1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.3
6 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
7 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
8 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
9 target hardware watchpoint.
11 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
12 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
13 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
14 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
18 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
19 deprecated, and a new command: "set python print-stack on|off" has
20 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is now
23 ** A prompt subsitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
26 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
27 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
28 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
31 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
32 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
33 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
34 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
35 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
37 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
38 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
40 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
41 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
42 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
43 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
44 use this option to specify where to find it.
46 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
47 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
48 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
49 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
50 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
51 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
52 section in the user manual for more details.
54 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
55 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
56 become available after that.
58 * New commands "info macros", and "info definitions" have been added.
62 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
63 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
64 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
66 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
67 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
68 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
70 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
71 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
72 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
73 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
74 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
81 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
85 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
87 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
88 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
90 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
92 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
93 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
94 matches the given regular expression.
96 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
98 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
99 dumping the instruction opcodes.
101 * New command line options
103 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
104 This is mostly for testing purposes.
106 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
107 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
109 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
110 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
111 source path list instead of augmenting it.
113 * GDB now understands thread names.
115 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
116 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
118 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
119 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
122 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
123 has been integrated into GDB.
127 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
128 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
129 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
131 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
132 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
133 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
134 and allows for more dynamic content.
136 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
137 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
138 have an is_valid method.
140 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
141 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
142 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
144 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
146 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
147 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
148 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
149 that function like so:
151 result = some_value (10,20)
153 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
154 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
155 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
157 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
158 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
159 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
160 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
161 New function: register_pretty_printer.
163 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
164 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
166 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
168 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
171 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
172 holds the thread's name.
174 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
175 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
176 occurring in the process being debugged.
177 The following events are currently supported:
178 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
179 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
180 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
184 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
185 instantiation. For example, if you have:
187 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
189 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
190 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
191 was added to GCC 4.5.
193 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
194 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
195 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
196 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
197 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
198 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
200 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
201 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
202 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
203 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
204 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
206 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
207 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
208 execution to a label.
210 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
211 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
212 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
213 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
215 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
216 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
217 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
220 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
222 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
223 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
224 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
225 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
226 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
227 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
230 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
232 While now you see this:
235 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
237 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
240 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
241 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
242 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
243 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
245 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
246 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
247 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
248 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
249 section in the user manual for more details.
251 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
253 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
254 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
256 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
258 * New native configurations
260 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
264 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
266 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
267 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
268 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
269 in the GDB user manual.
271 * Guile support was removed.
273 * New features in the GNU simulator
275 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
277 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
279 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
281 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
283 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
284 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
285 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
286 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
287 was always disabled for such configurations.
291 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
293 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
294 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
304 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
305 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
306 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
308 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
310 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
311 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
312 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
313 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
315 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
316 mentioned flavors of operators.
318 ** static const class members
320 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
321 class definition has been fixed.
323 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
325 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
326 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
327 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
328 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
329 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
330 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
334 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
335 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
336 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
337 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
338 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
339 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
340 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
341 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
342 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
343 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
344 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
345 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
346 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
347 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
348 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
349 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
350 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
351 the "New remote packets" section below.
353 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
355 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
356 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
357 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
358 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
362 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
363 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
364 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
365 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
366 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
367 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
368 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
370 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
377 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
381 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
382 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
383 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
384 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
385 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
386 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
390 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
394 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
397 qXfer:statictrace:read
399 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
400 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
401 to gdb's qSupported query.
405 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
409 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
410 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
412 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
413 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
416 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
418 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
419 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
420 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
421 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
423 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
424 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
425 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
426 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
427 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
428 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
429 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
431 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
432 for static tracepoints support.
434 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
436 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
437 it understands register description.
439 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
441 * X86 general purpose registers
443 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
444 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
445 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
446 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
447 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
449 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
450 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
451 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
452 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
453 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
454 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
456 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
457 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
458 in the specified file.
460 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
461 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
462 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
463 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
464 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
465 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
466 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
467 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
468 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
469 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
473 eval template, expressions...
474 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
475 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
477 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
478 show target-file-system-kind
479 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
482 save breakpoints <filename>
483 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
484 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
485 definitions, use the `source' command.
487 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
490 info static-tracepoint-markers
491 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
493 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
494 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
495 function, line, address, or marker ID.
499 Enable and disable observer mode.
501 set may-write-registers on|off
502 set may-write-memory on|off
503 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
504 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
505 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
506 set may-interrupt on|off
507 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
508 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
509 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
510 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
511 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
512 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
513 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
515 set record memory-query on|off
516 show record memory-query
517 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
518 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
523 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
527 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
528 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
529 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
530 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
531 GDB using Python' in the manual.
533 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
534 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
535 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
536 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
538 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
539 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
541 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
543 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
545 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
547 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
548 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
549 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
551 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
552 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
553 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
558 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
560 * D language support.
561 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
564 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
565 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
566 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
567 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
568 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
570 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
571 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
572 conditions of the form:
574 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
576 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
577 interface mentioned above.
579 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
585 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
586 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
587 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
588 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
589 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
593 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
594 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
599 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
600 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
604 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
609 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
612 * Multi-program debugging.
614 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
615 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
616 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
617 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
618 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
619 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
620 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
621 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
623 * New tracing features
625 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
627 ** Trace state variables
629 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
630 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
631 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
632 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
633 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
634 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
635 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
636 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
637 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
638 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
642 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
643 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
644 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
645 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
646 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
647 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
648 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
649 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
650 the regular trace command.
652 ** Disconnected tracing
654 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
655 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
656 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
657 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
658 connection is lost unexpectedly.
662 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
663 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
664 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
665 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
666 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
667 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
670 ** Circular trace buffer
672 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
673 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
674 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
675 not be available for all target agents.
680 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
681 the arguments to be comma-separated.
684 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
685 which only declare a variable are not shown.
688 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
689 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
692 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
693 "set script-extension" (see below).
695 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
697 record save [<FILENAME>]
698 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
699 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
701 record restore <FILENAME>
702 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
703 earlier time, for replay debugging.
705 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
708 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
709 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
715 maint info program-spaces
716 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
718 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
719 show remote interrupt-sequence
720 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
721 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
722 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
723 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
724 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
726 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
727 show remote interrupt-on-connect
728 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
729 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
732 set remotebreak [on | off]
734 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
736 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
737 Create or modify a trace state variable.
740 List trace state variables and their values.
742 delete tvariable $NAME ...
743 Delete one or more trace state variables.
746 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
747 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
749 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
750 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
752 * New expression syntax
754 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
755 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
759 set follow-exec-mode new|same
760 show follow-exec-mode
761 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
762 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
763 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
765 set default-collect EXPR, ...
767 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
768 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
769 such as registers or a critical global variable.
771 set disconnected-tracing
772 show disconnected-tracing
773 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
774 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
777 set circular-trace-buffer
778 show circular-trace-buffer
779 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
780 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
781 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
782 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
784 set script-extension off|soft|strict
785 show script-extension
786 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
787 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
788 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
789 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
791 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
793 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
794 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
795 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
796 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
797 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
798 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
799 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
802 * Python API Improvements
804 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
805 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
806 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
808 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
809 `is_base_class' attribute.
811 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
813 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
814 evaluate an expression.
819 Define a trace state variable.
822 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
825 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
828 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
831 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
835 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
837 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
838 much more reliable. In particular:
839 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
840 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
841 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
842 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
843 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
844 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
845 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
846 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
847 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
848 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
849 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
850 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
851 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
852 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
853 non-threaded programs.
855 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
856 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
857 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
860 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
862 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
863 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
864 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
865 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
866 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
868 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
869 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
870 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
871 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
872 for tracepoint actions.
874 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
875 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
876 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
878 * Process record and replay
880 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
881 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
882 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
885 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
886 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
887 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
890 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
891 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
894 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
895 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
896 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
897 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
898 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
899 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
900 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
901 the installation instructions for more information.
903 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
904 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
905 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
906 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
908 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
909 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
911 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
912 now complete on file names.
914 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
915 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
916 For instance, consider:
918 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
919 # struct example variable;
922 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
923 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
925 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
926 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
928 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
929 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
932 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
933 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
934 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
936 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
937 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
938 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
939 and simulator targets may also provide them.
944 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
947 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
948 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
949 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
952 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
953 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
956 Obtains additional operating system information
960 Read or write additional signal information.
962 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
964 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
965 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
966 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
968 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
969 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
971 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
972 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
973 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
975 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
976 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
978 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
980 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
982 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
983 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
985 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
986 list of section offsets.
988 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
989 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
990 have also been fixed.
992 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
993 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
994 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
996 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
999 template<typename T> class C { };
1002 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1004 ptype C<char const *>
1005 ptype C<char const*>
1006 ptype C<const char *>
1007 ptype C<const char*>
1009 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1011 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1012 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1014 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1015 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1016 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1018 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1019 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1021 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1024 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1025 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1027 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1028 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1033 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1034 available is determined at configure time.
1036 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1038 * Ada tasking support
1040 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1044 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1046 Print detailed information about task number N.
1048 Print the task number of the current task.
1050 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1052 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1053 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1055 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1057 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1058 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1059 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1060 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1061 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1062 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1065 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1066 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1069 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1070 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1071 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1072 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1075 * Multi-architecture debugging.
1077 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1078 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1079 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1080 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1081 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1083 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1084 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1085 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1086 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1087 --enable-targets configure option.
1089 * Non-stop mode debugging.
1091 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1092 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1093 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1094 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1095 section in the user manual for more information.
1097 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1098 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1099 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1100 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1101 extensions on linux targets.
1103 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1105 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1106 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1107 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1108 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1109 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1110 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1111 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1112 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1113 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1115 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1117 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1119 maint set python print-stack
1120 maint show python print-stack
1121 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1124 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1129 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1133 Show operating system information about processes.
1136 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1139 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1142 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1145 Kill inferior number NUM.
1149 set spu stop-on-load
1150 show spu stop-on-load
1151 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1153 set spu auto-flush-cache
1154 show spu auto-flush-cache
1155 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1156 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1158 set sh calling-convention
1159 show sh calling-convention
1160 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1163 show debug timestamp
1164 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1166 set disassemble-next-line
1167 show disassemble-next-line
1168 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1171 set remote noack-packet
1172 show remote noack-packet
1173 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1174 under "New remote packets."
1176 set remote query-attached-packet
1177 show remote query-attached-packet
1178 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1180 set remote read-siginfo-object
1181 show remote read-siginfo-object
1182 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1185 set remote write-siginfo-object
1186 show remote write-siginfo-object
1187 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1190 set remote reverse-continue
1191 show remote reverse-continue
1192 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1194 set remote reverse-step
1195 show remote reverse-step
1196 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1198 set displaced-stepping
1199 show displaced-stepping
1200 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1201 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1202 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1205 show debug displaced
1206 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1208 maint set internal-error
1209 maint show internal-error
1210 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1212 maint set internal-warning
1213 maint show internal-warning
1214 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
1219 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1221 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1222 show multiple-symbols
1223 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1224 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1225 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1227 set breakpoint always-inserted
1228 show breakpoint always-inserted
1229 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1230 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1231 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1233 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1234 show arm fallback-mode
1235 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1237 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1238 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1239 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1240 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1242 set disable-randomization
1243 show disable-randomization
1244 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1245 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1246 multiple debugging sessions.
1250 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1255 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1256 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1257 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1258 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1260 set target-wide-charset
1261 show target-wide-charset
1262 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1263 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1265 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1267 set tcp connect-timeout
1268 show tcp connect-timeout
1269 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1270 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1271 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1273 set libthread-db-search-path
1274 show libthread-db-search-path
1275 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1278 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1279 show schedule-multiple
1280 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1281 the current process.
1285 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1286 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1287 affecting correctness.
1289 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1290 show interactive-mode
1291 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1292 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1293 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1294 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1295 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1300 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1301 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1302 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1306 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1307 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1308 alias for the `fork' command.
1311 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1312 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1313 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1316 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1317 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1318 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1322 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1323 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1324 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1327 * New native configurations
1329 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1331 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1335 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
1336 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
1337 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
1340 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1341 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1347 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1349 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
1351 * New native configurations
1353 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
1354 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
1358 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
1359 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
1361 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1363 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1364 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1365 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1366 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1368 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1369 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1371 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
1374 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
1375 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1376 and in inlined functions.
1378 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1379 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1380 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1382 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1384 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1385 registers on PowerPC targets.
1387 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1388 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1390 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1391 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1393 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1394 extended-remote mode.
1396 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
1397 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1398 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1399 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
1401 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1402 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1403 target architectures.
1405 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1406 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1407 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1408 stored in two consecutive float registers.
1410 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1413 * Improved support for debugging Ada
1414 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1416 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1417 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1418 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1419 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1421 - Improved command completion in Ada
1424 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1429 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1430 show print frame-arguments
1431 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1432 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1437 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1444 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1446 * New remote packets
1453 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
1456 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1460 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1462 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
1464 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1465 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1466 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1468 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1469 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1470 -Bsymbolic linker option.
1472 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1473 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1476 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1477 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1479 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1480 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
1482 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1484 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1485 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1486 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1488 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1489 automatically displayed as character or string data.
1491 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1492 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1495 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1496 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
1497 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
1499 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1502 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1503 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1504 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1506 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1508 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1510 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1511 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1512 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1514 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1515 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1517 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1518 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1519 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1520 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1521 Windows and SymbianOS).
1523 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1524 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
1526 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1527 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
1533 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1534 when debugging using remote targets.
1536 set mem inaccessible-by-default
1537 show mem inaccessible-by-default
1538 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1539 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1540 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1541 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1542 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1544 set breakpoint auto-hw
1545 show breakpoint auto-hw
1546 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1547 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1548 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1549 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1550 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1551 including "next" and "finish".
1554 catch exception unhandled
1555 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1558 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1562 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1563 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1564 an alias to "set sysroot".
1567 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1568 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1571 * New native configurations
1573 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1576 unset tdesc filename
1578 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1579 not query the target for its built-in description.
1583 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
1584 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
1585 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
1587 * New remote packets
1590 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1591 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1593 qXfer:features:read:
1594 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1599 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1600 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1602 qXfer:libraries:read:
1603 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1604 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1605 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1606 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1610 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1618 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1619 i[34567]86-*-netware*
1620 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1621 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1623 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1626 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1627 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1636 * Other removed features
1643 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1650 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1655 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1656 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1661 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1662 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1664 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1666 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1667 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1668 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1669 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1671 MIPS ".pdr" sections
1673 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1674 in debugging information.
1678 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1679 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1681 set mips stack-arg-size
1682 set mips saved-gpreg-size
1684 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1686 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
1691 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
1693 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1694 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1695 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1697 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1698 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1701 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1702 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1704 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1705 stub provides the required support.
1707 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1708 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1713 unset substitute-path
1714 show substitute-path
1715 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1716 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1717 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1718 between compilation and debugging.
1722 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1723 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1724 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1728 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1730 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1731 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1733 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1735 * New remote packets
1738 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1739 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1740 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1741 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1745 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1746 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1748 qXfer:memory-map:read:
1749 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1750 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1755 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1757 * Removed remote packets
1760 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1761 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1763 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
1767 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1769 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1773 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1774 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1776 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1778 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1780 restart <n> Return the program state to a
1781 previously saved state.
1783 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1785 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1787 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1788 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1790 info forks List forks of the user program that
1791 are available to be debugged.
1793 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1794 forks of the user program that are
1795 available to be debugged.
1797 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1798 that are available to be debugged (and
1799 kill the forked process).
1801 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1802 that are available to be debugged (and
1803 allow the process to continue).
1807 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1809 * Improved Windows host support
1811 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1812 native console support, and remote communications using either
1813 network sockets or serial ports.
1815 * Improved Modula-2 language support
1817 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1818 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1819 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1820 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1821 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1822 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1826 The ARM rdi-share module.
1828 The Netware NLM debug server.
1830 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
1832 * New native configurations
1834 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
1835 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1839 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1841 * New command line options
1843 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1844 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1845 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1846 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1847 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1848 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1849 with the --command (-x) option.
1851 * Deprecated commands removed
1853 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1857 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1858 othernames set arm disassembler
1859 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1860 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1861 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1864 * New BSD user-level threads support
1866 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1867 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1870 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1871 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1872 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1874 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1875 are not yet supported.
1877 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1878 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1880 * REMOVED configurations and files
1882 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
1883 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1884 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
1886 * New "set print array-indexes" command
1888 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1889 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1892 * VAX floating point support
1894 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1896 * User-defined command support
1898 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1899 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1900 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1902 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1904 * New command line option
1906 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1909 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1911 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1912 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1913 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1914 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1915 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
1917 * Internationalization
1919 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1920 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1921 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1925 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1926 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1927 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1929 * New native configurations
1931 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1935 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1936 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1938 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1940 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1941 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1942 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1945 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1946 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1947 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1957 powerpc bdm protocol
1959 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1960 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1962 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1964 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1965 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1966 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1967 permanently REMOVED.
1976 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1978 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1980 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1981 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1984 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1986 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1987 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1988 IRIX long double values).
1992 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1993 command. This problem has been fixed.
1995 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
1997 * Fix for ``many threads''
1999 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2000 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2003 ptrace: No such process.
2004 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2006 This problem has been fixed.
2008 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2010 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2013 * New ``start'' command.
2015 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2017 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2019 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2020 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2021 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2023 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2024 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2025 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2026 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2027 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2028 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2029 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2030 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2031 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2033 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2035 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2036 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2037 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2038 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2039 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2041 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2042 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2043 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2045 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2047 * New native configurations
2049 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2050 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2051 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2052 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2053 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2054 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2055 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2057 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2059 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2060 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2061 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2062 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2063 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2064 work, was also included.
2066 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2067 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2077 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2078 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2080 * REMOVED configurations and files
2082 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2083 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2084 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2085 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2086 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2087 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2088 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2089 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2090 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2091 sonymips mips-sony-*
2092 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2094 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2096 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2098 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2099 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2100 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2101 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2104 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2106 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2107 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2108 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2109 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2110 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2111 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2114 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2116 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
2118 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2119 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2120 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2122 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2124 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2125 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2127 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2129 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2130 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2131 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2133 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2135 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2136 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2138 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2140 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2141 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2142 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2144 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2146 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2147 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2148 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2150 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
2152 * Removed --with-mmalloc
2154 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2155 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2157 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
2159 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2160 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2161 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2162 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2164 * Revised SPARC target
2166 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2167 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
2168 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2169 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2170 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
2174 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2175 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2176 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2179 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2181 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2182 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2185 * C++ nested types and namespaces
2187 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2188 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2189 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2190 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2191 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2192 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2193 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2194 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2195 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2197 * New native configurations
2199 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
2200 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2201 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
2202 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2203 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
2205 * New debugging protocols
2207 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2209 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2211 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2212 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2213 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2215 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2217 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2218 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2219 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2220 permanently REMOVED.
2222 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2223 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2224 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2225 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2226 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2227 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2228 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2229 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2230 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2231 sonymips mips-sony-*
2232 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2234 * REMOVED configurations and files
2236 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2237 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2238 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2239 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2240 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2241 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2242 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2243 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2244 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2245 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
2246 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2247 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2248 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2249 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2250 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
2251 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2252 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2254 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2258 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2259 integrated into GDB.
2261 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2263 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2264 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2265 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2268 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2269 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2270 DWARF 2 CFI support.
2274 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2275 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2276 remote protocol documentation for details.
2278 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
2280 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2281 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2282 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2285 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2287 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2288 per-thread variables.
2290 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2292 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2293 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2295 * Separate debug info.
2297 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2298 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2299 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2300 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2301 and optional debug files.
2303 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2305 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2306 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2309 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2310 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2314 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2315 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2316 considered "useable".
2318 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2320 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2321 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2324 * GDB supports logging output to a file
2326 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2327 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
2329 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2331 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2332 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2335 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
2337 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2338 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2342 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2343 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2344 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2345 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2346 data, for more informative profiling results.
2348 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2350 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2351 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
2352 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
2354 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2357 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2358 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2359 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2360 in a subsequent -var-update.
2362 * New native configurations.
2364 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2366 * Multi-arched targets.
2368 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
2369 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2371 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2373 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2374 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2375 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2376 permanently REMOVED.
2378 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2379 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2380 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2381 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2382 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2383 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2384 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2385 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2386 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2387 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2388 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2389 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2391 * REMOVED configurations and files
2394 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2395 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2396 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2397 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2398 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2399 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2401 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2402 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2403 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2404 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2405 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2406 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2408 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
2410 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2411 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2412 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2413 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2414 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2416 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
2418 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2420 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2421 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2422 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2423 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2424 shared libs like mad''.
2426 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
2428 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2429 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2430 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2431 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
2433 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2435 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2436 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2439 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2440 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2442 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2443 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2445 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2446 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2447 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2448 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2450 * Multi-arched targets.
2452 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2453 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2455 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
2456 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2457 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2461 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2464 * New native configurations
2466 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
2467 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
2468 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
2469 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
2471 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2473 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2474 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2475 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2476 permanently REMOVED.
2478 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2479 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2480 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2481 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2482 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2483 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2484 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2485 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2486 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2487 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2489 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2490 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2492 * OBSOLETE languages
2494 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2496 * REMOVED configurations and files
2498 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2499 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2500 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2501 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2502 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2504 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2506 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2508 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2509 commands. The default is 1024.
2511 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2513 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2515 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2517 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2518 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2519 from a file into memory (restore).
2521 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2523 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2524 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2525 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2527 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2535 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2536 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2537 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2539 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2540 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2541 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2543 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2544 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2545 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2547 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2548 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2549 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2551 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
2553 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2555 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2556 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2557 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2558 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2559 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2560 (notably embedded) targets.
2562 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2564 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2565 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2566 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2567 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
2569 * New command line option
2571 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2573 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2575 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2576 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2577 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2578 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2579 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2580 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2581 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2582 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2583 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2584 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2586 * Changes in ARM configurations.
2588 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2589 configuration is fully multi-arch.
2591 * New native configurations
2593 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
2594 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
2595 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
2596 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
2600 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2602 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2604 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2605 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2606 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2607 permanently REMOVED.
2609 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2610 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2611 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2612 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2613 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2615 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2617 * REMOVED configurations and files
2619 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2621 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2622 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2623 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2624 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2625 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2626 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2627 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2628 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2629 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2630 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2631 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
2633 * Changes to command line processing
2635 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2636 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2638 * Changes to key bindings
2640 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2642 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2644 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2646 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2649 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2651 Numerous documentation fixes.
2653 Numerous testsuite fixes.
2655 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
2657 * New native configurations
2659 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2660 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2661 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
2662 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2663 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
2664 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
2668 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
2670 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
2672 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2674 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
2675 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2676 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2677 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2678 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2680 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2681 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2682 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2683 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2684 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2685 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2686 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2687 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
2689 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2690 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2692 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2693 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2694 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2695 permanently REMOVED.
2697 * REMOVED configurations and files
2699 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2700 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2702 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2706 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
2708 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
2709 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2714 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2716 * The MI enabled by default.
2718 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2719 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2720 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2721 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2722 which is now deprecated.
2724 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2726 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2727 main features are supported:
2729 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2731 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2734 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2736 - a Pascal expression parser.
2738 However, some important features are not yet supported.
2740 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2742 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2744 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2745 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2747 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2749 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2751 * Changes in completion.
2753 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2754 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2755 users expect at the shell prompt.
2757 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2758 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2759 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2760 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2761 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2762 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2763 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2765 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2767 * New platform-independent commands:
2769 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2770 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2771 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2773 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2775 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2776 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2777 many threads as your system allows you to have.
2779 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2781 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2782 multi-threaded programs though.
2784 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
2786 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2788 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2789 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2792 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2794 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2795 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2796 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2797 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2798 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2801 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2802 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2803 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2805 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2807 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2808 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2810 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2811 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2814 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2815 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2816 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2817 a given linear address.
2819 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2820 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2821 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2823 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2825 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2827 * Changes in documentation.
2829 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2830 Documentation License.
2832 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2835 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2837 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2840 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2841 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2842 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2844 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2846 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2847 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2848 contents of this file.
2852 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
2854 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
2856 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2858 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2859 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2860 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2861 greater level of detail.
2863 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2865 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2866 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2867 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2870 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2872 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2873 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2874 machines ``out of the box''.
2876 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2877 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2878 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2879 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2880 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2882 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2883 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2884 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2885 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2886 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2888 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2889 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2892 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2895 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2896 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2897 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2898 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2900 * New native configurations
2902 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
2903 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2907 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
2908 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2909 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
2910 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2912 * OBSOLETE configurations
2914 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2915 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2917 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2920 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2921 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2922 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2923 be permanently REMOVED.
2925 * Gould support removed
2927 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2929 * New features for SVR4
2931 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2932 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2933 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2935 * Many C++ enhancements
2937 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2938 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2940 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2942 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2943 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2944 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2945 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2947 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2948 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2950 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
2952 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2953 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2954 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2956 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2957 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2959 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2961 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2962 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2963 include ``set remote P-packet''.
2965 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2967 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2968 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2969 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2971 * ``apropos'' command added.
2973 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2974 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2975 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2979 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2980 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
2981 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2982 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2983 enabled by configuring with:
2985 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2987 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2989 * New native configurations
2991 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2992 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
2993 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
2997 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2998 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2999 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3001 * OBSOLETE configurations
3003 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3005 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3006 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3007 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3008 be permanently REMOVED.
3012 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3013 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3014 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3015 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3016 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3017 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3018 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3023 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3025 * set extension-language
3027 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3028 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3029 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3030 set extension-language .c c++
3031 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3032 and their associated languages.
3034 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3036 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3037 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3038 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3042 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3043 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3045 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3046 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3048 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3049 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3050 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3051 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3052 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3053 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3054 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3055 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3057 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3058 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3059 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3060 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3064 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3065 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3066 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3067 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3068 for xdb and dbx commands.
3072 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3073 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3074 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3076 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3077 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3078 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3080 * Debugging across forks
3082 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3087 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3088 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3089 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3091 * GDB remote protocol additions
3093 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3094 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3095 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3096 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3098 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3099 full 64-bit address. The command
3101 set remoteaddresssize 32
3103 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3104 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3107 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3108 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3110 maint packet heythere
3112 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3113 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3116 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3117 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3118 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3120 * Tracing can collect general expressions
3122 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3123 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3124 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3126 * mask-address variable for Mips
3128 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3129 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3130 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3132 * Higher serial baud rates
3134 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3135 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3136 to achieve all of these rates.)
3140 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3141 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3144 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3146 * New native configurations
3148 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3149 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3150 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3151 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3152 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3153 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3154 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3158 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3159 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3160 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3161 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3162 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3163 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3164 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3165 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3166 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3167 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3168 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3170 * New debugging protocols
3172 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3173 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3174 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3175 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3176 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3177 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3181 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3182 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3187 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3188 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3190 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3192 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3193 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3194 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3196 * Live range splitting
3198 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3199 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3200 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3204 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3205 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3209 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3210 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3211 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3216 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3221 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3222 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3223 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3224 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3225 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3226 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3230 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3231 the symbol at the specified address.
3235 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3236 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3237 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3238 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3239 file tracepoint.c for more details.
3243 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3244 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3245 of most MIPS variants.
3249 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3250 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3251 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3255 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3256 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3257 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3258 the possible architectures.
3260 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3262 * New native configurations
3264 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3265 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3266 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3267 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3268 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3269 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3273 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3274 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3275 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3276 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3277 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3279 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3283 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3284 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3285 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3286 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3287 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3291 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3293 * Windows 95/NT native
3295 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3296 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3297 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3298 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3299 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3301 * dont-repeat command
3303 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3304 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3305 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3306 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3308 * Send break instead of ^C
3310 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3311 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3312 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3314 * Remote protocol timeout
3316 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3317 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3318 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3320 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3322 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3323 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3324 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3325 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3326 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3328 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3329 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3330 automatically on hpux10.
3332 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3334 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3336 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3338 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3339 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3340 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3341 every character. The default value is 1050.
3343 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3345 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3346 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3347 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3348 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3349 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3350 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3352 * Speedups for remote debugging
3354 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3355 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3356 and more efficient S-record downloading.
3358 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3360 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3361 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3363 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3365 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
3367 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3368 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3370 * Remote targets use caching
3372 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3373 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3374 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3375 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3376 off' turns the the data cache off.
3378 * Remote targets may have threads
3380 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3381 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3382 gdb/remote.c for details.
3386 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3387 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3388 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3389 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3390 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3391 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3392 sequence is something like
3394 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3396 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3400 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3401 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3402 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3403 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3404 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3405 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3406 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3407 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3411 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3412 but does simplify configuration and building.
3416 GDB now supports hpux10.
3418 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3420 * New native configurations
3422 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3423 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3424 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3425 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3429 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3430 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3431 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3432 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3435 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3437 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3438 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3439 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3440 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3441 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3443 * Arguments to user-defined commands
3445 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3446 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3449 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3451 To execute the command use:
3454 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3455 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3456 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3458 * New `if' and `while' commands
3460 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3461 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3462 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3463 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3464 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3465 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3466 if the expression is zero.
3468 * Fortran source language mode
3470 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3471 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3472 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3473 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3476 * Better HPUX support
3478 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3479 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3480 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3481 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3482 that behavior do the following before running the program:
3488 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3489 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3495 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3496 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3499 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3500 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3502 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3504 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3505 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3506 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3507 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3508 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3509 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3511 * New DOS host serial code
3513 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3514 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3517 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3519 * New "complete" command
3521 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3522 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3524 * Trailing space optional in prompt
3526 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3527 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3529 * Breakpoint hit counts
3531 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3532 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3533 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3534 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3535 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3538 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3540 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3541 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3542 arrays actually contain only short strings.
3544 * Shared library breakpoints
3546 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3547 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3549 * Hardware watchpoints
3551 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3552 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3554 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
3558 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3559 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3561 * Improved Irix 5 support
3563 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3565 * Improved HPPA support
3567 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3569 * New native configurations
3571 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3572 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3573 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3574 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3578 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3579 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3582 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3584 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3585 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3589 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3590 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3592 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3594 * Irix 5 is now supported
3598 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3599 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3600 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3601 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3602 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3605 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3607 * User visible changes:
3611 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3612 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3613 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3614 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3615 debugging info for the mips target).
3617 * DEC Alpha native support
3619 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3620 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3621 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3622 Alpha-specific notes.
3624 * Preliminary thread implementation
3626 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3628 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
3630 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3631 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3634 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3636 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3637 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3638 call methods, ...etc.
3640 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3642 * User visible changes:
3644 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3645 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3646 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3647 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3649 Filename completion now works.
3651 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3652 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3653 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3655 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3656 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3657 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3658 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3659 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3663 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3664 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3667 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3671 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3672 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3673 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3677 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3678 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3679 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3680 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3681 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3685 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3686 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3687 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3689 * New targets supported
3691 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3692 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3693 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3694 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3695 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3697 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3698 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3699 GO32 memory extender.
3701 * New remote protocols
3703 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3705 * New source languages supported
3707 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3708 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3709 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3712 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3714 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3716 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3717 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3718 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3719 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3720 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3721 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3723 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3725 * Faster and better demangling
3727 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3728 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3729 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3730 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3731 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3732 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3735 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3736 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3737 compiler does not actually implement.
3739 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3741 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3742 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3743 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3744 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3745 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3746 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3749 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3750 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3752 * Improved configure script
3754 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3755 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3756 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3757 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3759 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3760 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3761 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3762 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3763 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3764 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3766 * Documentation improvements
3768 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3769 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3770 before submitting changes.
3772 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3773 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3774 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3775 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3776 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3778 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3779 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3780 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3781 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3782 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3783 around this problem.
3787 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3788 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3789 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3792 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3793 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3795 * New native hosts supported
3797 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3798 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3800 * New targets supported
3802 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3804 * New file formats supported
3806 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3807 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3811 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3813 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3814 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3816 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3817 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3818 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3820 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3821 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3823 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3824 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3825 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3828 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3829 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3830 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3831 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3832 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3834 * Internal improvements
3836 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3837 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3839 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3840 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3841 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3842 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3843 shared code that handles any of them.
3845 * New command line options
3847 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3851 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3852 General Public License.
3854 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3856 * Host/native/target split
3858 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3859 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3860 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3861 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3862 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3864 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3865 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3866 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3867 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3868 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3869 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3870 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3872 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3873 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3874 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3876 * New hosts supported
3878 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3879 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3880 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3882 * New targets supported
3884 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3885 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3887 * New native hosts supported
3889 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3890 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3891 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3893 * New file formats supported
3895 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3896 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3897 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3901 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3902 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3903 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3905 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3907 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3908 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3909 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3910 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3914 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3915 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3916 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3918 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3922 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3923 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3926 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3927 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3929 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3930 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3931 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3932 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3933 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3934 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3936 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3937 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3938 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3939 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3943 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3944 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3945 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3946 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3947 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3949 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3950 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3951 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3952 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3956 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3957 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3958 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3959 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3960 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3961 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3962 each instruction being stepped through.
3964 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3965 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3967 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3968 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3969 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3970 processor with a serial port.
3974 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3975 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3976 supported, and what files each one uses.
3980 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3981 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3982 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3983 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3985 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3986 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3987 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3988 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3992 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3993 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3994 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3995 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3996 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3997 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3999 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4002 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4004 * Better support for C++ function names
4006 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4007 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4008 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4009 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4010 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4012 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4013 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4014 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4015 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4016 for the list of formats.
4018 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4020 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4021 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4022 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4023 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4024 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4025 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4028 * New 'maintenance' command
4030 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4031 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4032 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4034 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4035 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4036 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4037 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4038 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4039 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4041 The following commands are new:
4043 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4044 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4045 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4047 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4049 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4050 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4051 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4052 read after argv processing.
4054 * New hosts supported
4056 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4058 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4060 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4061 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4062 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4063 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4064 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4067 * New targets supported
4069 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4071 * More smarts about finding #include files
4073 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4074 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4075 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4076 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4077 the one that contains your sources.
4079 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4080 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4081 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4083 * Interesting infernals change
4085 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4086 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4087 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4088 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4090 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4092 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4093 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4094 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4096 See the ChangeLog for details.
4098 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4100 * New machines supported (host and target)
4102 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4104 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4106 * New malloc package
4108 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4109 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4110 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4111 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4112 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4113 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4117 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4118 'help info proc' for details.
4120 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4122 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4123 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4126 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4128 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4129 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4130 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4131 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4132 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4133 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4135 * Cross byte order fixes
4137 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4138 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4140 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4142 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4143 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4144 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4145 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4146 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4147 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4148 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4149 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4150 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4151 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4153 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4154 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4155 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4156 slower, but makes future operations faster.
4158 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4159 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4160 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4163 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4165 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4166 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4167 shared across multiple host platforms.
4169 * longjmp() handling
4171 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4172 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4173 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4174 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4178 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4179 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4184 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4185 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4186 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4188 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4190 * New machines supported (host and target)
4192 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4194 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4195 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4197 * New machines supported (target)
4199 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4203 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4204 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4205 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4207 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4208 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4209 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4210 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4211 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4214 * New features for SVR4
4216 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4217 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4218 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4220 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4221 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4222 it prints the address mappings of the process.
4224 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4225 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4227 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4229 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4230 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4231 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4232 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4233 same code linked statically.
4237 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4238 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4239 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4240 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4241 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4242 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4246 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4247 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4248 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4251 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4253 * New machines supported (host and target)
4255 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4256 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4257 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4259 * Almost SCO Unix support
4261 We had hoped to support:
4262 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4263 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4264 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4265 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4267 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4269 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4270 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4271 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4272 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4277 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4278 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4279 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4283 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4284 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4285 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4287 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4289 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4290 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4291 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4293 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4294 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4295 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4296 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4299 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4300 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4301 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4302 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4305 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4306 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4309 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4310 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4311 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4314 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4316 * Improved configuration
4318 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4319 Porting BFD is simpler.
4323 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4324 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4325 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4326 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4330 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4332 * New host supported (not target)
4334 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4337 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4339 * Multiple source language support
4341 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4342 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4343 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4344 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4345 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4346 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4350 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4351 currently under development at the State University of New York at
4352 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4353 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4355 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4356 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4357 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4359 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4360 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4364 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4365 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4366 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4367 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4370 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4372 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4373 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4374 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4375 examining core files.
4379 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4382 * New machines supported (host and target)
4384 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4385 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4386 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4388 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4390 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4392 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4394 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4395 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4396 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4398 * New remote interfaces
4404 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4408 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4410 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4411 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4412 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4413 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4414 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4415 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4416 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4417 stub on the target system.
4419 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4421 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4422 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4423 object file types such as a.out and coff.
4425 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4426 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4429 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4431 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4432 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4434 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4435 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4436 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4438 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4439 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4440 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4441 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4443 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4444 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4445 it is already running. Default is ON.
4447 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4448 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4449 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4450 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4453 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4454 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4455 or the value of the environment variable
4458 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4459 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4462 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4463 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4464 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4466 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4467 history expansion will be performed on
4468 command line input. The default is OFF.
4470 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4471 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4472 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4474 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4475 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4476 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4479 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4480 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4481 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4484 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4485 ``set width'' instead.
4487 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4488 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4489 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4490 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4492 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4495 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4498 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4501 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4504 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4506 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4507 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4508 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4512 * Support for Shared Libraries
4514 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4515 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4516 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4517 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4518 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4519 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4520 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4521 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4523 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4524 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4525 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4527 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4532 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4533 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4534 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4535 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4536 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4537 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4539 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4541 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4543 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4544 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4545 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4548 * C++ multiple inheritance
4550 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4553 * C++ exception handling
4555 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4556 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4557 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4560 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4561 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4562 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4564 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4565 current stack frame.
4568 * Minor command changes
4570 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4571 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4572 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4574 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4575 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4576 frames without printing.
4578 * New directory command
4580 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4581 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4582 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4583 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4584 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4586 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4588 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4591 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4592 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4593 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4594 where the program that you are debugging will run.