembler-options
708 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
709 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
710 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
711 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
712 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
717 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
718 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
720 -file-list-shared-libraries
721 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
722 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
725 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
726 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
728 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
730 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
732 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
733 default. One must now explicitly configure with
734 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
735 option will be removed in a future release.
737 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
740 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
741 memory backward from the given address. For example:
744 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
745 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
746 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
747 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
748 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
749 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
750 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
751 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
752 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
754 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
755 arrays of dynamic types.
757 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
758 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
759 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
760 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
761 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
762 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
764 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
767 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
768 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
769 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
771 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
773 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
774 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
775 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
776 signal received and code location.
780 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
781 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
782 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
783 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
785 * Rust language support.
786 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
787 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
790 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
792 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
793 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
794 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
795 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
796 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
797 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
798 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
799 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
800 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
801 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
804 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
806 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
807 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
812 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
813 skip -function function
814 skip -rfunction regular-expression
815 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
816 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
817 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
819 maint info line-table REGEXP
820 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
823 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
826 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
827 using the TTY file for input/output.
831 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
832 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
833 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
834 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
835 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
838 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
839 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
840 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
841 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
844 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
845 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
846 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
848 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
851 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
852 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
853 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
854 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
855 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
856 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
858 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
859 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
860 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
861 bytecode into native code.
863 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
864 recording. For example:
866 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
868 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
870 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
874 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
876 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
878 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
880 * Per-inferior thread numbers
882 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
883 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
884 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
888 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
889 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
890 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
891 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
893 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
894 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
895 are no longer unique between inferiors.
897 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
898 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
899 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
901 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
904 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
905 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
908 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
911 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
912 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
913 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
914 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
917 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
920 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
923 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
926 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
927 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
930 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
931 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
933 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
935 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
937 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
938 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
940 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
941 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
944 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
945 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
948 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
949 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
952 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
954 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
955 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
956 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
958 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
959 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
963 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
964 maint show target-non-stop
965 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
966 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
967 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
969 maint set bfd-sharing
970 maint show bfd-sharing
971 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
975 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
979 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
981 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
982 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
983 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
985 set remote thread-events
986 show remote thread-events
987 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
989 set ada print-signatures on|off
990 show ada print-signatures"
991 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
992 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
996 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
997 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
998 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1000 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1001 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1002 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1003 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1004 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1005 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1007 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1008 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1010 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1011 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1013 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1015 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1016 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1017 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1018 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1019 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1020 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1022 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1023 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1026 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1028 * New remote packets
1031 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1033 exec-events feature in qSupported
1034 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1035 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1036 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1037 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1040 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1043 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1044 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1046 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1047 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1050 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1051 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1052 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1053 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1054 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1055 stop for that same thread.
1058 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1059 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1060 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1063 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1064 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1066 syscall_entry stop reason
1067 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1069 syscall_return stop reason
1070 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
1072 * Extended-remote exec events
1074 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
1075 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
1076 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
1078 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
1079 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
1080 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
1082 * Thread names in remote protocol
1084 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
1087 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
1089 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
1090 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
1091 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
1092 fork and exec catchpoints.
1094 * Remote syscall events
1096 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
1097 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
1099 set remote catch-syscall-packet
1100 show remote catch-syscall-packet
1101 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
1105 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
1106 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
1111 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
1112 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
1113 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
1114 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
1115 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
1116 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
1118 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
1120 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
1121 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
1122 including advance SIMD instructions.
1124 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
1126 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
1127 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
1128 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
1129 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
1130 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
1131 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
1132 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
1134 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1136 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
1138 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
1139 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
1142 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
1143 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
1144 and may include things like its command line arguments.
1146 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
1147 is now available on all platforms.
1149 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
1150 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
1151 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
1152 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
1153 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
1154 backward compatibility.
1156 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
1157 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
1158 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
1159 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
1161 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
1162 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
1163 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
1164 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
1167 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
1169 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
1171 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
1172 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
1173 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
1174 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
1175 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
1176 See "New remote packets" below.
1178 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
1179 available register groups, including target specific groups.
1181 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
1182 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
1183 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
1184 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
1189 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
1193 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
1194 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
1195 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
1196 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
1197 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
1198 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
1199 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
1200 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
1201 "const" version of the value respectively.
1205 maint print symbol-cache
1206 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
1208 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
1209 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
1211 maint flush-symbol-cache
1212 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
1216 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
1219 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
1223 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
1226 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
1227 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
1231 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
1234 Print information about branch tracing internals.
1236 maint btrace packet-history
1237 Print the raw branch tracing data.
1239 maint btrace clear-packet-history
1240 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
1243 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
1244 anew by the next "record" command.
1249 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
1250 show debug dwarf-die
1251 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
1253 set debug dwarf-read
1254 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
1255 show debug dwarf-read
1256 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
1258 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
1259 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1260 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
1261 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1263 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
1264 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1265 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
1266 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1268 set debug dwarf-line
1269 show debug dwarf-line
1270 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
1273 show max-completions
1274 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
1275 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
1276 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
1277 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
1279 set history remove-duplicates
1280 show history remove-duplicates
1281 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
1283 maint set symbol-cache-size
1284 maint show symbol-cache-size
1285 Control the size of the symbol cache.
1287 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
1288 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1290 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1291 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1293 set debug linux-namespaces
1294 show debug linux-namespaces
1295 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
1297 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
1298 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1299 Intel Processor Trace format.
1300 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1301 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1303 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
1304 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
1307 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
1308 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
1310 * Python/Guile scripting
1312 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
1313 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
1315 * New remote packets
1317 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
1318 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
1320 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
1321 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
1324 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
1325 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
1328 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
1329 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
1333 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
1334 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
1335 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
1339 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
1340 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
1343 Return information about files on the remote system.
1345 qXfer:exec-file:read
1346 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
1347 create a process running on the remote system.
1350 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
1351 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
1352 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1353 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1356 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1359 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1361 vforkdone stop reason
1362 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1363 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1365 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1366 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1367 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1368 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1369 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1370 whether these features are enabled.
1372 * Extended-remote fork events
1374 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1375 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1376 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1377 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1379 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1380 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1381 the btrace record target.
1382 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1384 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1385 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1387 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1390 * Removed command line options
1392 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1394 * Removed targets and native configurations
1396 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1397 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1399 * New configure options
1402 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1403 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1405 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1406 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1407 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1408 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1410 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1414 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1416 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1418 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1422 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1423 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1424 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1425 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1426 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1427 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1428 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1429 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1430 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1431 selecting a new file to debug.
1432 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1433 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1435 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1438 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1439 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1440 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1441 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1443 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1445 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1446 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1447 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1448 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1450 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1451 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1452 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1453 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1454 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1455 interface with this new feature are:
1457 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1458 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1462 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1463 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1464 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1465 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1466 as "maint demangler-warning".
1468 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1469 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1471 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1472 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1475 maint print user-registers
1476 List all currently available "user" registers.
1478 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1479 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1480 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1482 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1483 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1484 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1487 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1488 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1489 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1490 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1493 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1494 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1495 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1496 switched threads meanwhile.
1498 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1500 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1501 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1502 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1503 is now the default mode.
1507 set debug symbol-lookup
1508 show debug symbol-lookup
1509 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1513 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1514 inferiors that have exited.
1518 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1522 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1524 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1525 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1526 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1527 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1528 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1530 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1531 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1532 its alias "share", instead.
1534 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1536 * New command line options
1539 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1541 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1542 as specified in ISO C99.
1544 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1545 with or without disassembly.
1549 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1550 available is determined at configure time.
1551 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1552 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1554 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1558 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1562 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1564 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1565 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1567 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1568 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1572 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1573 show print symbol-loading
1574 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1575 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1576 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1577 becomes less useful.
1579 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1580 show guile print-stack
1581 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1583 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1584 show auto-load guile-scripts
1585 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1587 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1588 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1589 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1590 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1591 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1592 usage of this option.
1594 set auto-connect-native-target
1596 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1597 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1598 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1600 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1601 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1602 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1604 maint set target-async (on|off)
1605 maint show target-async
1606 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1607 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1608 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1609 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1611 set mi-async (on|off)
1613 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1614 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1616 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1617 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1619 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1620 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1621 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1622 "set target-async on" command.
1624 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1626 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1627 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1628 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1629 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1630 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1632 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1633 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1634 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1636 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1637 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1638 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1639 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1640 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1641 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1642 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1644 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1645 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1647 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1648 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1649 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1651 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1652 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1653 memory or registers.
1655 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1657 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1658 remote. It now works with all targets.
1660 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1661 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1662 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1663 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1664 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1665 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1666 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1667 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1668 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1671 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1672 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1673 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1675 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1677 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1678 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1679 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1681 * New remote packets
1683 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1684 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1685 branch trace incrementally.
1689 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1690 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1692 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1693 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1694 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1695 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1696 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1699 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1701 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1702 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1703 its alias "share", instead.
1705 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1706 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1711 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1712 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1713 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1714 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1715 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1716 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1717 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1718 commands and CLI execution commands.
1720 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1722 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1723 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1724 recording has been added.
1726 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1728 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1729 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1731 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1732 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1733 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1734 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1735 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1736 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1739 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1741 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1743 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1744 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1745 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1746 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1751 (gdb) info registers rax
1754 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1755 "*value not available*".
1757 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1762 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1763 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1764 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1765 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1766 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1767 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1771 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1772 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1773 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1775 * Removed native configurations
1777 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1778 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1780 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1781 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1782 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1783 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1784 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1785 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1786 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1790 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1791 maint check-psymtabs
1792 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1794 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1795 maint expand-symtabs
1796 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1799 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1801 maint set|show per-command
1802 maint set|show per-command space
1803 maint set|show per-command time
1804 maint set|show per-command symtab
1805 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1807 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1808 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1809 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1810 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1811 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1814 info exceptions REGEXP
1815 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1816 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1821 set debug symfile off|on
1823 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1824 symbol tables within those files
1826 set print raw frame-arguments
1827 show print raw frame-arguments
1828 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1829 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1831 set remote trace-status-packet
1832 show remote trace-status-packet
1833 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1837 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1841 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1843 set startup-with-shell
1844 show startup-with-shell
1845 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1850 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1851 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1853 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1854 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1855 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1856 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1859 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1860 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1861 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1863 * New command-line options
1865 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1867 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1868 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1870 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1873 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1875 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1876 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1878 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1879 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1881 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1882 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1883 due to an uncaught signal.
1887 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1888 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1889 command, which should contain "language-option".
1891 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1892 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1894 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1895 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1896 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1897 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1898 "undefined-command-error-code".
1900 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1903 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1905 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1906 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1909 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1910 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1912 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1913 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1914 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1916 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1917 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1918 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1919 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1920 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1921 "exec-run-start-option".
1923 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1924 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1926 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1927 the new "info exceptions" command.
1929 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1930 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1931 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1935 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1936 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1937 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1940 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1941 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1943 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1944 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1945 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1947 * New remote packets
1951 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1952 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1953 involvemement at each single-step.
1955 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1956 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1957 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1958 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1959 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1960 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1963 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1965 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1966 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1968 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1969 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1970 trace state variables.
1972 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1975 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1976 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1978 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1980 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1981 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1982 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1983 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1985 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
1987 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1988 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1989 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1990 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1992 set|show record full insn-number-max
1993 set|show record full stop-at-limit
1994 set|show record full memory-query
1996 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1997 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1998 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1999 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2000 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2004 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2005 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2007 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2008 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2009 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2011 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2012 instruction granularity
2014 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2015 function granularity
2017 * New native configurations
2019 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2020 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2021 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2022 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2026 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2027 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2028 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2029 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2030 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2032 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2033 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2034 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2035 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2036 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2037 --data-directory command-line option.
2039 * New command line options:
2041 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2042 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2044 * Removed command line options
2046 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2049 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2052 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2056 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2058 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2060 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2062 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2064 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2065 of architecture in the Python API.
2067 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2068 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2070 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2072 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
2073 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
2075 ** $_regex(str, regex)
2077 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
2080 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
2081 default for GCC since November 2000.
2083 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
2085 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
2086 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
2088 * New configure options
2090 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
2091 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
2092 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
2093 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
2094 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
2095 options allow the user to override that default.
2096 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
2097 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
2098 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
2100 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2103 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
2104 conditions to be attached.
2107 List the BFDs known to GDB.
2109 python-interactive [command]
2111 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
2112 and print the result of expressions.
2115 "py" is a new alias for "python".
2117 enable type-printer [name]...
2118 disable type-printer [name]...
2119 Enable or disable type printers.
2123 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
2124 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
2129 set print type methods (on|off)
2130 show print type methods
2131 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
2132 The default is to show them.
2134 set print type typedefs (on|off)
2135 show print type typedefs
2136 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
2137 The default is to show them.
2139 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
2140 show filename-display
2141 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
2142 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
2144 set trace-buffer-size
2145 show trace-buffer-size
2146 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
2148 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
2149 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
2150 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
2154 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
2157 set debug coff-pe-read
2158 show debug coff-pe-read
2159 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
2164 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
2167 set debug notification
2168 show debug notification
2169 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
2173 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
2174 "=cmd-param-changed".
2175 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
2176 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
2177 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
2178 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
2179 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
2180 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
2181 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
2182 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
2184 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
2185 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
2186 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
2187 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
2188 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
2189 library load/unload events.
2190 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
2191 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
2192 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
2193 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
2194 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
2195 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
2196 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
2197 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
2199 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
2200 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
2201 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
2202 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
2204 * New remote packets
2207 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
2208 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2211 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
2212 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
2216 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
2217 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2220 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
2221 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2223 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
2225 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
2226 for more x32 ABI info.
2228 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
2230 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
2232 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2233 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
2234 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
2235 "info os files" lists file descriptors
2236 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
2237 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
2238 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
2239 "info os msg" lists message queues
2240 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
2242 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
2243 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
2244 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
2245 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
2246 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
2247 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
2249 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
2250 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
2251 record/replay support.
2253 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
2257 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
2260 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
2262 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
2263 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
2265 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
2267 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
2268 the source at which the symbol was defined.
2270 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
2271 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
2272 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
2275 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
2276 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
2278 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
2279 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
2280 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
2282 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
2283 object associated with a PC value.
2285 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
2286 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
2288 * Go language support.
2289 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
2292 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
2293 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
2295 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
2296 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
2298 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
2299 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
2300 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
2301 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
2302 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
2305 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
2306 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
2307 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
2308 build/libcpp/expr.c.
2310 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
2311 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
2313 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
2314 since December 2007.
2316 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
2317 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
2318 command does. For instance:
2320 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
2322 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
2323 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
2324 created, using the "condition" command.
2326 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
2327 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
2329 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
2331 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
2332 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
2333 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
2334 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
2335 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
2336 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
2337 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
2338 files with older .gdb_index sections.
2340 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
2341 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
2342 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
2343 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
2344 the .gdb_index section.
2346 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
2348 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
2353 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2355 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2359 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2360 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2361 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2363 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2364 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2366 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2369 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2370 C++ and Java objects.
2372 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2373 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2374 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2375 configured with '--with-python'.
2377 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2378 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2379 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2380 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2381 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2382 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2383 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2385 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2386 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2387 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2388 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2390 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2391 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2392 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2393 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2395 ** "set print symbol"
2397 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2398 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2399 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2401 * Deprecated commands
2403 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2404 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2408 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2409 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2411 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2412 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2413 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2414 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2419 set mips compression
2420 show mips compression
2421 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2422 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2425 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2427 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2428 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2429 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2430 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2432 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2436 Disable auto-loading globally.
2439 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2441 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2442 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2443 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2445 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2446 show auto-load python-scripts
2447 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2449 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2450 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2451 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2453 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2454 show auto-load libthread-db
2455 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2457 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2458 show auto-load scripts-directory
2459 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2460 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2461 of the directories listed by this option.
2462 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2464 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2465 show auto-load safe-path
2466 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2467 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2469 set debug auto-load on|off
2470 show debug auto-load
2471 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2473 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2475 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2476 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2477 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2478 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2480 set dprintf-function <expr>
2481 show dprintf-function
2482 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2483 show dprintf-channel
2484 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2485 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2487 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2488 show disconnected-dprintf
2489 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2490 after GDB disconnects.
2492 * New configure options
2494 --with-auto-load-dir
2495 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2496 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2497 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2498 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2499 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2501 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2502 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2503 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2505 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2506 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2509 * New remote packets
2511 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2513 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2514 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2515 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2516 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2520 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2521 program without GDB involvement.
2523 * New command line options
2525 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2526 before loading inferior.
2527 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2528 execute it before loading inferior.
2530 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2532 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2533 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2534 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2535 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2538 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2539 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2541 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2542 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2543 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2544 target hardware watchpoint.
2546 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2547 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2548 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2549 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2553 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2554 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2557 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2558 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2559 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2560 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2561 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2564 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2567 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2568 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2569 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2570 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2571 corresponding value.
2573 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2574 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2575 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2578 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2579 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2580 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2581 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2583 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2585 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2588 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2589 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2590 available in the CLI.
2592 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2593 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2594 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2595 "some_type.items()".
2597 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2600 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2601 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2602 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2603 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2604 any anonymous fields.
2608 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2611 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2612 "=breakpoint-modified".
2614 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2616 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2617 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2618 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2621 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2622 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2623 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2624 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2625 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2627 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2628 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2630 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2631 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2632 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2633 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2634 use this option to specify where to find it.
2636 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2637 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2638 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2639 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2640 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2641 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2642 section in the user manual for more details.
2644 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2645 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2646 become available after that.
2648 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2650 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2651 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2657 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2658 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2662 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2663 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2664 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2666 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2667 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2668 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2670 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2671 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2672 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2673 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2674 name starts with a hyphen.
2676 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2677 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2678 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2679 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2680 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2681 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2682 number of bytes that will be collected.
2685 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2686 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2687 setting the variable trace-notes.
2690 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2691 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2692 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2695 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2696 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2697 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2698 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2699 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2702 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2703 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2704 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2708 set debug dwarf2-read
2709 show debug dwarf2-read
2710 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2711 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2713 set debug symtab-create
2714 show debug symtab-create
2715 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2716 creation. The default is off.
2719 show extended-prompt
2720 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2721 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2722 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2723 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2724 prompt is displayed.
2726 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2727 show print entry-values
2728 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2729 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2730 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2732 set debug entry-values
2733 show debug entry-values
2734 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2735 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2737 set basenames-may-differ
2738 show basenames-may-differ
2739 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2740 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2741 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2742 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2743 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2744 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2745 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2746 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2752 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2753 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2754 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2755 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2757 set trace-stop-notes
2758 show trace-stop-notes
2759 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2760 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2761 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2762 started by someone else.
2764 * New remote packets
2768 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2772 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2776 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2780 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2784 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2787 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2788 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2792 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2796 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2798 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2800 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2802 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2804 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2805 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2806 matches the given regular expression.
2808 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2810 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2811 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2813 * New command line options
2815 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2816 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2818 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2819 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2821 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2822 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2823 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2825 * GDB now understands thread names.
2827 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2828 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2830 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2831 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2834 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2835 has been integrated into GDB.
2839 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2840 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2841 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2843 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2844 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2845 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2846 and allows for more dynamic content.
2848 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2849 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2850 have an is_valid method.
2852 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2853 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2854 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2856 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2858 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2859 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2860 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2861 that function like so:
2863 result = some_value (10,20)
2865 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2866 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2867 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2869 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2870 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2871 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2872 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2873 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2875 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2876 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2878 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2880 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2883 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2884 holds the thread's name.
2886 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2887 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2888 occurring in the process being debugged.
2889 The following events are currently supported:
2890 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2891 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2892 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2896 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2897 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2899 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2901 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2902 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2903 was added to GCC 4.5.
2905 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2906 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2907 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2908 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2909 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2910 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2912 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2913 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2914 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2915 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2916 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2918 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2919 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2920 execution to a label.
2922 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2923 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2924 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2925 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2927 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2928 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2929 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2932 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2934 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2935 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2936 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2937 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2938 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2939 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2942 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2944 While now you see this:
2947 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2949 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2952 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2953 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2954 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2955 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2957 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2958 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2959 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2960 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2961 section in the user manual for more details.
2963 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2965 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2966 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2968 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2970 * New native configurations
2972 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2976 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2978 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2979 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2980 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2981 in the GDB user manual.
2983 * Guile support was removed.
2985 * New features in the GNU simulator
2987 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2989 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2991 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
2993 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
2995 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2996 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2997 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2998 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2999 was always disabled for such configurations.
3003 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3005 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3006 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3016 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3017 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3018 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3020 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3022 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3023 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3024 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3025 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3027 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3028 mentioned flavors of operators.
3030 ** static const class members
3032 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3033 class definition has been fixed.
3035 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3037 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3038 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3039 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3040 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3041 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3042 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3044 * Static tracepoints
3046 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3047 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3048 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3049 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3050 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3051 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3052 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3053 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3054 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3055 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3056 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3057 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3058 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3059 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3060 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3061 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3062 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3063 the "New remote packets" section below.
3065 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3067 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3068 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3069 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3070 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
3074 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
3075 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
3076 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
3077 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
3078 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
3079 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
3080 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
3082 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
3085 * New remote packets
3089 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
3093 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
3094 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
3095 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
3096 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
3097 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
3098 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
3102 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
3106 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
3109 qXfer:statictrace:read
3111 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
3112 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
3113 to gdb's qSupported query.
3117 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
3121 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
3122 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
3124 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
3125 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
3128 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3130 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
3131 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
3132 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
3133 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
3135 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
3136 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
3137 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
3138 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
3139 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
3140 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
3141 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
3143 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
3144 for static tracepoints support.
3146 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
3148 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
3149 it understands register description.
3151 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
3153 * X86 general purpose registers
3155 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
3156 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
3157 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
3158 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
3159 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
3161 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
3162 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
3163 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
3164 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
3165 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
3166 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
3168 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
3169 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
3170 in the specified file.
3172 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
3173 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
3174 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
3175 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
3176 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
3177 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
3178 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
3179 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
3180 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
3181 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
3185 eval template, expressions...
3186 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
3187 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
3189 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
3190 show target-file-system-kind
3191 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
3194 save breakpoints <filename>
3195 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
3196 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
3197 definitions, use the `source' command.
3199 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
3202 info static-tracepoint-markers
3203 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
3205 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
3206 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
3207 function, line, address, or marker ID.
3211 Enable and disable observer mode.
3213 set may-write-registers on|off
3214 set may-write-memory on|off
3215 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
3216 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
3217 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
3218 set may-interrupt on|off
3219 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
3220 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
3221 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
3222 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
3223 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
3224 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
3225 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
3227 set record memory-query on|off
3228 show record memory-query
3229 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
3230 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
3235 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
3239 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
3240 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
3241 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
3242 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
3243 GDB using Python' in the manual.
3245 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
3246 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
3247 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
3248 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
3250 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
3251 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
3253 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
3255 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
3257 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
3259 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
3260 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
3261 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
3263 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
3264 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
3265 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
3266 regular breakpoints.
3270 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
3272 * D language support.
3273 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
3276 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
3277 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
3278 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
3279 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
3280 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
3282 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
3283 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
3284 conditions of the form:
3286 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
3288 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
3289 interface mentioned above.
3291 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
3295 ** Namespace Support
3297 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
3298 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
3299 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
3300 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
3301 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
3305 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
3306 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
3311 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
3312 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
3316 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
3321 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
3324 * Multi-program debugging.
3326 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
3327 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
3328 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
3329 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
3330 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
3331 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
3332 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
3333 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
3335 * New tracing features
3337 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
3339 ** Trace state variables
3341 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
3342 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
3343 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
3344 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
3345 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
3346 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
3347 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
3348 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
3349 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
3350 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
3354 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3355 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3356 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3357 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3358 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3359 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3360 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3361 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3362 the regular trace command.
3364 ** Disconnected tracing
3366 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3367 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3368 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3369 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3370 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3374 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3375 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3376 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3377 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3378 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3379 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3382 ** Circular trace buffer
3384 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3385 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3386 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3387 not be available for all target agents.
3392 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3393 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3396 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3397 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3400 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3401 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3404 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3405 "set script-extension" (see below).
3407 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3409 record save [<FILENAME>]
3410 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3411 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3413 record restore <FILENAME>
3414 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3415 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3417 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3420 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3421 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3422 inferior has loaded.
3427 maint info program-spaces
3428 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3430 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3431 show remote interrupt-sequence
3432 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3433 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3434 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3435 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3436 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3438 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3439 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3440 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3441 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3444 set remotebreak [on | off]
3446 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3448 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3449 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3452 List trace state variables and their values.
3454 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3455 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3458 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3459 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3461 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3462 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3464 * New expression syntax
3466 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3467 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3471 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3472 show follow-exec-mode
3473 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3474 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3475 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3477 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3478 show default-collect
3479 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3480 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3481 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3483 set disconnected-tracing
3484 show disconnected-tracing
3485 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3486 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3489 set circular-trace-buffer
3490 show circular-trace-buffer
3491 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3492 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3493 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3494 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3496 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3497 show script-extension
3498 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3499 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3500 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3501 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3503 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3505 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3506 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3507 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3508 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3509 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3510 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3511 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3514 * Python API Improvements
3516 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3517 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3518 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3520 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3521 `is_base_class' attribute.
3523 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3525 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3526 evaluate an expression.
3528 * New remote packets
3531 Define a trace state variable.
3534 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3537 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3540 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3543 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3547 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3549 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3550 much more reliable. In particular:
3551 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3552 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3553 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3554 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3555 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3556 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3557 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3558 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3559 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3560 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3561 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3562 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3563 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3564 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3565 non-threaded programs.
3567 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3568 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3569 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3572 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3574 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3575 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3576 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3577 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3578 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3580 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3581 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3582 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3583 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3584 for tracepoint actions.
3586 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3587 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3588 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3590 * Process record and replay
3592 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3593 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3594 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3597 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3598 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3599 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3602 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3603 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3606 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3607 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3608 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3609 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3610 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3611 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3612 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3613 the installation instructions for more information.
3615 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3616 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3617 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3618 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3620 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3621 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3623 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3624 now complete on file names.
3626 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3627 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3628 For instance, consider:
3630 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3631 # struct example variable;
3634 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3635 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3637 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3638 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3640 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3641 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3644 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3645 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3646 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3648 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3649 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3650 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3651 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3653 * New remote packets
3656 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3659 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3660 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3661 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3664 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3665 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3668 Obtains additional operating system information
3672 Read or write additional signal information.
3674 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3676 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3677 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3678 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3680 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3681 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3683 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3684 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3685 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3687 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3688 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3690 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3692 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3694 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3695 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3697 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3698 list of section offsets.
3700 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3701 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3702 have also been fixed.
3704 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3705 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3706 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3708 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3711 template<typename T> class C { };
3714 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3716 ptype C<char const *>
3717 ptype C<char const*>
3718 ptype C<const char *>
3719 ptype C<const char*>
3721 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3723 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3724 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3726 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3727 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3728 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3730 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3731 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3733 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3736 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3737 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3739 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3740 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3745 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3746 available is determined at configure time.
3748 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3750 * Ada tasking support
3752 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3756 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3758 Print detailed information about task number N.
3760 Print the task number of the current task.
3762 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3764 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3765 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3767 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3769 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3770 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3771 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3772 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3773 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3774 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3777 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3778 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3781 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3782 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3783 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3784 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3787 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3789 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3790 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3791 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3792 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3793 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3795 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3796 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3797 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3798 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3799 --enable-targets configure option.
3801 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3803 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3804 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3805 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3806 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3807 section in the user manual for more information.
3809 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3810 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3811 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3812 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3813 extensions on linux targets.
3815 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3817 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3818 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3819 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3820 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3821 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3822 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3823 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3824 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3825 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3827 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3829 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3831 maint set python print-stack
3832 maint show python print-stack
3833 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3836 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3841 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3845 Show operating system information about processes.
3848 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3851 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3854 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3857 Kill inferior number NUM.
3861 set spu stop-on-load
3862 show spu stop-on-load
3863 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3865 set spu auto-flush-cache
3866 show spu auto-flush-cache
3867 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3868 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3870 set sh calling-convention
3871 show sh calling-convention
3872 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3875 show debug timestamp
3876 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3878 set disassemble-next-line
3879 show disassemble-next-line
3880 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3883 set remote noack-packet
3884 show remote noack-packet
3885 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3886 under "New remote packets."
3888 set remote query-attached-packet
3889 show remote query-attached-packet
3890 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3892 set remote read-siginfo-object
3893 show remote read-siginfo-object
3894 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3897 set remote write-siginfo-object
3898 show remote write-siginfo-object
3899 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3902 set remote reverse-continue
3903 show remote reverse-continue
3904 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3906 set remote reverse-step
3907 show remote reverse-step
3908 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3910 set displaced-stepping
3911 show displaced-stepping
3912 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3913 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3914 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3917 show debug displaced
3918 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3920 maint set internal-error
3921 maint show internal-error
3922 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3924 maint set internal-warning
3925 maint show internal-warning
3926 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3931 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3933 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3934 show multiple-symbols
3935 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3936 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3937 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3939 set breakpoint always-inserted
3940 show breakpoint always-inserted
3941 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3942 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3943 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3945 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3946 show arm fallback-mode
3947 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3949 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3950 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3951 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3952 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3954 set disable-randomization
3955 show disable-randomization
3956 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3957 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3958 multiple debugging sessions.
3962 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3967 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3968 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3969 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3970 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3972 set target-wide-charset
3973 show target-wide-charset
3974 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3975 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3977 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3979 set tcp connect-timeout
3980 show tcp connect-timeout
3981 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3982 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3983 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3985 set libthread-db-search-path
3986 show libthread-db-search-path
3987 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3990 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3991 show schedule-multiple
3992 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3993 the current process.
3997 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3998 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3999 affecting correctness.
4001 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4002 show interactive-mode
4003 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4004 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4005 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4006 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4007 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4012 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4013 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4014 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4018 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4019 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4020 alias for the `fork' command.
4023 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4024 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4025 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4028 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4029 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4030 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4034 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4035 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4036 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4039 * New native configurations
4041 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4043 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4047 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4048 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4049 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4052 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4053 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4059 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4061 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4063 * New native configurations
4065 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4066 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4070 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
4071 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
4073 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4075 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
4076 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
4077 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
4078 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
4080 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
4081 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
4083 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
4086 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
4087 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
4088 and in inlined functions.
4090 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
4091 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
4092 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
4094 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
4096 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
4097 registers on PowerPC targets.
4099 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
4100 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
4102 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
4103 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
4105 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
4106 extended-remote mode.
4108 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
4109 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
4110 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
4111 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
4113 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
4114 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
4115 target architectures.
4117 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
4118 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
4119 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
4120 stored in two consecutive float registers.
4122 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
4125 * Improved support for debugging Ada
4126 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
4128 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
4129 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
4130 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
4131 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
4133 - Improved command completion in Ada
4136 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
4141 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
4142 show print frame-arguments
4143 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
4144 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
4149 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4156 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4158 * New remote packets
4165 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
4168 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
4172 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
4174 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
4176 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
4177 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
4178 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
4180 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
4181 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
4182 -Bsymbolic linker option.
4184 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
4185 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
4188 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
4189 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
4191 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
4192 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
4194 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
4196 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
4197 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
4198 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
4200 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
4201 automatically displayed as character or string data.
4203 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
4204 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
4207 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
4208 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
4209 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
4211 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
4214 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
4215 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
4216 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
4218 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
4220 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
4222 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
4223 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
4224 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
4226 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
4227 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
4229 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
4230 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
4231 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
4232 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
4233 Windows and SymbianOS).
4235 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
4236 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
4238 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
4239 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
4245 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
4246 when debugging using remote targets.
4248 set mem inaccessible-by-default
4249 show mem inaccessible-by-default
4250 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4251 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4252 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
4253 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
4254 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
4256 set breakpoint auto-hw
4257 show breakpoint auto-hw
4258 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4259 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4260 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
4261 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
4262 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
4263 including "next" and "finish".
4266 catch exception unhandled
4267 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
4270 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
4274 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
4275 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
4276 an alias to "set sysroot".
4279 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
4280 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
4283 * New native configurations
4285 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
4288 unset tdesc filename
4290 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
4291 not query the target for its built-in description.
4295 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
4296 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
4297 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
4299 * New remote packets
4302 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
4303 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
4305 qXfer:features:read:
4306 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
4311 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
4312 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
4314 qXfer:libraries:read:
4315 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
4316 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
4317 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
4318 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
4322 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
4330 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
4331 i[34567]86-*-netware*
4332 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
4333 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
4335 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
4338 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
4339 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
4348 * Other removed features
4355 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4362 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4367 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4368 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4373 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4374 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4376 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4378 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4379 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4380 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4381 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4383 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4385 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4386 in debugging information.
4390 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4391 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4393 set mips stack-arg-size
4394 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4396 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4398 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4403 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4405 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4406 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4407 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4409 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4410 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4413 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4414 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4416 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4417 stub provides the required support.
4419 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4420 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4425 unset substitute-path
4426 show substitute-path
4427 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4428 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4429 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4430 between compilation and debugging.
4434 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4435 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4436 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4440 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4442 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4443 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4445 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4447 * New remote packets
4450 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4451 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4452 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4453 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4457 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4458 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4460 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4461 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4462 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4467 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4469 * Removed remote packets
4472 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4473 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4475 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4479 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4481 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4485 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4486 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4488 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4490 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4492 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4493 previously saved state.
4495 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4497 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4499 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4500 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4502 info forks List forks of the user program that
4503 are available to be debugged.
4505 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4506 forks of the user program that are
4507 available to be debugged.
4509 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4510 that are available to be debugged (and
4511 kill the forked process).
4513 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4514 that are available to be debugged (and
4515 allow the process to continue).
4519 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4521 * Improved Windows host support
4523 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4524 native console support, and remote communications using either
4525 network sockets or serial ports.
4527 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4529 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4530 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4531 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4532 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4533 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4534 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4538 The ARM rdi-share module.
4540 The Netware NLM debug server.
4542 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4544 * New native configurations
4546 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4547 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4551 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4553 * New command line options
4555 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4556 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4557 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4558 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4559 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4560 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4561 with the --command (-x) option.
4563 * Deprecated commands removed
4565 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4569 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4570 othernames set arm disassembler
4571 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4572 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4573 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4576 * New BSD user-level threads support
4578 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4579 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4582 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4583 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4584 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4586 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4587 are not yet supported.
4589 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4590 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4592 * REMOVED configurations and files
4594 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4595 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4596 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4598 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4600 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4601 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4604 * VAX floating point support
4606 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4608 * User-defined command support
4610 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4611 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4612 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4614 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4616 * New command line option
4618 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4621 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4623 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4624 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4625 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4626 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4627 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4629 * Internationalization
4631 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4632 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4633 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4637 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4638 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4639 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4641 * New native configurations
4643 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4647 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4648 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4650 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4652 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4653 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4654 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4657 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4658 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4659 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4669 powerpc bdm protocol
4671 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4672 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4674 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4676 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4677 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4678 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4679 permanently REMOVED.
4688 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4690 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4692 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4693 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4696 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4698 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4699 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4700 IRIX long double values).
4704 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4705 command. This problem has been fixed.
4707 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4709 * Fix for ``many threads''
4711 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4712 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4715 ptrace: No such process.
4716 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4718 This problem has been fixed.
4720 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4722 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4725 * New ``start'' command.
4727 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4729 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4731 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4732 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4733 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4735 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4736 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4737 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4738 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4739 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4740 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4741 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4742 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4743 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4745 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4747 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4748 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4749 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4750 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4751 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4753 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4754 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4755 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4757 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4759 * New native configurations
4761 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4762 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4763 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4764 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4765 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4766 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4767 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4769 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4771 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4772 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4773 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4774 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4775 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4776 work, was also included.
4778 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4779 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4789 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4790 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4792 * REMOVED configurations and files
4794 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4795 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4796 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4797 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4798 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4799 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4800 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4801 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4802 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4803 sonymips mips-sony-*
4804 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4806 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4808 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4810 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4811 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4812 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4813 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4816 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4818 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4819 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4820 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4821 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4822 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4823 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4826 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4828 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4830 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4831 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4832 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4834 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4836 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4837 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4839 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4841 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4842 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4843 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4845 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4847 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4848 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4850 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4852 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4853 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4854 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4856 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4858 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4859 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4860 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4862 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4864 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4866 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4867 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4869 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4871 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4872 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4873 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4874 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4876 * Revised SPARC target
4878 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4879 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4880 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4881 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4882 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4886 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4887 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4888 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4891 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4893 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4894 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4897 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4899 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4900 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4901 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4902 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4903 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4904 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4905 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4906 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4907 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4909 * New native configurations
4911 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4912 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4913 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4914 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4915 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4917 * New debugging protocols
4919 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4921 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4923 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4924 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4925 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4927 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4929 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4930 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4931 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4932 permanently REMOVED.
4934 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4935 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4936 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4937 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4938 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4939 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4940 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4941 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4942 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4943 sonymips mips-sony-*
4944 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4946 * REMOVED configurations and files
4948 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4949 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4950 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4951 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4952 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4953 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4954 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4955 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4956 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4957 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4958 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4959 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4960 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4961 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4962 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4963 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4964 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4966 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4970 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4971 integrated into GDB.
4973 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4975 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4976 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4977 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4980 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4981 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4982 DWARF 2 CFI support.
4986 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4987 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4988 remote protocol documentation for details.
4990 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
4992 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4993 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4994 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4997 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4999 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5000 per-thread variables.
5002 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5004 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5005 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5007 * Separate debug info.
5009 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5010 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5011 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5012 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5013 and optional debug files.
5015 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5017 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5018 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5021 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5022 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5026 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5027 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5028 considered "useable".
5030 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5032 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5033 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5036 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5038 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5039 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5041 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5043 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5044 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5047 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5049 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5050 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5054 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5055 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5056 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5057 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5058 data, for more informative profiling results.
5060 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5062 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5063 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5064 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5066 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5069 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5070 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
5071 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
5072 in a subsequent -var-update.
5074 * New native configurations.
5076 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5078 * Multi-arched targets.
5080 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
5081 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5083 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5085 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5086 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5087 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5088 permanently REMOVED.
5090 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5091 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5092 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5093 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5094 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5095 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5096 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5097 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5098 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5099 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5100 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5101 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5103 * REMOVED configurations and files
5106 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5107 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5108 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5109 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5110 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5111 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5113 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5114 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5115 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5116 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5117 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5118 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5120 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
5122 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
5123 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
5124 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
5125 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
5126 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
5128 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
5130 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
5132 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
5133 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
5134 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
5135 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
5136 shared libs like mad''.
5138 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
5140 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
5141 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
5142 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
5143 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
5145 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
5147 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
5148 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
5151 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
5152 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
5154 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
5155 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
5157 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
5158 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
5159 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
5160 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
5162 * Multi-arched targets.
5164 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
5165 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
5167 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
5168 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
5169 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5173 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
5176 * New native configurations
5178 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
5179 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
5180 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
5181 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
5183 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5185 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5186 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5187 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5188 permanently REMOVED.
5190 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5191 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5192 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5193 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5194 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5195 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5196 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5197 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5198 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5199 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5201 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5202 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5204 * OBSOLETE languages
5206 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
5208 * REMOVED configurations and files
5210 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5211 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5212 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5213 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5214 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5216 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5218 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
5220 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
5221 commands. The default is 1024.
5223 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
5225 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
5227 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
5229 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
5230 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
5231 from a file into memory (restore).
5233 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
5235 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
5236 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
5237 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
5239 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
5247 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
5248 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
5249 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
5251 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
5252 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
5253 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
5255 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
5256 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
5257 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
5259 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
5260 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
5261 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
5263 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
5265 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
5267 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
5268 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
5269 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
5270 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
5271 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
5272 (notably embedded) targets.
5274 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
5276 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
5277 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
5278 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
5279 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
5281 * New command line option
5283 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
5285 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
5287 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
5288 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
5289 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
5290 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
5291 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
5292 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
5293 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
5294 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
5295 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
5296 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
5298 * Changes in ARM configurations.
5300 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
5301 configuration is fully multi-arch.
5303 * New native configurations
5305 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
5306 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
5307 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
5308 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
5312 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
5314 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5316 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5317 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5318 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5319 permanently REMOVED.
5321 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5322 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5323 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5324 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5325 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5327 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5329 * REMOVED configurations and files
5331 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5333 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5334 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5335 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5336 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5337 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5338 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5339 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5340 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5341 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5342 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5343 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
5345 * Changes to command line processing
5347 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
5348 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
5350 * Changes to key bindings
5352 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5354 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5356 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5358 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5361 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5363 Numerous documentation fixes.
5365 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5367 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5369 * New native configurations
5371 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5372 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5373 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5374 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5375 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5376 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5380 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5382 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5384 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5386 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5387 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5388 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5389 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5390 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5392 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5393 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5394 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5395 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5396 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5397 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5398 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5399 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5401 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5402 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5404 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5405 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5406 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5407 permanently REMOVED.
5409 * REMOVED configurations and files
5411 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5412 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5414 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5418 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5420 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5421 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5426 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5428 * The MI enabled by default.
5430 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5431 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5432 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5433 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5434 which is now deprecated.
5436 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5438 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5439 main features are supported:
5441 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5443 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5446 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5448 - a Pascal expression parser.
5450 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5452 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5454 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5456 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5457 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5459 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5461 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5463 * Changes in completion.
5465 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5466 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5467 users expect at the shell prompt.
5469 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5470 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5471 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5472 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5473 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5474 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5475 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5477 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5479 * New platform-independent commands:
5481 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5482 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5483 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5485 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5487 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5488 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5489 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5491 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5493 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5494 multi-threaded programs though.
5496 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5498 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5500 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5501 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5504 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5506 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5507 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5508 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5509 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5510 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5513 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5514 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5515 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5517 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5519 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5520 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5522 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5523 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5526 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5527 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5528 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5529 a given linear address.
5531 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5532 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5533 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5535 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5537 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5539 * Changes in documentation.
5541 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5542 Documentation License.
5544 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5547 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5549 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5552 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5553 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5554 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5556 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5558 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5559 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5560 contents of this file.
5564 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5566 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5568 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5570 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5571 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5572 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5573 greater level of detail.
5575 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5577 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5578 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5579 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5582 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5584 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5585 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5586 machines ``out of the box''.
5588 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5589 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5590 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5591 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5592 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5594 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5595 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5596 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5597 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5598 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5600 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5601 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5604 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5607 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5608 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5609 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5610 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5612 * New native configurations
5614 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5615 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5619 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5620 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5621 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5622 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5624 * OBSOLETE configurations
5626 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5627 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5629 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5632 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5633 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5634 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5635 be permanently REMOVED.
5637 * Gould support removed
5639 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5641 * New features for SVR4
5643 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5644 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5645 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5647 * Many C++ enhancements
5649 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5650 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5652 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5654 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5655 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5656 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5657 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5659 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5660 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5662 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5664 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5665 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5666 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5668 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5669 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5671 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5673 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5674 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5675 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5677 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5679 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5680 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5681 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5683 * ``apropos'' command added.
5685 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5686 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5687 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5691 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5692 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5693 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5694 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5695 enabled by configuring with:
5697 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5699 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5701 * New native configurations
5703 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5704 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5705 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5709 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5710 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5711 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5713 * OBSOLETE configurations
5715 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5717 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5718 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5719 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5720 be permanently REMOVED.
5724 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5725 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5726 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5727 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5728 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5729 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5730 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5735 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5737 * set extension-language
5739 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5740 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5741 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5742 set extension-language .c c++
5743 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5744 and their associated languages.
5746 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5748 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5749 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5750 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5754 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5755 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5757 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5758 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5760 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5761 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5762 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5763 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5764 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5765 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5766 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5767 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5769 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5770 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5771 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5772 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5776 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5777 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5778 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5779 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5780 for xdb and dbx commands.
5784 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5785 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5786 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5788 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5789 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5790 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5792 * Debugging across forks
5794 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5799 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5800 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5801 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5803 * GDB remote protocol additions
5805 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5806 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5807 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5808 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5810 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5811 full 64-bit address. The command
5813 set remoteaddresssize 32
5815 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5816 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5819 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5820 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5822 maint packet heythere
5824 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5825 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5828 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5829 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5830 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5832 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5834 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5835 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5836 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5838 * mask-address variable for Mips
5840 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5841 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5842 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5844 * Higher serial baud rates
5846 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5847 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5848 to achieve all of these rates.)
5852 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5853 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5856 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5858 * New native configurations
5860 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5861 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5862 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5863 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5864 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5865 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5866 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5870 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5871 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5872 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5873 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5874 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5875 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5876 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5877 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5878 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5879 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5880 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5882 * New debugging protocols
5884 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5885 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5886 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5887 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5888 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5889 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5893 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5894 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5899 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5900 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5902 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5904 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5905 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5906 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5908 * Live range splitting
5910 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5911 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5912 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5916 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5917 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5921 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5922 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5923 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5928 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5933 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5934 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5935 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5936 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5937 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5938 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5942 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5943 the symbol at the specified address.
5947 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5948 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5949 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5950 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5951 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5955 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5956 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5957 of most MIPS variants.
5961 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5962 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5963 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5967 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5968 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5969 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5970 the possible architectures.
5972 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5974 * New native configurations
5976 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5977 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5978 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5979 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5980 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5981 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5985 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5986 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5987 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5988 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5989 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5991 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5995 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5996 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5997 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5998 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5999 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6003 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6005 * Windows 95/NT native
6007 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6008 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6009 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6010 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6011 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6013 * dont-repeat command
6015 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6016 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6017 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6018 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6020 * Send break instead of ^C
6022 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6023 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6024 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6026 * Remote protocol timeout
6028 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6029 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6030 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6032 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6034 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6035 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6036 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6037 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6038 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6040 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6041 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6042 automatically on hpux10.
6044 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6046 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6048 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6050 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6051 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6052 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6053 every character. The default value is 1050.
6055 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6057 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6058 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6059 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6060 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6061 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6062 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6064 * Speedups for remote debugging
6066 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6067 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6068 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6070 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
6072 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
6073 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
6075 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
6077 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
6079 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
6080 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
6082 * Remote targets use caching
6084 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
6085 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
6086 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
6087 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
6088 off' turns the the data cache off.
6090 * Remote targets may have threads
6092 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
6093 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
6094 gdb/remote.c for details.
6098 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
6099 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
6100 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
6101 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
6102 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
6103 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
6104 sequence is something like
6106 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
6108 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
6112 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
6113 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
6114 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
6115 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
6116 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
6117 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
6118 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
6119 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
6123 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
6124 but does simplify configuration and building.
6128 GDB now supports hpux10.
6130 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
6132 * New native configurations
6134 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
6135 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
6136 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
6137 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
6141 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6142 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
6143 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
6144 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
6147 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
6149 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
6150 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
6151 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
6152 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
6153 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
6155 * Arguments to user-defined commands
6157 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
6158 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
6161 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
6163 To execute the command use:
6166 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
6167 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
6168 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
6170 * New `if' and `while' commands
6172 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
6173 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
6174 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
6175 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
6176 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
6177 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
6178 if the expression is zero.
6180 * Fortran source language mode
6182 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
6183 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
6184 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
6185 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
6188 * Better HPUX support
6190 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
6191 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
6192 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
6193 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
6194 that behavior do the following before running the program:
6200 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
6201 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
6207 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
6208 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
6211 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
6212 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
6214 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
6216 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
6217 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
6218 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
6219 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
6220 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
6221 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
6223 * New DOS host serial code
6225 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
6226 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
6229 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
6231 * New "complete" command
6233 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
6234 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
6236 * Trailing space optional in prompt
6238 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
6239 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
6241 * Breakpoint hit counts
6243 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
6244 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
6245 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
6246 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
6247 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
6250 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
6252 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
6253 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
6254 arrays actually contain only short strings.
6256 * Shared library breakpoints
6258 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
6259 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
6261 * Hardware watchpoints
6263 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
6264 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
6266 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
6270 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
6271 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
6273 * Improved Irix 5 support
6275 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
6277 * Improved HPPA support
6279 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
6281 * New native configurations
6283 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
6284 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
6285 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
6286 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
6290 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6291 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
6294 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
6296 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
6297 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
6301 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
6302 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
6304 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
6306 * Irix 5 is now supported
6310 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
6311 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
6312 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
6313 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
6314 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
6317 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
6319 * User visible changes:
6323 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
6324 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
6325 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
6326 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
6327 debugging info for the mips target).
6329 * DEC Alpha native support
6331 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
6332 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
6333 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
6334 Alpha-specific notes.
6336 * Preliminary thread implementation
6338 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
6340 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
6342 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
6343 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
6346 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
6348 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
6349 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
6350 call methods, ...etc.
6352 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6354 * User visible changes:
6356 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6357 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6358 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6359 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6361 Filename completion now works.
6363 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6364 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6365 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6367 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6368 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6369 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6370 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6371 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6375 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6376 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6379 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6383 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6384 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6385 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6389 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6390 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6391 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6392 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6393 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6397 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6398 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6399 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6401 * New targets supported
6403 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6404 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6405 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6406 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6407 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6409 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6410 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6411 GO32 memory extender.
6413 * New remote protocols
6415 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6417 * New source languages supported
6419 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6420 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6421 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6424 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6426 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6428 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6429 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6430 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6431 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6432 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6433 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6435 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6437 * Faster and better demangling
6439 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6440 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6441 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6442 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6443 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6444 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6447 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6448 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6449 compiler does not actually implement.
6451 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6453 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6454 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6455 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6456 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6457 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6458 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6461 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6462 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6464 * Improved configure script
6466 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6467 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6468 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6469 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6471 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6472 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6473 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6474 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6475 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6476 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6478 * Documentation improvements
6480 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6481 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6482 before submitting changes.
6484 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6485 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6486 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6487 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6488 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6490 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6491 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6492 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6493 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6494 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6495 around this problem.
6499 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6500 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6501 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6504 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6505 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6507 * New native hosts supported
6509 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6510 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6512 * New targets supported
6514 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6516 * New file formats supported
6518 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6519 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6523 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6525 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6526 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6528 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6529 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6530 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6532 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6533 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6535 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6536 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6537 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6540 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6541 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6542 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6543 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6544 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6546 * Internal improvements
6548 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6549 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6551 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6552 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6553 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6554 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6555 shared code that handles any of them.
6557 * New command line options
6559 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6563 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6564 General Public License.
6566 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6568 * Host/native/target split
6570 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6571 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6572 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6573 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6574 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6576 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6577 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6578 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6579 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6580 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6581 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6582 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6584 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6585 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6586 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6588 * New hosts supported
6590 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6591 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6592 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6594 * New targets supported
6596 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6597 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6599 * New native hosts supported
6601 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6602 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6603 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6605 * New file formats supported
6607 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6608 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6609 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6613 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6614 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6615 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6617 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6619 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6620 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6621 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6622 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6626 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6627 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6628 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6630 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6634 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6635 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6638 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6639 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6641 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6642 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6643 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6644 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6645 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6646 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6648 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6649 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6650 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6651 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6655 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6656 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6657 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6658 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6659 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6661 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6662 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6663 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6664 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6668 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6669 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6670 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6671 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6672 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6673 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6674 each instruction being stepped through.
6676 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6677 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6679 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6680 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6681 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6682 processor with a serial port.
6686 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6687 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6688 supported, and what files each one uses.
6692 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6693 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6694 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6695 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6697 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6698 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6699 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6700 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6704 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6705 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6706 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6707 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6708 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6709 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6711 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6714 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6716 * Better support for C++ function names
6718 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6719 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6720 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6721 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6722 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6724 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6725 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6726 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6727 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6728 for the list of formats.
6730 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6732 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6733 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6734 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6735 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6736 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6737 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6740 * New 'maintenance' command
6742 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6743 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6744 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6746 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6747 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6748 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6749 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6750 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6751 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6753 The following commands are new:
6755 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6756 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6757 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6759 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6761 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6762 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6763 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6764 read after argv processing.
6766 * New hosts supported
6768 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6770 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6772 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6773 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6774 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6775 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6776 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6779 * New targets supported
6781 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6783 * More smarts about finding #include files
6785 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6786 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6787 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6788 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6789 the one that contains your sources.
6791 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6792 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6793 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6795 * Interesting infernals change
6797 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6798 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6799 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6800 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6802 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6804 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6805 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6806 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6808 See the ChangeLog for details.
6810 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6812 * New machines supported (host and target)
6814 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6816 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6818 * New malloc package
6820 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6821 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6822 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6823 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6824 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6825 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6829 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6830 'help info proc' for details.
6832 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6834 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6835 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6838 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6840 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6841 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6842 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6843 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6844 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6845 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6847 * Cross byte order fixes
6849 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6850 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6852 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6854 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6855 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6856 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6857 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6858 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6859 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6860 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6861 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6862 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6863 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6865 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6866 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6867 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6868 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6870 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6871 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6872 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6875 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6877 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6878 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6879 shared across multiple host platforms.
6881 * longjmp() handling
6883 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6884 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6885 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6886 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6890 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6891 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6896 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6897 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6898 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6900 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6902 * New machines supported (host and target)
6904 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6906 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6907 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6909 * New machines supported (target)
6911 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6915 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6916 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6917 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6919 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6920 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6921 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6922 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6923 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6926 * New features for SVR4
6928 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6929 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6930 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6932 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6933 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6934 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6936 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6937 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6939 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6941 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6942 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6943 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6944 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6945 same code linked statically.
6949 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6950 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6951 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6952 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6953 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6954 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6958 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6959 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6960 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6963 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6965 * New machines supported (host and target)
6967 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6968 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6969 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6971 * Almost SCO Unix support
6973 We had hoped to support:
6974 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6975 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6976 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6977 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6979 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6981 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6982 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6983 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6984 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6989 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6990 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6991 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6995 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6996 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6997 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6999 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7001 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7002 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7003 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7005 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7006 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7007 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7008 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7011 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7012 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7013 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7014 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7017 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7018 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7021 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7022 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7023 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7026 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7028 * Improved configuration
7030 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7031 Porting BFD is simpler.
7035 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7036 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7037 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7038 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7042 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7044 * New host supported (not target)
7046 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7049 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7051 * Multiple source language support
7053 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7054 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7055 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7056 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7057 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7058 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7062 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7063 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7064 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7065 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7067 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7068 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7069 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
7071 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
7072 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
7076 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
7077 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
7078 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
7079 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
7082 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
7084 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
7085 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
7086 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
7087 examining core files.
7091 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
7094 * New machines supported (host and target)
7096 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7097 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
7098 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
7100 * New hosts supported (not targets)
7102 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
7104 * New targets supported (not hosts)
7106 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7107 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7108 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
7110 * New remote interfaces
7116 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
7120 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
7122 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
7123 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
7124 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
7125 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
7126 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
7127 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
7128 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
7129 stub on the target system.
7131 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
7133 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
7134 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
7135 object file types such as a.out and coff.
7137 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
7138 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
7141 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
7143 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
7144 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
7146 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
7147 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
7148 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
7150 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
7151 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
7152 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
7153 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
7155 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
7156 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
7157 it is already running. Default is ON.
7159 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
7160 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
7161 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
7162 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
7165 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
7166 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
7167 or the value of the environment variable
7170 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
7171 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
7174 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
7175 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
7176 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
7178 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
7179 history expansion will be performed on
7180 command line input. The default is OFF.
7182 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
7183 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
7184 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
7186 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
7187 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
7188 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7191 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
7192 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
7193 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7196 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
7197 ``set width'' instead.
7199 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
7200 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
7201 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
7202 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
7204 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
7207 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
7210 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
7213 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
7216 * Support for Epoch Environment.
7218 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
7219 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
7220 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
7224 * Support for Shared Libraries
7226 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
7227 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
7228 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
7229 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
7230 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
7231 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
7232 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
7233 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
7235 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
7236 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
7237 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
7239 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
7244 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
7245 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
7246 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
7247 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
7248 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
7249 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
7251 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
7253 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
7255 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7256 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7257 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7260 * C++ multiple inheritance
7262 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
7265 * C++ exception handling
7267 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
7268 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
7269 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
7272 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
7273 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
7274 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
7276 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
7277 current stack frame.
7280 * Minor command changes
7282 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
7283 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
7284 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
7286 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
7287 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
7288 frames without printing.
7290 * New directory command
7292 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
7293 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
7294 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
7295 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
7296 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
7298 * Configuring GDB for compilation
7300 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
7303 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
7304 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
7305 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
7306 where the program that you are debugging will run.