1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.5
8 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
10 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
11 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
12 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
13 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
14 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
15 --data-directory command-line option.
17 * New command line options:
19 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
20 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
22 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
25 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
29 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
31 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
33 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
35 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
37 * New Python-based convenience functions:
39 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
40 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
42 ** $_regex(str, regex)
44 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
47 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
49 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
50 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
52 * New configure options
54 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
55 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
56 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
57 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
58 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
59 options allow the user to override that default.
61 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
64 List the BFDs known to GDB.
66 python-interactive [command]
68 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
69 and print the result of expressions.
72 "py" is a new alias for "python".
74 enable type-printer [name]...
75 disable type-printer [name]...
76 Enable or disable type printers.
78 set debug notification
79 show debug notification
80 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
84 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
85 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
90 set print type methods (on|off)
91 show print type methods
92 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
93 The default is to show them.
95 set print type typedefs (on|off)
96 show print type typedefs
97 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
98 The default is to show them.
102 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
103 "=cmd-param-changed".
104 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
105 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
106 ** The creation and deletion of trace state variables are now notified
107 using new async records "=tsv-created" and "=tsv-deleted".
108 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
109 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
110 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
112 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
113 containing the absolute file name when GDB can determine it and source
115 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
116 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
117 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
118 library load/unload events.
119 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
120 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
121 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
123 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
124 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
125 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
126 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
128 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
130 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
131 for more x32 ABI info.
133 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
135 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
137 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
138 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
139 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
140 "info os files" lists file descriptors
141 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
142 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
143 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
144 "info os msg" lists message queues
145 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
147 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
148 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
149 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
150 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
151 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
152 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
154 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
155 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
156 record/replay support.
158 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
162 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
165 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
167 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
168 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
170 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
172 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
173 the source at which the symbol was defined.
175 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
176 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
177 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
180 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
181 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
183 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
184 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
185 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
187 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
188 object associated with a PC value.
190 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
191 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
193 * Go language support.
194 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
197 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
198 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
200 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
201 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
203 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
204 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
205 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
206 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
207 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
210 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
211 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
212 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
215 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
216 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
218 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
221 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
222 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
223 command does. For instance:
225 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
227 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
228 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
229 created, using the "condition" command.
231 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
232 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
234 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
236 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
237 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
238 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
239 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
240 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
241 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
242 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
243 files with older .gdb_index sections.
245 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
246 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
247 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
248 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
249 the .gdb_index section.
251 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
253 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
258 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
260 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
264 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
265 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
266 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
268 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
269 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
271 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
274 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
275 C++ and Java objects.
277 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
278 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
279 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
280 configured with '--with-python'.
282 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
283 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
284 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
285 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
286 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
287 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
288 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
290 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
291 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
292 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
293 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
295 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
296 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
297 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
298 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
300 ** "set print symbol"
302 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
303 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
304 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
306 * Deprecated commands
308 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
309 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
313 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
314 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
316 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
317 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
318 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
319 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
325 show mips compression
326 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
327 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
330 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
332 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
333 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
334 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
335 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
337 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
341 Disable auto-loading globally.
344 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
346 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
347 show auto-load gdb-scripts
348 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
350 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
351 show auto-load python-scripts
352 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
354 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
355 show auto-load local-gdbinit
356 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
358 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
359 show auto-load libthread-db
360 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
362 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
363 show auto-load scripts-directory
364 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
365 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
366 of the directories listed by this option.
367 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
369 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
370 show auto-load safe-path
371 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
372 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
374 set debug auto-load on|off
376 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
378 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
380 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
381 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
382 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
383 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
385 set dprintf-function <expr>
386 show dprintf-function
387 set dprintf-channel <expr>
389 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
390 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
392 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
393 show disconnected-dprintf
394 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
395 after GDB disconnects.
397 * New configure options
400 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
401 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
402 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
403 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
404 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
406 --with-auto-load-safe-path
407 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
408 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
410 --without-auto-load-safe-path
411 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
416 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
418 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
419 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
420 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
421 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
425 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
426 program without GDB involvement.
428 * New command line options
430 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
431 before loading inferior.
432 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
433 execute it before loading inferior.
435 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
437 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
438 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
439 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
440 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
443 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
444 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
446 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
447 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
448 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
449 target hardware watchpoint.
451 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
452 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
453 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
454 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
458 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
459 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
462 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
463 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
464 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
465 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
466 now "message", which just prints the error message without
469 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
472 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
473 modules library. This module provides functionality for
474 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
475 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
478 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
479 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
480 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
483 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
484 static_block will return the global and static blocks
485 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
486 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
488 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
490 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
493 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
494 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
495 available in the CLI.
497 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
498 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
499 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
502 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
505 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
506 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
507 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
508 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
509 any anonymous fields.
513 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
516 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
517 "=breakpoint-modified".
519 ** New command -ada-task-info.
521 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
522 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
523 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
526 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
527 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
528 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
529 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
530 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
532 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
533 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
535 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
536 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
537 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
538 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
539 use this option to specify where to find it.
541 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
542 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
543 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
544 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
545 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
546 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
547 section in the user manual for more details.
549 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
550 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
551 become available after that.
553 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
555 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
556 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
562 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
563 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
567 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
568 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
569 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
571 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
572 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
573 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
575 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
576 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
577 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
578 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
579 name starts with a hyphen.
581 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
582 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
583 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
584 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
585 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
586 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
587 number of bytes that will be collected.
590 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
591 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
592 setting the variable trace-notes.
595 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
596 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
597 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
600 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
601 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
602 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
603 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
604 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
607 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
608 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
609 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
613 set debug dwarf2-read
614 show debug dwarf2-read
615 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
616 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
618 set debug symtab-create
619 show debug symtab-create
620 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
621 creation. The default is off.
625 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
626 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
627 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
628 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
631 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
632 show print entry-values
633 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
634 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
635 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
637 set debug entry-values
638 show debug entry-values
639 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
640 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
642 set basenames-may-differ
643 show basenames-may-differ
644 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
645 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
646 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
647 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
648 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
649 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
650 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
651 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
657 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
658 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
659 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
660 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
663 show trace-stop-notes
664 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
665 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
666 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
667 started by someone else.
673 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
677 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
681 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
685 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
689 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
692 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
693 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
697 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
701 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
703 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
705 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
707 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
709 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
710 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
711 matches the given regular expression.
713 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
715 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
716 dumping the instruction opcodes.
718 * New command line options
720 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
721 This is mostly for testing purposes.
723 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
724 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
726 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
727 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
728 source path list instead of augmenting it.
730 * GDB now understands thread names.
732 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
733 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
735 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
736 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
739 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
740 has been integrated into GDB.
744 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
745 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
746 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
748 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
749 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
750 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
751 and allows for more dynamic content.
753 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
754 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
755 have an is_valid method.
757 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
758 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
759 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
761 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
763 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
764 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
765 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
766 that function like so:
768 result = some_value (10,20)
770 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
771 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
772 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
774 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
775 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
776 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
777 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
778 New function: register_pretty_printer.
780 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
781 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
783 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
785 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
788 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
789 holds the thread's name.
791 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
792 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
793 occurring in the process being debugged.
794 The following events are currently supported:
795 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
796 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
797 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
801 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
802 instantiation. For example, if you have:
804 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
806 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
807 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
808 was added to GCC 4.5.
810 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
811 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
812 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
813 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
814 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
815 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
817 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
818 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
819 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
820 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
821 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
823 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
824 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
825 execution to a label.
827 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
828 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
829 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
830 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
832 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
833 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
834 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
837 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
839 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
840 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
841 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
842 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
843 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
844 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
847 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
849 While now you see this:
852 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
854 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
857 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
858 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
859 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
860 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
862 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
863 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
864 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
865 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
866 section in the user manual for more details.
868 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
870 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
871 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
873 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
875 * New native configurations
877 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
881 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
883 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
884 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
885 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
886 in the GDB user manual.
888 * Guile support was removed.
890 * New features in the GNU simulator
892 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
894 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
896 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
898 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
900 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
901 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
902 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
903 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
904 was always disabled for such configurations.
908 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
910 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
911 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
921 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
922 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
923 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
925 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
927 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
928 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
929 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
930 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
932 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
933 mentioned flavors of operators.
935 ** static const class members
937 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
938 class definition has been fixed.
940 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
942 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
943 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
944 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
945 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
946 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
947 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
951 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
952 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
953 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
954 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
955 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
956 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
957 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
958 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
959 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
960 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
961 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
962 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
963 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
964 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
965 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
966 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
967 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
968 the "New remote packets" section below.
970 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
972 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
973 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
974 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
975 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
979 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
980 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
981 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
982 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
983 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
984 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
985 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
987 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
994 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
998 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
999 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1000 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1001 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1002 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1003 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1007 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1011 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1014 qXfer:statictrace:read
1016 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1017 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1018 to gdb's qSupported query.
1022 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1026 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1027 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1029 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1030 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1033 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1035 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1036 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1037 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1038 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1040 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1041 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1042 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1043 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1044 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1045 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1046 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1048 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1049 for static tracepoints support.
1051 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1053 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1054 it understands register description.
1056 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1058 * X86 general purpose registers
1060 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1061 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1062 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1063 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1064 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1066 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1067 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1068 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1069 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1070 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1071 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1073 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1074 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1075 in the specified file.
1077 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1078 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1079 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1080 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1081 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1082 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1083 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1084 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1085 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1086 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1090 eval template, expressions...
1091 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1092 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1094 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1095 show target-file-system-kind
1096 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1099 save breakpoints <filename>
1100 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1101 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1102 definitions, use the `source' command.
1104 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1107 info static-tracepoint-markers
1108 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1110 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1111 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1112 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1116 Enable and disable observer mode.
1118 set may-write-registers on|off
1119 set may-write-memory on|off
1120 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1121 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1122 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1123 set may-interrupt on|off
1124 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1125 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1126 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1127 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1128 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1129 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1130 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1132 set record memory-query on|off
1133 show record memory-query
1134 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1135 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1140 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1144 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1145 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1146 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1147 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1148 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1150 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
1151 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1152 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1153 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
1155 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
1156 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1158 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
1160 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
1162 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1164 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1165 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1166 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1168 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1169 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1170 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1171 regular breakpoints.
1175 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1177 * D language support.
1178 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1181 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1182 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1183 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1184 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1185 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1187 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1188 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1189 conditions of the form:
1191 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1193 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1194 interface mentioned above.
1196 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
1200 ** Namespace Support
1202 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1203 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1204 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1205 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1206 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1210 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1211 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1216 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1217 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1221 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
1226 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
1229 * Multi-program debugging.
1231 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1232 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1233 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1234 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1235 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1236 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1237 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1238 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1240 * New tracing features
1242 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1244 ** Trace state variables
1246 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1247 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1248 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1249 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1250 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1251 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1252 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1253 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1254 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1255 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
1259 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1260 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1261 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1262 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1263 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1264 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1265 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1266 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1267 the regular trace command.
1269 ** Disconnected tracing
1271 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1272 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1273 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1274 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1275 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1279 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1280 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1281 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1282 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1283 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1284 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1287 ** Circular trace buffer
1289 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1290 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1291 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1292 not be available for all target agents.
1297 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1298 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1301 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1302 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1305 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1306 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1309 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1310 "set script-extension" (see below).
1312 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1314 record save [<FILENAME>]
1315 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1316 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1318 record restore <FILENAME>
1319 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1320 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1322 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1325 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1326 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1327 inferior has loaded.
1332 maint info program-spaces
1333 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1335 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1336 show remote interrupt-sequence
1337 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1338 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1339 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1340 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1341 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1343 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1344 show remote interrupt-on-connect
1345 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1346 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1349 set remotebreak [on | off]
1351 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1353 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1354 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1357 List trace state variables and their values.
1359 delete tvariable $NAME ...
1360 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1363 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1364 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1366 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1367 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1369 * New expression syntax
1371 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1372 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1376 set follow-exec-mode new|same
1377 show follow-exec-mode
1378 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1379 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1380 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1382 set default-collect EXPR, ...
1383 show default-collect
1384 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1385 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1386 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1388 set disconnected-tracing
1389 show disconnected-tracing
1390 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1391 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1394 set circular-trace-buffer
1395 show circular-trace-buffer
1396 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1397 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1398 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1399 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1401 set script-extension off|soft|strict
1402 show script-extension
1403 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1404 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1405 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1406 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1408 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1410 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1411 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1412 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1413 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1414 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1415 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1416 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1419 * Python API Improvements
1421 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1422 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1423 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1425 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1426 `is_base_class' attribute.
1428 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1430 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1431 evaluate an expression.
1433 * New remote packets
1436 Define a trace state variable.
1439 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1442 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1445 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1448 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1452 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1454 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1455 much more reliable. In particular:
1456 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1457 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1458 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1459 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1460 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1461 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1462 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1463 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1464 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1465 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1466 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1467 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1468 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1469 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1470 non-threaded programs.
1472 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1473 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1474 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1477 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1479 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1480 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1481 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1482 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1483 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1485 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1486 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1487 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1488 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1489 for tracepoint actions.
1491 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1492 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1493 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1495 * Process record and replay
1497 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1498 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1499 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1502 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1503 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1504 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1507 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1508 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1511 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1512 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1513 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1514 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1515 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1516 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1517 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1518 the installation instructions for more information.
1520 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1521 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1522 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1523 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1525 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1526 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1528 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1529 now complete on file names.
1531 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1532 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1533 For instance, consider:
1535 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1536 # struct example variable;
1539 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1540 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1542 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1543 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1545 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1546 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1549 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1550 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1551 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1553 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1554 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1555 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1556 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1558 * New remote packets
1561 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1564 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1565 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1566 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1569 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1570 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1573 Obtains additional operating system information
1577 Read or write additional signal information.
1579 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1581 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1582 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1583 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1585 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1586 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1588 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1589 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1590 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1592 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1593 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1595 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1597 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1599 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1600 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1602 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1603 list of section offsets.
1605 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1606 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1607 have also been fixed.
1609 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1610 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1611 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1613 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1616 template<typename T> class C { };
1619 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1621 ptype C<char const *>
1622 ptype C<char const*>
1623 ptype C<const char *>
1624 ptype C<const char*>
1626 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1628 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1629 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1631 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1632 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1633 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1635 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1636 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1638 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1641 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1642 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1644 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1645 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1650 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1651 available is determined at configure time.
1653 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1655 * Ada tasking support
1657 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1661 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1663 Print detailed information about task number N.
1665 Print the task number of the current task.
1667 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1669 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1670 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1672 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1674 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1675 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1676 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1677 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1678 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1679 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1682 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1683 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1686 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1687 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1688 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1689 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1692 * Multi-architecture debugging.
1694 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1695 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1696 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1697 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1698 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1700 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1701 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1702 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1703 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1704 --enable-targets configure option.
1706 * Non-stop mode debugging.
1708 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1709 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1710 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1711 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1712 section in the user manual for more information.
1714 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1715 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1716 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1717 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1718 extensions on linux targets.
1720 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1722 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1723 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1724 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1725 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1726 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1727 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1728 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1729 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1730 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1732 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1734 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1736 maint set python print-stack
1737 maint show python print-stack
1738 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1741 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1746 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1750 Show operating system information about processes.
1753 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1756 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1759 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1762 Kill inferior number NUM.
1766 set spu stop-on-load
1767 show spu stop-on-load
1768 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1770 set spu auto-flush-cache
1771 show spu auto-flush-cache
1772 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1773 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1775 set sh calling-convention
1776 show sh calling-convention
1777 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1780 show debug timestamp
1781 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1783 set disassemble-next-line
1784 show disassemble-next-line
1785 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1788 set remote noack-packet
1789 show remote noack-packet
1790 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1791 under "New remote packets."
1793 set remote query-attached-packet
1794 show remote query-attached-packet
1795 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1797 set remote read-siginfo-object
1798 show remote read-siginfo-object
1799 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1802 set remote write-siginfo-object
1803 show remote write-siginfo-object
1804 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1807 set remote reverse-continue
1808 show remote reverse-continue
1809 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1811 set remote reverse-step
1812 show remote reverse-step
1813 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1815 set displaced-stepping
1816 show displaced-stepping
1817 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1818 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1819 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1822 show debug displaced
1823 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1825 maint set internal-error
1826 maint show internal-error
1827 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1829 maint set internal-warning
1830 maint show internal-warning
1831 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
1836 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1838 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1839 show multiple-symbols
1840 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1841 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1842 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1844 set breakpoint always-inserted
1845 show breakpoint always-inserted
1846 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1847 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1848 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1850 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1851 show arm fallback-mode
1852 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1854 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1855 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1856 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1857 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1859 set disable-randomization
1860 show disable-randomization
1861 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1862 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1863 multiple debugging sessions.
1867 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1872 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1873 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1874 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1875 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1877 set target-wide-charset
1878 show target-wide-charset
1879 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1880 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1882 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1884 set tcp connect-timeout
1885 show tcp connect-timeout
1886 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1887 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1888 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1890 set libthread-db-search-path
1891 show libthread-db-search-path
1892 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1895 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1896 show schedule-multiple
1897 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1898 the current process.
1902 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1903 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1904 affecting correctness.
1906 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1907 show interactive-mode
1908 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1909 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1910 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1911 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1912 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1917 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1918 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1919 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1923 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1924 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1925 alias for the `fork' command.
1928 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1929 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1930 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1933 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1934 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1935 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1939 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1940 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1941 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1944 * New native configurations
1946 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1948 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1952 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
1953 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
1954 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
1957 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1958 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1964 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1966 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
1968 * New native configurations
1970 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
1971 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
1975 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
1976 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
1978 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1980 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1981 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1982 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1983 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1985 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1986 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1988 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
1991 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
1992 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1993 and in inlined functions.
1995 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1996 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1997 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1999 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2001 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2002 registers on PowerPC targets.
2004 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2005 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2007 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2008 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2010 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2011 extended-remote mode.
2013 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2014 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2015 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2016 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2018 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2019 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2020 target architectures.
2022 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2023 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2024 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2025 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2027 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2030 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2031 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2033 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2034 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2035 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2036 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2038 - Improved command completion in Ada
2041 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2046 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2047 show print frame-arguments
2048 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2049 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2054 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2061 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2063 * New remote packets
2070 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2073 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2077 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2079 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2081 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2082 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2083 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2085 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2086 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2087 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2089 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2090 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2093 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2094 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2096 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2097 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
2099 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2101 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2102 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2103 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2105 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2106 automatically displayed as character or string data.
2108 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2109 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2112 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2113 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
2114 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
2116 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2119 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2120 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2121 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2123 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2125 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2127 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2128 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2129 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2131 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2132 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2134 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2135 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2136 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2137 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2138 Windows and SymbianOS).
2140 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2141 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
2143 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2144 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
2150 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2151 when debugging using remote targets.
2153 set mem inaccessible-by-default
2154 show mem inaccessible-by-default
2155 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2156 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2157 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2158 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2159 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2161 set breakpoint auto-hw
2162 show breakpoint auto-hw
2163 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2164 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2165 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2166 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2167 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2168 including "next" and "finish".
2171 catch exception unhandled
2172 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2175 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2179 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2180 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2181 an alias to "set sysroot".
2184 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2185 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2188 * New native configurations
2190 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2193 unset tdesc filename
2195 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2196 not query the target for its built-in description.
2200 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
2201 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
2202 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
2204 * New remote packets
2207 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2208 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2210 qXfer:features:read:
2211 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2216 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2217 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2219 qXfer:libraries:read:
2220 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2221 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2222 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2223 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2227 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2235 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2236 i[34567]86-*-netware*
2237 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2238 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2240 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2243 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2244 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2253 * Other removed features
2260 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2267 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2272 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2273 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2278 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2279 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2281 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2283 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2284 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2285 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2286 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2288 MIPS ".pdr" sections
2290 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2291 in debugging information.
2295 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2296 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2298 set mips stack-arg-size
2299 set mips saved-gpreg-size
2301 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2303 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
2308 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
2310 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2311 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2312 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2314 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2315 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2318 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2319 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2321 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2322 stub provides the required support.
2324 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2325 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2330 unset substitute-path
2331 show substitute-path
2332 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2333 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2334 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2335 between compilation and debugging.
2339 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2340 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2341 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2345 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2347 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2348 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2350 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2352 * New remote packets
2355 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2356 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2357 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2358 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2362 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2363 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2365 qXfer:memory-map:read:
2366 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2367 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2372 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2374 * Removed remote packets
2377 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2378 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2380 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
2384 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2386 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2390 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2391 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2393 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2395 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2397 restart <n> Return the program state to a
2398 previously saved state.
2400 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2402 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2404 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2405 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2407 info forks List forks of the user program that
2408 are available to be debugged.
2410 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2411 forks of the user program that are
2412 available to be debugged.
2414 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2415 that are available to be debugged (and
2416 kill the forked process).
2418 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2419 that are available to be debugged (and
2420 allow the process to continue).
2424 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2426 * Improved Windows host support
2428 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2429 native console support, and remote communications using either
2430 network sockets or serial ports.
2432 * Improved Modula-2 language support
2434 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2435 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2436 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2437 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2438 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2439 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2443 The ARM rdi-share module.
2445 The Netware NLM debug server.
2447 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2449 * New native configurations
2451 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2452 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2456 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2458 * New command line options
2460 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2461 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2462 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2463 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2464 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2465 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2466 with the --command (-x) option.
2468 * Deprecated commands removed
2470 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2474 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2475 othernames set arm disassembler
2476 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2477 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2478 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2481 * New BSD user-level threads support
2483 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2484 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2487 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2488 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2489 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2491 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2492 are not yet supported.
2494 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2495 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2497 * REMOVED configurations and files
2499 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2500 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2501 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2503 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2505 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2506 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2509 * VAX floating point support
2511 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2513 * User-defined command support
2515 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2516 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2517 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2519 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2521 * New command line option
2523 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2526 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2528 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2529 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2530 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2531 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2532 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2534 * Internationalization
2536 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2537 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2538 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2542 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2543 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2544 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2546 * New native configurations
2548 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2552 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2553 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2555 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2557 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2558 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2559 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2562 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2563 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2564 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2574 powerpc bdm protocol
2576 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2577 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2579 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2581 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2582 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2583 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2584 permanently REMOVED.
2593 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2595 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2597 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2598 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2601 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2603 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2604 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2605 IRIX long double values).
2609 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2610 command. This problem has been fixed.
2612 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2614 * Fix for ``many threads''
2616 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2617 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2620 ptrace: No such process.
2621 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2623 This problem has been fixed.
2625 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2627 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2630 * New ``start'' command.
2632 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2634 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2636 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2637 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2638 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2640 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2641 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2642 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2643 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2644 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2645 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2646 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2647 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2648 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2650 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2652 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2653 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2654 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2655 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2656 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2658 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2659 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2660 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2662 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2664 * New native configurations
2666 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2667 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2668 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2669 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2670 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2671 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2672 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2674 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2676 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2677 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2678 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2679 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2680 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2681 work, was also included.
2683 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2684 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2694 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2695 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2697 * REMOVED configurations and files
2699 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2700 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2701 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2702 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2703 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2704 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2705 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2706 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2707 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2708 sonymips mips-sony-*
2709 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2711 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2713 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2715 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2716 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2717 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2718 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2721 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2723 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2724 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2725 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2726 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2727 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2728 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2731 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2733 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
2735 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2736 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2737 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2739 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2741 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2742 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2744 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2746 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2747 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2748 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2750 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2752 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2753 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2755 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2757 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2758 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2759 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2761 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2763 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2764 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2765 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2767 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
2769 * Removed --with-mmalloc
2771 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2772 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2774 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
2776 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2777 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2778 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2779 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2781 * Revised SPARC target
2783 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2784 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
2785 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2786 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2787 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
2791 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2792 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2793 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2796 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2798 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2799 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2802 * C++ nested types and namespaces
2804 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2805 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2806 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2807 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2808 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2809 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2810 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2811 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2812 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2814 * New native configurations
2816 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
2817 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2818 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
2819 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2820 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
2822 * New debugging protocols
2824 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2826 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2828 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2829 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2830 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2832 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2834 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2835 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2836 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2837 permanently REMOVED.
2839 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2840 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2841 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2842 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2843 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2844 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2845 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2846 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2847 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2848 sonymips mips-sony-*
2849 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2851 * REMOVED configurations and files
2853 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2854 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2855 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2856 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2857 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2858 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2859 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2860 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2861 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2862 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
2863 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2864 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2865 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2866 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2867 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
2868 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2869 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2871 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2875 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2876 integrated into GDB.
2878 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2880 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2881 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2882 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2885 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2886 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2887 DWARF 2 CFI support.
2891 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2892 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2893 remote protocol documentation for details.
2895 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
2897 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2898 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2899 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2902 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2904 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2905 per-thread variables.
2907 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2909 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2910 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2912 * Separate debug info.
2914 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2915 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2916 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2917 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2918 and optional debug files.
2920 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2922 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2923 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2926 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2927 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2931 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2932 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2933 considered "useable".
2935 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2937 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2938 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2941 * GDB supports logging output to a file
2943 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2944 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
2946 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2948 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2949 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2952 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
2954 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2955 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2959 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2960 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2961 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2962 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2963 data, for more informative profiling results.
2965 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2967 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2968 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
2969 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
2971 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2974 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2975 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2976 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2977 in a subsequent -var-update.
2979 * New native configurations.
2981 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2983 * Multi-arched targets.
2985 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
2986 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2988 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2990 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2991 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2992 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2993 permanently REMOVED.
2995 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2996 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2997 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2998 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2999 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3000 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3001 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3002 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3003 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3004 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3005 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3006 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3008 * REMOVED configurations and files
3011 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3012 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3013 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3014 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3015 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3016 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3018 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3019 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3020 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3021 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3022 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3023 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3025 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3027 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3028 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3029 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3030 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3031 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3033 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3035 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3037 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3038 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3039 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3040 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3041 shared libs like mad''.
3043 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3045 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3046 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3047 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3048 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3050 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3052 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3053 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3056 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3057 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3059 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3060 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3062 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3063 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3064 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3065 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3067 * Multi-arched targets.
3069 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3070 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3072 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3073 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3074 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3078 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3081 * New native configurations
3083 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3084 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3085 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3086 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3088 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3090 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3091 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3092 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3093 permanently REMOVED.
3095 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3096 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3097 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3098 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3099 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3100 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3101 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3102 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3103 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3104 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3106 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3107 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3109 * OBSOLETE languages
3111 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3113 * REMOVED configurations and files
3115 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3116 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3117 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3118 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3119 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3121 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3123 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3125 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3126 commands. The default is 1024.
3128 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3130 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3132 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3134 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3135 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3136 from a file into memory (restore).
3138 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3140 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3141 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3142 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3144 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3152 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3153 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3154 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3156 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3157 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3158 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3160 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3161 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3162 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3164 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3165 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3166 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3168 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
3170 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3172 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3173 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3174 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3175 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3176 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3177 (notably embedded) targets.
3179 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3181 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3182 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3183 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3184 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
3186 * New command line option
3188 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3190 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3192 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3193 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3194 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3195 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3196 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3197 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3198 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3199 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3200 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3201 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3203 * Changes in ARM configurations.
3205 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3206 configuration is fully multi-arch.
3208 * New native configurations
3210 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
3211 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
3212 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
3213 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
3217 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3219 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3221 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3222 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3223 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3224 permanently REMOVED.
3226 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3227 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3228 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3229 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3230 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3232 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3234 * REMOVED configurations and files
3236 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3238 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3239 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3240 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3241 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3242 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3243 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3244 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3245 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3246 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3247 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3248 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
3250 * Changes to command line processing
3252 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3253 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3255 * Changes to key bindings
3257 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3259 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3261 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3263 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3266 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3268 Numerous documentation fixes.
3270 Numerous testsuite fixes.
3272 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
3274 * New native configurations
3276 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3277 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
3278 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
3279 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3280 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
3281 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
3285 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
3287 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
3289 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3291 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
3292 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3293 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3294 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3295 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3297 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3298 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3299 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3300 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3301 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3302 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3303 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3304 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
3306 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3307 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3309 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3310 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3311 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3312 permanently REMOVED.
3314 * REMOVED configurations and files
3316 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3317 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3319 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3323 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
3325 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
3326 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3331 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3333 * The MI enabled by default.
3335 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3336 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3337 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3338 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3339 which is now deprecated.
3341 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3343 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3344 main features are supported:
3346 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3348 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3351 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3353 - a Pascal expression parser.
3355 However, some important features are not yet supported.
3357 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3359 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3361 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3362 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3364 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3366 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3368 * Changes in completion.
3370 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3371 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3372 users expect at the shell prompt.
3374 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3375 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3376 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3377 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3378 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3379 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3380 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3382 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3384 * New platform-independent commands:
3386 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3387 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3388 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3390 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3392 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3393 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3394 many threads as your system allows you to have.
3396 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3398 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3399 multi-threaded programs though.
3401 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
3403 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3405 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3406 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3409 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3411 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3412 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3413 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3414 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3415 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3418 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3419 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3420 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3422 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3424 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3425 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3427 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3428 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3431 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3432 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3433 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3434 a given linear address.
3436 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3437 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3438 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3440 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3442 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3444 * Changes in documentation.
3446 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3447 Documentation License.
3449 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3452 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3454 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3457 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3458 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3459 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3461 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3463 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3464 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3465 contents of this file.
3469 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3471 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3473 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3475 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3476 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3477 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3478 greater level of detail.
3480 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3482 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3483 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3484 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3487 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3489 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3490 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3491 machines ``out of the box''.
3493 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3494 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3495 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3496 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3497 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3499 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3500 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3501 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3502 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3503 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3505 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3506 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3509 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3512 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3513 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3514 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3515 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3517 * New native configurations
3519 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3520 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3524 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3525 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3526 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3527 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3529 * OBSOLETE configurations
3531 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3532 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3534 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3537 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3538 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3539 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3540 be permanently REMOVED.
3542 * Gould support removed
3544 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3546 * New features for SVR4
3548 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3549 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3550 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3552 * Many C++ enhancements
3554 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3555 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3557 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3559 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3560 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3561 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3562 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3564 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3565 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3567 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3569 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3570 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3571 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3573 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3574 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3576 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3578 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3579 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3580 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3582 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3584 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3585 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3586 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3588 * ``apropos'' command added.
3590 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3591 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3592 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3596 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3597 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3598 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3599 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3600 enabled by configuring with:
3602 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3604 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3606 * New native configurations
3608 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3609 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3610 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3614 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3615 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3616 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3618 * OBSOLETE configurations
3620 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3622 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3623 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3624 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3625 be permanently REMOVED.
3629 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3630 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3631 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3632 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3633 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3634 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3635 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3640 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3642 * set extension-language
3644 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3645 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3646 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3647 set extension-language .c c++
3648 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3649 and their associated languages.
3651 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3653 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3654 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3655 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3659 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3660 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3662 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3663 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3665 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3666 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3667 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3668 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3669 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3670 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3671 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3672 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3674 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3675 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3676 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3677 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3681 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3682 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3683 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3684 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3685 for xdb and dbx commands.
3689 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3690 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3691 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3693 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3694 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3695 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3697 * Debugging across forks
3699 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3704 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3705 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3706 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3708 * GDB remote protocol additions
3710 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3711 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3712 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3713 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3715 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3716 full 64-bit address. The command
3718 set remoteaddresssize 32
3720 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3721 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3724 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3725 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3727 maint packet heythere
3729 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3730 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3733 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3734 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3735 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3737 * Tracing can collect general expressions
3739 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3740 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3741 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3743 * mask-address variable for Mips
3745 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3746 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3747 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3749 * Higher serial baud rates
3751 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3752 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3753 to achieve all of these rates.)
3757 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3758 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3761 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3763 * New native configurations
3765 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3766 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3767 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3768 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3769 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3770 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3771 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3775 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3776 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3777 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3778 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3779 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3780 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3781 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3782 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3783 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3784 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3785 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3787 * New debugging protocols
3789 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3790 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3791 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3792 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3793 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3794 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3798 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3799 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3804 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3805 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3807 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3809 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3810 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3811 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3813 * Live range splitting
3815 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3816 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3817 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3821 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3822 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3826 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3827 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3828 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3833 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3838 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3839 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3840 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3841 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3842 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3843 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3847 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3848 the symbol at the specified address.
3852 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3853 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3854 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3855 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3856 file tracepoint.c for more details.
3860 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3861 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3862 of most MIPS variants.
3866 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3867 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3868 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3872 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3873 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3874 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3875 the possible architectures.
3877 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3879 * New native configurations
3881 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3882 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3883 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3884 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3885 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3886 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3890 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3891 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3892 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3893 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3894 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3896 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3900 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3901 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3902 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3903 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3904 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3908 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3910 * Windows 95/NT native
3912 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3913 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3914 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3915 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3916 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3918 * dont-repeat command
3920 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3921 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3922 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3923 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3925 * Send break instead of ^C
3927 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3928 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3929 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3931 * Remote protocol timeout
3933 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3934 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3935 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3937 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3939 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3940 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3941 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3942 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3943 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3945 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3946 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3947 automatically on hpux10.
3949 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3951 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3953 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3955 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3956 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3957 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3958 every character. The default value is 1050.
3960 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3962 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3963 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3964 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3965 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3966 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3967 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3969 * Speedups for remote debugging
3971 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3972 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3973 and more efficient S-record downloading.
3975 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3977 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3978 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3980 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3982 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
3984 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3985 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3987 * Remote targets use caching
3989 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3990 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3991 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3992 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3993 off' turns the the data cache off.
3995 * Remote targets may have threads
3997 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3998 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3999 gdb/remote.c for details.
4003 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4004 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4005 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4006 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4007 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4008 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4009 sequence is something like
4011 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4013 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4017 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4018 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4019 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4020 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4021 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4022 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4023 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4024 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4028 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4029 but does simplify configuration and building.
4033 GDB now supports hpux10.
4035 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4037 * New native configurations
4039 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4040 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4041 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4042 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4046 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4047 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4048 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4049 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4052 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4054 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4055 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4056 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4057 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4058 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4060 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4062 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4063 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4066 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4068 To execute the command use:
4071 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4072 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4073 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4075 * New `if' and `while' commands
4077 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4078 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4079 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4080 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4081 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4082 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4083 if the expression is zero.
4085 * Fortran source language mode
4087 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4088 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4089 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4090 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4093 * Better HPUX support
4095 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4096 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4097 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4098 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4099 that behavior do the following before running the program:
4105 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4106 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4112 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4113 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4116 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4117 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4119 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4121 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4122 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4123 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4124 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4125 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4126 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4128 * New DOS host serial code
4130 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4131 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4134 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4136 * New "complete" command
4138 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4139 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4141 * Trailing space optional in prompt
4143 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4144 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4146 * Breakpoint hit counts
4148 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4149 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4150 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4151 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4152 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4155 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4157 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4158 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4159 arrays actually contain only short strings.
4161 * Shared library breakpoints
4163 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4164 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4166 * Hardware watchpoints
4168 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4169 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4171 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
4175 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4176 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4178 * Improved Irix 5 support
4180 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4182 * Improved HPPA support
4184 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4186 * New native configurations
4188 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4189 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4190 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4191 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4195 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4196 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4199 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4201 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4202 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4206 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4207 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4209 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4211 * Irix 5 is now supported
4215 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4216 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4217 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4218 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4219 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4222 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4224 * User visible changes:
4228 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4229 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4230 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4231 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4232 debugging info for the mips target).
4234 * DEC Alpha native support
4236 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4237 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4238 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4239 Alpha-specific notes.
4241 * Preliminary thread implementation
4243 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4245 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
4247 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4248 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4251 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4253 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4254 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4255 call methods, ...etc.
4257 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4259 * User visible changes:
4261 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4262 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4263 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4264 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4266 Filename completion now works.
4268 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4269 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4270 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4272 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4273 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4274 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4275 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4276 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4280 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4281 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4284 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4288 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4289 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4290 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4294 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4295 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4296 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4297 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4298 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4302 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4303 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4304 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4306 * New targets supported
4308 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4309 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4310 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4311 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4312 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4314 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4315 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4316 GO32 memory extender.
4318 * New remote protocols
4320 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4322 * New source languages supported
4324 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4325 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4326 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4329 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4331 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4333 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4334 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4335 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4336 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4337 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4338 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4340 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4342 * Faster and better demangling
4344 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4345 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4346 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4347 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4348 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4349 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4352 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4353 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4354 compiler does not actually implement.
4356 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4358 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4359 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4360 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4361 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4362 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4363 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4366 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4367 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4369 * Improved configure script
4371 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4372 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4373 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4374 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4376 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4377 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4378 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4379 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4380 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4381 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4383 * Documentation improvements
4385 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4386 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4387 before submitting changes.
4389 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4390 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4391 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4392 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4393 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4395 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4396 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4397 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4398 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4399 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4400 around this problem.
4404 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4405 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4406 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4409 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4410 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4412 * New native hosts supported
4414 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4415 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4417 * New targets supported
4419 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4421 * New file formats supported
4423 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4424 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4428 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4430 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4431 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4433 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4434 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4435 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4437 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4438 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4440 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4441 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4442 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4445 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4446 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4447 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4448 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4449 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4451 * Internal improvements
4453 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4454 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4456 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4457 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4458 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4459 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4460 shared code that handles any of them.
4462 * New command line options
4464 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4468 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4469 General Public License.
4471 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4473 * Host/native/target split
4475 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4476 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4477 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4478 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4479 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4481 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4482 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4483 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4484 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4485 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4486 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4487 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4489 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4490 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4491 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4493 * New hosts supported
4495 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4496 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4497 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4499 * New targets supported
4501 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4502 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4504 * New native hosts supported
4506 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4507 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4508 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4510 * New file formats supported
4512 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4513 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4514 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4518 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4519 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4520 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4522 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4524 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4525 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4526 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4527 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4531 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4532 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4533 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4535 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4539 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4540 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4543 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4544 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4546 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4547 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4548 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4549 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4550 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4551 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4553 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4554 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4555 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4556 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4560 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4561 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4562 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4563 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4564 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4566 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4567 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4568 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4569 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4573 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4574 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4575 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4576 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4577 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4578 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4579 each instruction being stepped through.
4581 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4582 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4584 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4585 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4586 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4587 processor with a serial port.
4591 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4592 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4593 supported, and what files each one uses.
4597 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4598 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4599 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4600 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4602 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4603 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4604 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4605 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4609 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4610 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4611 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4612 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4613 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4614 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4616 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4619 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4621 * Better support for C++ function names
4623 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4624 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4625 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4626 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4627 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4629 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4630 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4631 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4632 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4633 for the list of formats.
4635 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4637 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4638 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4639 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4640 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4641 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4642 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4645 * New 'maintenance' command
4647 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4648 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4649 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4651 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4652 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4653 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4654 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4655 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4656 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4658 The following commands are new:
4660 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4661 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4662 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4664 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4666 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4667 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4668 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4669 read after argv processing.
4671 * New hosts supported
4673 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4675 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4677 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4678 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4679 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4680 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4681 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4684 * New targets supported
4686 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4688 * More smarts about finding #include files
4690 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4691 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4692 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4693 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4694 the one that contains your sources.
4696 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4697 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4698 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4700 * Interesting infernals change
4702 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4703 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4704 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4705 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4707 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4709 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4710 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4711 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4713 See the ChangeLog for details.
4715 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4717 * New machines supported (host and target)
4719 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4721 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4723 * New malloc package
4725 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4726 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4727 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4728 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4729 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4730 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4734 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4735 'help info proc' for details.
4737 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4739 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4740 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4743 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4745 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4746 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4747 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4748 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4749 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4750 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4752 * Cross byte order fixes
4754 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4755 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4757 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4759 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4760 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4761 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4762 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4763 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4764 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4765 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4766 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4767 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4768 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4770 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4771 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4772 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4773 slower, but makes future operations faster.
4775 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4776 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4777 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4780 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4782 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4783 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4784 shared across multiple host platforms.
4786 * longjmp() handling
4788 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4789 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4790 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4791 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4795 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4796 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4801 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4802 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4803 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4805 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4807 * New machines supported (host and target)
4809 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4811 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4812 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4814 * New machines supported (target)
4816 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4820 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4821 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4822 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4824 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4825 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4826 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4827 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4828 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4831 * New features for SVR4
4833 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4834 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4835 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4837 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4838 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4839 it prints the address mappings of the process.
4841 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4842 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4844 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4846 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4847 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4848 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4849 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4850 same code linked statically.
4854 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4855 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4856 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4857 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4858 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4859 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4863 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4864 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4865 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4868 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4870 * New machines supported (host and target)
4872 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4873 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4874 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4876 * Almost SCO Unix support
4878 We had hoped to support:
4879 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4880 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4881 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4882 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4884 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4886 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4887 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4888 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4889 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4894 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4895 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4896 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4900 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4901 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4902 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4904 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4906 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4907 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4908 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4910 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4911 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4912 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4913 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4916 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4917 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4918 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4919 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4922 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4923 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4926 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4927 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4928 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4931 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4933 * Improved configuration
4935 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4936 Porting BFD is simpler.
4940 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4941 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4942 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4943 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4947 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4949 * New host supported (not target)
4951 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4954 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4956 * Multiple source language support
4958 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4959 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4960 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4961 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4962 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4963 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4967 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4968 currently under development at the State University of New York at
4969 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4970 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4972 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4973 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4974 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4976 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4977 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4981 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4982 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4983 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4984 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4987 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4989 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4990 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4991 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4992 examining core files.
4996 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4999 * New machines supported (host and target)
5001 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5002 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5003 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5005 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5007 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5009 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5011 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5012 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5013 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5015 * New remote interfaces
5021 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5025 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5027 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5028 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5029 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5030 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5031 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5032 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5033 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5034 stub on the target system.
5036 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5038 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5039 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5040 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5042 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5043 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5046 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5048 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5049 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5051 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5052 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5053 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5055 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5056 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5057 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5058 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5060 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5061 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5062 it is already running. Default is ON.
5064 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5065 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5066 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5067 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5070 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5071 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5072 or the value of the environment variable
5075 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5076 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5079 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5080 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5081 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5083 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5084 history expansion will be performed on
5085 command line input. The default is OFF.
5087 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5088 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5089 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5091 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5092 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5093 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5096 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5097 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5098 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5101 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5102 ``set width'' instead.
5104 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5105 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5106 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5107 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5109 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5112 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5115 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5118 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5121 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5123 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5124 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5125 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5129 * Support for Shared Libraries
5131 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5132 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5133 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5134 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5135 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5136 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5137 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5138 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5140 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5141 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5142 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5144 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5149 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5150 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5151 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5152 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5153 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5154 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5156 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5158 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5160 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5161 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5162 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5165 * C++ multiple inheritance
5167 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5170 * C++ exception handling
5172 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5173 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5174 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5177 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5178 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5179 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5181 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5182 current stack frame.
5185 * Minor command changes
5187 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5188 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5189 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5191 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5192 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5193 frames without printing.
5195 * New directory command
5197 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5198 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5199 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5200 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5201 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5203 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5205 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5208 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5209 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5210 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5211 where the program that you are debugging will run.