1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.4
8 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
10 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
11 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
13 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
14 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
16 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
17 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
19 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
20 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
21 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
22 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
23 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
26 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
27 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
28 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
31 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
32 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
34 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
37 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
39 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
40 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
41 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
42 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
45 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
46 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
48 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
49 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
50 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
51 target hardware watchpoint.
53 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
54 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
55 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
56 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
60 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
61 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
64 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
65 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
66 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
67 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
68 now "message", which just prints the error message without
71 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
74 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
75 modules library. This module provides functionality for
76 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
77 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
80 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
81 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
82 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
85 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
86 static_block will return the global and static blocks
87 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
88 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
90 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
92 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
95 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
96 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
99 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
100 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
101 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
104 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
107 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
108 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
109 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
110 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
111 any anonymous fields.
115 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
118 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
119 "=breakpoint-modified".
121 ** New command -ada-task-info.
123 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
124 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
125 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
128 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
129 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
130 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
131 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
132 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
134 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
135 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
137 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
138 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
139 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
140 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
141 use this option to specify where to find it.
143 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
144 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
145 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
146 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
147 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
148 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
149 section in the user manual for more details.
151 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
152 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
153 become available after that.
155 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
157 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
158 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
164 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
165 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
169 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
170 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
171 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
173 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
174 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
175 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
177 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
178 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
179 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
180 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
181 name starts with a hyphen.
183 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
184 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
185 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
186 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
187 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
188 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
189 number of bytes that will be collected.
192 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
193 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
194 setting the variable trace-notes.
197 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
198 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
199 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
202 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
203 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
204 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
205 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
206 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
209 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
210 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
211 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
217 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
218 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
219 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
220 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
223 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
224 show print entry-values
225 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
226 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
227 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
229 set debug entry-values
230 show debug entry-values
231 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
232 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
234 set basenames-may-differ
235 show basenames-may-differ
236 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
237 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
238 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
239 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
240 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
241 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
242 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
243 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
249 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
250 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
251 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
252 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
255 show trace-stop-notes
256 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
257 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
258 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
259 started by someone else.
265 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
269 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
273 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
277 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
281 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
284 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
285 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
289 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
293 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
295 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
297 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
299 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
301 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
302 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
303 matches the given regular expression.
305 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
307 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
308 dumping the instruction opcodes.
310 * New command line options
312 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
313 This is mostly for testing purposes.
315 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
316 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
318 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
319 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
320 source path list instead of augmenting it.
322 * GDB now understands thread names.
324 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
325 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
327 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
328 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
331 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
332 has been integrated into GDB.
336 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
337 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
338 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
340 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
341 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
342 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
343 and allows for more dynamic content.
345 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
346 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
347 have an is_valid method.
349 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
350 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
351 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
353 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
355 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
356 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
357 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
358 that function like so:
360 result = some_value (10,20)
362 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
363 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
364 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
366 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
367 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
368 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
369 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
370 New function: register_pretty_printer.
372 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
373 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
375 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
377 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
380 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
381 holds the thread's name.
383 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
384 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
385 occurring in the process being debugged.
386 The following events are currently supported:
387 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
388 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
389 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
393 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
394 instantiation. For example, if you have:
396 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
398 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
399 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
400 was added to GCC 4.5.
402 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
403 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
404 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
405 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
406 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
407 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
409 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
410 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
411 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
412 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
413 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
415 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
416 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
417 execution to a label.
419 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
420 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
421 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
422 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
424 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
425 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
426 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
429 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
431 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
432 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
433 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
434 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
435 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
436 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
439 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
441 While now you see this:
444 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
446 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
449 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
450 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
451 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
452 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
454 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
455 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
456 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
457 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
458 section in the user manual for more details.
460 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
462 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
463 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
465 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
467 * New native configurations
469 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
473 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
475 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
476 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
477 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
478 in the GDB user manual.
480 * Guile support was removed.
482 * New features in the GNU simulator
484 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
486 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
488 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
490 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
492 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
493 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
494 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
495 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
496 was always disabled for such configurations.
500 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
502 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
503 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
513 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
514 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
515 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
517 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
519 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
520 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
521 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
522 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
524 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
525 mentioned flavors of operators.
527 ** static const class members
529 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
530 class definition has been fixed.
532 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
534 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
535 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
536 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
537 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
538 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
539 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
543 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
544 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
545 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
546 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
547 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
548 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
549 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
550 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
551 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
552 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
553 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
554 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
555 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
556 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
557 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
558 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
559 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
560 the "New remote packets" section below.
562 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
564 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
565 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
566 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
567 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
571 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
572 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
573 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
574 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
575 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
576 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
577 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
579 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
586 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
590 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
591 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
592 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
593 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
594 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
595 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
599 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
603 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
606 qXfer:statictrace:read
608 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
609 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
610 to gdb's qSupported query.
614 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
618 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
619 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
621 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
622 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
625 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
627 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
628 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
629 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
630 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
632 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
633 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
634 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
635 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
636 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
637 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
638 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
640 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
641 for static tracepoints support.
643 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
645 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
646 it understands register description.
648 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
650 * X86 general purpose registers
652 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
653 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
654 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
655 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
656 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
658 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
659 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
660 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
661 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
662 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
663 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
665 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
666 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
667 in the specified file.
669 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
670 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
671 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
672 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
673 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
674 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
675 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
676 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
677 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
678 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
682 eval template, expressions...
683 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
684 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
686 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
687 show target-file-system-kind
688 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
691 save breakpoints <filename>
692 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
693 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
694 definitions, use the `source' command.
696 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
699 info static-tracepoint-markers
700 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
702 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
703 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
704 function, line, address, or marker ID.
708 Enable and disable observer mode.
710 set may-write-registers on|off
711 set may-write-memory on|off
712 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
713 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
714 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
715 set may-interrupt on|off
716 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
717 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
718 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
719 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
720 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
721 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
722 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
724 set record memory-query on|off
725 show record memory-query
726 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
727 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
732 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
736 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
737 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
738 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
739 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
740 GDB using Python' in the manual.
742 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
743 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
744 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
745 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
747 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
748 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
750 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
752 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
754 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
756 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
757 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
758 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
760 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
761 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
762 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
767 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
769 * D language support.
770 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
773 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
774 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
775 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
776 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
777 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
779 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
780 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
781 conditions of the form:
783 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
785 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
786 interface mentioned above.
788 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
794 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
795 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
796 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
797 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
798 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
802 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
803 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
808 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
809 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
813 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
818 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
821 * Multi-program debugging.
823 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
824 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
825 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
826 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
827 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
828 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
829 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
830 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
832 * New tracing features
834 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
836 ** Trace state variables
838 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
839 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
840 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
841 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
842 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
843 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
844 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
845 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
846 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
847 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
851 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
852 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
853 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
854 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
855 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
856 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
857 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
858 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
859 the regular trace command.
861 ** Disconnected tracing
863 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
864 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
865 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
866 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
867 connection is lost unexpectedly.
871 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
872 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
873 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
874 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
875 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
876 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
879 ** Circular trace buffer
881 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
882 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
883 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
884 not be available for all target agents.
889 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
890 the arguments to be comma-separated.
893 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
894 which only declare a variable are not shown.
897 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
898 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
901 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
902 "set script-extension" (see below).
904 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
906 record save [<FILENAME>]
907 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
908 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
910 record restore <FILENAME>
911 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
912 earlier time, for replay debugging.
914 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
917 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
918 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
924 maint info program-spaces
925 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
927 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
928 show remote interrupt-sequence
929 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
930 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
931 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
932 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
933 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
935 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
936 show remote interrupt-on-connect
937 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
938 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
941 set remotebreak [on | off]
943 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
945 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
946 Create or modify a trace state variable.
949 List trace state variables and their values.
951 delete tvariable $NAME ...
952 Delete one or more trace state variables.
955 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
956 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
958 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
959 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
961 * New expression syntax
963 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
964 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
968 set follow-exec-mode new|same
969 show follow-exec-mode
970 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
971 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
972 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
974 set default-collect EXPR, ...
976 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
977 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
978 such as registers or a critical global variable.
980 set disconnected-tracing
981 show disconnected-tracing
982 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
983 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
986 set circular-trace-buffer
987 show circular-trace-buffer
988 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
989 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
990 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
991 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
993 set script-extension off|soft|strict
994 show script-extension
995 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
996 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
997 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
998 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1000 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1002 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1003 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1004 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1005 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1006 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1007 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1008 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1011 * Python API Improvements
1013 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1014 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1015 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1017 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1018 `is_base_class' attribute.
1020 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1022 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1023 evaluate an expression.
1025 * New remote packets
1028 Define a trace state variable.
1031 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1034 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1037 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1040 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1044 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1046 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1047 much more reliable. In particular:
1048 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1049 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1050 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1051 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1052 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1053 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1054 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1055 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1056 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1057 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1058 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1059 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1060 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1061 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1062 non-threaded programs.
1064 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1065 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1066 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1069 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1071 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1072 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1073 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1074 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1075 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1077 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1078 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1079 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1080 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1081 for tracepoint actions.
1083 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1084 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1085 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1087 * Process record and replay
1089 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1090 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1091 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1094 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1095 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1096 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1099 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1100 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1103 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1104 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1105 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1106 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1107 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1108 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1109 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1110 the installation instructions for more information.
1112 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1113 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1114 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1115 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1117 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1118 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1120 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1121 now complete on file names.
1123 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1124 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1125 For instance, consider:
1127 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1128 # struct example variable;
1131 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1132 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1134 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1135 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1137 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1138 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1141 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1142 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1143 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1145 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1146 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1147 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1148 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1150 * New remote packets
1153 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1156 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1157 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1158 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1161 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1162 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1165 Obtains additional operating system information
1169 Read or write additional signal information.
1171 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1173 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1174 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1175 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1177 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1178 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1180 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1181 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1182 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1184 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1185 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1187 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1189 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1191 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1192 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1194 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1195 list of section offsets.
1197 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1198 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1199 have also been fixed.
1201 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1202 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1203 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1205 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1208 template<typename T> class C { };
1211 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1213 ptype C<char const *>
1214 ptype C<char const*>
1215 ptype C<const char *>
1216 ptype C<const char*>
1218 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1220 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1221 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1223 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1224 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1225 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1227 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1228 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1230 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1233 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1234 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1236 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1237 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1242 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1243 available is determined at configure time.
1245 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1247 * Ada tasking support
1249 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1253 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1255 Print detailed information about task number N.
1257 Print the task number of the current task.
1259 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1261 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1262 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1264 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1266 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1267 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1268 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1269 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1270 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1271 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1274 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1275 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1278 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1279 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1280 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1281 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1284 * Multi-architecture debugging.
1286 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1287 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1288 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1289 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1290 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1292 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1293 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1294 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1295 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1296 --enable-targets configure option.
1298 * Non-stop mode debugging.
1300 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1301 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1302 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1303 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1304 section in the user manual for more information.
1306 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1307 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1308 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1309 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1310 extensions on linux targets.
1312 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1314 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1315 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1316 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1317 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1318 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1319 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1320 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1321 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1322 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1324 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1326 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1328 maint set python print-stack
1329 maint show python print-stack
1330 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1333 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1338 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1342 Show operating system information about processes.
1345 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1348 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1351 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1354 Kill inferior number NUM.
1358 set spu stop-on-load
1359 show spu stop-on-load
1360 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1362 set spu auto-flush-cache
1363 show spu auto-flush-cache
1364 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1365 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1367 set sh calling-convention
1368 show sh calling-convention
1369 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1372 show debug timestamp
1373 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1375 set disassemble-next-line
1376 show disassemble-next-line
1377 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1380 set remote noack-packet
1381 show remote noack-packet
1382 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1383 under "New remote packets."
1385 set remote query-attached-packet
1386 show remote query-attached-packet
1387 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1389 set remote read-siginfo-object
1390 show remote read-siginfo-object
1391 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1394 set remote write-siginfo-object
1395 show remote write-siginfo-object
1396 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1399 set remote reverse-continue
1400 show remote reverse-continue
1401 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1403 set remote reverse-step
1404 show remote reverse-step
1405 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1407 set displaced-stepping
1408 show displaced-stepping
1409 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1410 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1411 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1414 show debug displaced
1415 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1417 maint set internal-error
1418 maint show internal-error
1419 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1421 maint set internal-warning
1422 maint show internal-warning
1423 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
1428 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1430 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1431 show multiple-symbols
1432 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1433 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1434 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1436 set breakpoint always-inserted
1437 show breakpoint always-inserted
1438 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1439 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1440 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1442 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1443 show arm fallback-mode
1444 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1446 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1447 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1448 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1449 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1451 set disable-randomization
1452 show disable-randomization
1453 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1454 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1455 multiple debugging sessions.
1459 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1464 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1465 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1466 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1467 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1469 set target-wide-charset
1470 show target-wide-charset
1471 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1472 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1474 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1476 set tcp connect-timeout
1477 show tcp connect-timeout
1478 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1479 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1480 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1482 set libthread-db-search-path
1483 show libthread-db-search-path
1484 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1487 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1488 show schedule-multiple
1489 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1490 the current process.
1494 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1495 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1496 affecting correctness.
1498 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1499 show interactive-mode
1500 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1501 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1502 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1503 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1504 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1509 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1510 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1511 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1515 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1516 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1517 alias for the `fork' command.
1520 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1521 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1522 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1525 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1526 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1527 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1531 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1532 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1533 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1536 * New native configurations
1538 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1540 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1544 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
1545 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
1546 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
1549 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1550 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1556 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1558 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
1560 * New native configurations
1562 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
1563 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
1567 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
1568 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
1570 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1572 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1573 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1574 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1575 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1577 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1578 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1580 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
1583 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
1584 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1585 and in inlined functions.
1587 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1588 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1589 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1591 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1593 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1594 registers on PowerPC targets.
1596 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1597 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1599 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1600 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1602 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1603 extended-remote mode.
1605 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
1606 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1607 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1608 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
1610 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1611 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1612 target architectures.
1614 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1615 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1616 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1617 stored in two consecutive float registers.
1619 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1622 * Improved support for debugging Ada
1623 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1625 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1626 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1627 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1628 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1630 - Improved command completion in Ada
1633 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1638 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1639 show print frame-arguments
1640 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1641 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1646 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1653 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1655 * New remote packets
1662 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
1665 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1669 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1671 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
1673 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1674 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1675 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1677 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1678 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1679 -Bsymbolic linker option.
1681 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1682 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1685 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1686 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1688 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1689 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
1691 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1693 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1694 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1695 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1697 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1698 automatically displayed as character or string data.
1700 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1701 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1704 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1705 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
1706 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
1708 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1711 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1712 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1713 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1715 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1717 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1719 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1720 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1721 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1723 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1724 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1726 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1727 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1728 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1729 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1730 Windows and SymbianOS).
1732 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1733 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
1735 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1736 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
1742 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1743 when debugging using remote targets.
1745 set mem inaccessible-by-default
1746 show mem inaccessible-by-default
1747 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1748 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1749 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1750 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1751 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1753 set breakpoint auto-hw
1754 show breakpoint auto-hw
1755 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1756 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1757 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1758 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1759 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1760 including "next" and "finish".
1763 catch exception unhandled
1764 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1767 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1771 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1772 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1773 an alias to "set sysroot".
1776 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1777 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1780 * New native configurations
1782 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1785 unset tdesc filename
1787 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1788 not query the target for its built-in description.
1792 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
1793 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
1794 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
1796 * New remote packets
1799 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1800 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1802 qXfer:features:read:
1803 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1808 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1809 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1811 qXfer:libraries:read:
1812 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1813 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1814 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1815 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1819 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1827 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1828 i[34567]86-*-netware*
1829 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1830 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1832 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1835 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1836 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1845 * Other removed features
1852 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1859 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1864 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1865 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1870 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1871 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1873 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1875 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1876 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1877 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1878 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1880 MIPS ".pdr" sections
1882 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1883 in debugging information.
1887 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1888 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1890 set mips stack-arg-size
1891 set mips saved-gpreg-size
1893 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1895 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
1900 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
1902 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1903 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1904 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1906 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1907 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1910 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1911 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1913 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1914 stub provides the required support.
1916 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1917 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1922 unset substitute-path
1923 show substitute-path
1924 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1925 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1926 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1927 between compilation and debugging.
1931 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1932 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1933 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1937 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1939 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1940 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1942 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1944 * New remote packets
1947 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1948 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1949 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1950 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1954 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1955 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1957 qXfer:memory-map:read:
1958 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1959 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1964 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1966 * Removed remote packets
1969 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1970 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1972 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
1976 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1978 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1982 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1983 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1985 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1987 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1989 restart <n> Return the program state to a
1990 previously saved state.
1992 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1994 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1996 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1997 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1999 info forks List forks of the user program that
2000 are available to be debugged.
2002 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2003 forks of the user program that are
2004 available to be debugged.
2006 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2007 that are available to be debugged (and
2008 kill the forked process).
2010 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2011 that are available to be debugged (and
2012 allow the process to continue).
2016 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2018 * Improved Windows host support
2020 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2021 native console support, and remote communications using either
2022 network sockets or serial ports.
2024 * Improved Modula-2 language support
2026 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2027 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2028 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2029 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2030 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2031 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2035 The ARM rdi-share module.
2037 The Netware NLM debug server.
2039 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2041 * New native configurations
2043 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2044 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2048 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2050 * New command line options
2052 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2053 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2054 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2055 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2056 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2057 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2058 with the --command (-x) option.
2060 * Deprecated commands removed
2062 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2066 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2067 othernames set arm disassembler
2068 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2069 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2070 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2073 * New BSD user-level threads support
2075 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2076 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2079 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2080 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2081 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2083 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2084 are not yet supported.
2086 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2087 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2089 * REMOVED configurations and files
2091 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2092 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2093 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2095 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2097 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2098 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2101 * VAX floating point support
2103 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2105 * User-defined command support
2107 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2108 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2109 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2111 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2113 * New command line option
2115 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2118 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2120 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2121 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2122 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2123 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2124 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2126 * Internationalization
2128 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2129 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2130 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2134 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2135 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2136 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2138 * New native configurations
2140 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2144 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2145 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2147 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2149 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2150 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2151 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2154 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2155 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2156 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2166 powerpc bdm protocol
2168 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2169 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2171 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2173 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2174 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2175 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2176 permanently REMOVED.
2185 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2187 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2189 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2190 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2193 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2195 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2196 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2197 IRIX long double values).
2201 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2202 command. This problem has been fixed.
2204 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2206 * Fix for ``many threads''
2208 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2209 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2212 ptrace: No such process.
2213 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2215 This problem has been fixed.
2217 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2219 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2222 * New ``start'' command.
2224 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2226 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2228 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2229 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2230 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2232 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2233 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2234 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2235 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2236 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2237 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2238 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2239 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2240 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2242 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2244 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2245 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2246 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2247 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2248 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2250 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2251 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2252 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2254 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2256 * New native configurations
2258 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2259 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2260 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2261 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2262 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2263 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2264 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2266 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2268 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2269 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2270 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2271 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2272 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2273 work, was also included.
2275 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2276 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2286 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2287 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2289 * REMOVED configurations and files
2291 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2292 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2293 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2294 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2295 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2296 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2297 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2298 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2299 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2300 sonymips mips-sony-*
2301 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2303 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2305 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2307 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2308 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2309 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2310 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2313 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2315 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2316 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2317 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2318 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2319 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2320 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2323 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2325 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
2327 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2328 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2329 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2331 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2333 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2334 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2336 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2338 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2339 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2340 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2342 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2344 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2345 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2347 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2349 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2350 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2351 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2353 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2355 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2356 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2357 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2359 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
2361 * Removed --with-mmalloc
2363 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2364 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2366 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
2368 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2369 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2370 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2371 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2373 * Revised SPARC target
2375 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2376 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
2377 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2378 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2379 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
2383 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2384 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2385 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2388 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2390 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2391 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2394 * C++ nested types and namespaces
2396 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2397 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2398 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2399 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2400 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2401 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2402 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2403 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2404 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2406 * New native configurations
2408 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
2409 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2410 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
2411 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2412 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
2414 * New debugging protocols
2416 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2418 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2420 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2421 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2422 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2424 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2426 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2427 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2428 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2429 permanently REMOVED.
2431 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2432 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2433 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2434 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2435 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2436 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2437 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2438 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2439 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2440 sonymips mips-sony-*
2441 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2443 * REMOVED configurations and files
2445 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2446 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2447 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2448 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2449 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2450 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2451 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2452 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2453 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2454 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
2455 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2456 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2457 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2458 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2459 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
2460 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2461 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2463 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2467 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2468 integrated into GDB.
2470 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2472 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2473 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2474 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2477 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2478 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2479 DWARF 2 CFI support.
2483 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2484 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2485 remote protocol documentation for details.
2487 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
2489 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2490 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2491 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2494 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2496 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2497 per-thread variables.
2499 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2501 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2502 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2504 * Separate debug info.
2506 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2507 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2508 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2509 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2510 and optional debug files.
2512 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2514 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2515 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2518 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2519 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2523 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2524 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2525 considered "useable".
2527 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2529 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2530 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2533 * GDB supports logging output to a file
2535 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2536 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
2538 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2540 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2541 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2544 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
2546 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2547 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2551 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2552 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2553 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2554 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2555 data, for more informative profiling results.
2557 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2559 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2560 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
2561 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
2563 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2566 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2567 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2568 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2569 in a subsequent -var-update.
2571 * New native configurations.
2573 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2575 * Multi-arched targets.
2577 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
2578 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2580 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2582 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2583 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2584 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2585 permanently REMOVED.
2587 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2588 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2589 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2590 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2591 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2592 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2593 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2594 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2595 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2596 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2597 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2598 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2600 * REMOVED configurations and files
2603 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2604 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2605 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2606 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2607 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2608 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2610 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2611 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2612 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2613 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2614 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2615 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2617 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
2619 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2620 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2621 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2622 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2623 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2625 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
2627 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2629 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2630 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2631 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2632 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2633 shared libs like mad''.
2635 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
2637 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2638 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2639 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2640 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
2642 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2644 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2645 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2648 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2649 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2651 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2652 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2654 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2655 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2656 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2657 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2659 * Multi-arched targets.
2661 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2662 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2664 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
2665 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2666 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2670 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2673 * New native configurations
2675 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
2676 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
2677 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
2678 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
2680 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2682 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2683 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2684 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2685 permanently REMOVED.
2687 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2688 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2689 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2690 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2691 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2692 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2693 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2694 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2695 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2696 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2698 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2699 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2701 * OBSOLETE languages
2703 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2705 * REMOVED configurations and files
2707 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2708 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2709 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2710 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2711 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2713 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2715 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2717 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2718 commands. The default is 1024.
2720 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2722 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2724 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2726 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2727 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2728 from a file into memory (restore).
2730 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2732 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2733 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2734 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2736 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2744 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2745 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2746 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2748 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2749 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2750 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2752 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2753 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2754 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2756 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2757 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2758 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2760 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
2762 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2764 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2765 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2766 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2767 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2768 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2769 (notably embedded) targets.
2771 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2773 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2774 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2775 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2776 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
2778 * New command line option
2780 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2782 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2784 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2785 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2786 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2787 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2788 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2789 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2790 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2791 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2792 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2793 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2795 * Changes in ARM configurations.
2797 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2798 configuration is fully multi-arch.
2800 * New native configurations
2802 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
2803 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
2804 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
2805 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
2809 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2811 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2813 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2814 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2815 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2816 permanently REMOVED.
2818 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2819 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2820 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2821 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2822 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2824 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2826 * REMOVED configurations and files
2828 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2830 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2831 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2832 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2833 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2834 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2835 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2836 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2837 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2838 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2839 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2840 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
2842 * Changes to command line processing
2844 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2845 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2847 * Changes to key bindings
2849 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2851 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2853 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2855 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2858 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2860 Numerous documentation fixes.
2862 Numerous testsuite fixes.
2864 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
2866 * New native configurations
2868 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2869 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2870 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
2871 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2872 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
2873 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
2877 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
2879 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
2881 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2883 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
2884 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2885 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2886 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2887 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2889 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2890 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2891 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2892 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2893 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2894 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2895 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2896 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
2898 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2899 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2901 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2902 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2903 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2904 permanently REMOVED.
2906 * REMOVED configurations and files
2908 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2909 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2911 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2915 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
2917 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
2918 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2923 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2925 * The MI enabled by default.
2927 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2928 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2929 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2930 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2931 which is now deprecated.
2933 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2935 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2936 main features are supported:
2938 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2940 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2943 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2945 - a Pascal expression parser.
2947 However, some important features are not yet supported.
2949 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2951 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2953 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2954 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2956 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2958 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2960 * Changes in completion.
2962 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2963 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2964 users expect at the shell prompt.
2966 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2967 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2968 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2969 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2970 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2971 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2972 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2974 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2976 * New platform-independent commands:
2978 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2979 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2980 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2982 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2984 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2985 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2986 many threads as your system allows you to have.
2988 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2990 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2991 multi-threaded programs though.
2993 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
2995 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2997 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2998 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3001 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3003 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3004 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3005 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3006 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3007 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3010 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3011 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3012 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3014 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3016 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3017 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3019 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3020 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3023 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3024 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3025 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3026 a given linear address.
3028 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3029 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3030 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3032 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3034 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3036 * Changes in documentation.
3038 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3039 Documentation License.
3041 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3044 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3046 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3049 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3050 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3051 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3053 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3055 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3056 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3057 contents of this file.
3061 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3063 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3065 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3067 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3068 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3069 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3070 greater level of detail.
3072 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3074 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3075 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3076 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3079 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3081 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3082 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3083 machines ``out of the box''.
3085 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3086 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3087 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3088 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3089 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3091 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3092 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3093 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3094 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3095 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3097 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3098 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3101 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3104 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3105 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3106 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3107 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3109 * New native configurations
3111 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3112 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3116 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3117 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3118 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3119 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3121 * OBSOLETE configurations
3123 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3124 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3126 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3129 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3130 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3131 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3132 be permanently REMOVED.
3134 * Gould support removed
3136 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3138 * New features for SVR4
3140 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3141 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3142 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3144 * Many C++ enhancements
3146 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3147 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3149 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3151 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3152 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3153 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3154 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3156 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3157 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3159 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3161 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3162 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3163 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3165 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3166 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3168 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3170 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3171 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3172 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3174 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3176 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3177 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3178 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3180 * ``apropos'' command added.
3182 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3183 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3184 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3188 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3189 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3190 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3191 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3192 enabled by configuring with:
3194 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3196 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3198 * New native configurations
3200 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3201 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3202 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3206 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3207 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3208 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3210 * OBSOLETE configurations
3212 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3214 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3215 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3216 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3217 be permanently REMOVED.
3221 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3222 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3223 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3224 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3225 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3226 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3227 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3232 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3234 * set extension-language
3236 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3237 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3238 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3239 set extension-language .c c++
3240 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3241 and their associated languages.
3243 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3245 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3246 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3247 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3251 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3252 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3254 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3255 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3257 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3258 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3259 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3260 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3261 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3262 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3263 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3264 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3266 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3267 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3268 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3269 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3273 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3274 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3275 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3276 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3277 for xdb and dbx commands.
3281 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3282 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3283 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3285 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3286 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3287 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3289 * Debugging across forks
3291 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3296 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3297 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3298 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3300 * GDB remote protocol additions
3302 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3303 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3304 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3305 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3307 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3308 full 64-bit address. The command
3310 set remoteaddresssize 32
3312 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3313 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3316 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3317 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3319 maint packet heythere
3321 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3322 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3325 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3326 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3327 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3329 * Tracing can collect general expressions
3331 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3332 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3333 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3335 * mask-address variable for Mips
3337 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3338 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3339 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3341 * Higher serial baud rates
3343 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3344 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3345 to achieve all of these rates.)
3349 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3350 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3353 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3355 * New native configurations
3357 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3358 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3359 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3360 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3361 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3362 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3363 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3367 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3368 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3369 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3370 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3371 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3372 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3373 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3374 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3375 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3376 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3377 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3379 * New debugging protocols
3381 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3382 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3383 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3384 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3385 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3386 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3390 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3391 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3396 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3397 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3399 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3401 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3402 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3403 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3405 * Live range splitting
3407 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3408 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3409 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3413 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3414 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3418 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3419 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3420 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3425 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3430 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3431 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3432 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3433 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3434 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3435 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3439 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3440 the symbol at the specified address.
3444 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3445 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3446 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3447 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3448 file tracepoint.c for more details.
3452 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3453 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3454 of most MIPS variants.
3458 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3459 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3460 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3464 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3465 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3466 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3467 the possible architectures.
3469 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3471 * New native configurations
3473 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3474 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3475 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3476 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3477 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3478 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3482 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3483 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3484 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3485 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3486 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3488 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3492 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3493 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3494 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3495 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3496 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3500 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3502 * Windows 95/NT native
3504 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3505 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3506 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3507 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3508 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3510 * dont-repeat command
3512 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3513 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3514 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3515 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3517 * Send break instead of ^C
3519 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3520 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3521 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3523 * Remote protocol timeout
3525 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3526 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3527 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3529 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3531 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3532 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3533 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3534 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3535 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3537 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3538 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3539 automatically on hpux10.
3541 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3543 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3545 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3547 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3548 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3549 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3550 every character. The default value is 1050.
3552 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3554 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3555 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3556 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3557 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3558 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3559 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3561 * Speedups for remote debugging
3563 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3564 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3565 and more efficient S-record downloading.
3567 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3569 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3570 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3572 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3574 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
3576 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3577 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3579 * Remote targets use caching
3581 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3582 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3583 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3584 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3585 off' turns the the data cache off.
3587 * Remote targets may have threads
3589 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3590 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3591 gdb/remote.c for details.
3595 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3596 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3597 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3598 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3599 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3600 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3601 sequence is something like
3603 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3605 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3609 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3610 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3611 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3612 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3613 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3614 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3615 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3616 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3620 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3621 but does simplify configuration and building.
3625 GDB now supports hpux10.
3627 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3629 * New native configurations
3631 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3632 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3633 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3634 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3638 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3639 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3640 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3641 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3644 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3646 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3647 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3648 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3649 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3650 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3652 * Arguments to user-defined commands
3654 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3655 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3658 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3660 To execute the command use:
3663 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3664 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3665 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3667 * New `if' and `while' commands
3669 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3670 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3671 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3672 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3673 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3674 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3675 if the expression is zero.
3677 * Fortran source language mode
3679 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3680 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3681 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3682 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3685 * Better HPUX support
3687 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3688 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3689 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3690 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3691 that behavior do the following before running the program:
3697 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3698 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3704 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3705 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3708 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3709 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3711 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3713 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3714 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3715 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3716 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3717 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3718 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3720 * New DOS host serial code
3722 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3723 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3726 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3728 * New "complete" command
3730 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3731 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3733 * Trailing space optional in prompt
3735 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3736 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3738 * Breakpoint hit counts
3740 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3741 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3742 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3743 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3744 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3747 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3749 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3750 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3751 arrays actually contain only short strings.
3753 * Shared library breakpoints
3755 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3756 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3758 * Hardware watchpoints
3760 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3761 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3763 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
3767 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3768 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3770 * Improved Irix 5 support
3772 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3774 * Improved HPPA support
3776 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3778 * New native configurations
3780 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3781 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3782 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3783 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3787 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3788 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3791 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3793 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3794 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3798 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3799 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3801 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3803 * Irix 5 is now supported
3807 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3808 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3809 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3810 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3811 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3814 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3816 * User visible changes:
3820 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3821 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3822 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3823 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3824 debugging info for the mips target).
3826 * DEC Alpha native support
3828 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3829 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3830 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3831 Alpha-specific notes.
3833 * Preliminary thread implementation
3835 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3837 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
3839 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3840 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3843 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3845 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3846 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3847 call methods, ...etc.
3849 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3851 * User visible changes:
3853 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3854 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3855 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3856 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3858 Filename completion now works.
3860 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3861 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3862 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3864 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3865 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3866 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3867 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3868 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3872 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3873 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3876 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3880 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3881 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3882 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3886 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3887 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3888 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3889 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3890 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3894 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3895 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3896 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3898 * New targets supported
3900 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3901 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3902 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3903 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3904 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3906 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3907 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3908 GO32 memory extender.
3910 * New remote protocols
3912 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3914 * New source languages supported
3916 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3917 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3918 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3921 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3923 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3925 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3926 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3927 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3928 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3929 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3930 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3932 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3934 * Faster and better demangling
3936 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3937 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3938 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3939 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3940 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3941 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3944 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3945 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3946 compiler does not actually implement.
3948 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3950 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3951 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3952 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3953 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3954 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3955 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3958 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3959 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3961 * Improved configure script
3963 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3964 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3965 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3966 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3968 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3969 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3970 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3971 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3972 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3973 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3975 * Documentation improvements
3977 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3978 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3979 before submitting changes.
3981 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3982 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3983 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3984 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3985 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3987 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3988 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3989 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3990 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3991 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3992 around this problem.
3996 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3997 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3998 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4001 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4002 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4004 * New native hosts supported
4006 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4007 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4009 * New targets supported
4011 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4013 * New file formats supported
4015 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4016 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4020 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4022 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4023 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4025 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4026 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4027 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4029 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4030 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4032 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4033 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4034 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4037 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4038 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4039 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4040 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4041 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4043 * Internal improvements
4045 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4046 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4048 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4049 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4050 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4051 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4052 shared code that handles any of them.
4054 * New command line options
4056 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4060 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4061 General Public License.
4063 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4065 * Host/native/target split
4067 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4068 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4069 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4070 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4071 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4073 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4074 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4075 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4076 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4077 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4078 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4079 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4081 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4082 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4083 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4085 * New hosts supported
4087 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4088 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4089 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4091 * New targets supported
4093 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4094 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4096 * New native hosts supported
4098 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4099 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4100 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4102 * New file formats supported
4104 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4105 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4106 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4110 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4111 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4112 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4114 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4116 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4117 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4118 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4119 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4123 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4124 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4125 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4127 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4131 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4132 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4135 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4136 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4138 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4139 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4140 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4141 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4142 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4143 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4145 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4146 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4147 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4148 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4152 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4153 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4154 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4155 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4156 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4158 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4159 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4160 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4161 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4165 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4166 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4167 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4168 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4169 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4170 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4171 each instruction being stepped through.
4173 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4174 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4176 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4177 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4178 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4179 processor with a serial port.
4183 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4184 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4185 supported, and what files each one uses.
4189 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4190 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4191 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4192 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4194 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4195 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4196 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4197 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4201 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4202 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4203 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4204 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4205 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4206 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4208 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4211 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4213 * Better support for C++ function names
4215 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4216 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4217 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4218 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4219 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4221 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4222 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4223 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4224 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4225 for the list of formats.
4227 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4229 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4230 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4231 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4232 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4233 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4234 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4237 * New 'maintenance' command
4239 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4240 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4241 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4243 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4244 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4245 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4246 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4247 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4248 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4250 The following commands are new:
4252 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4253 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4254 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4256 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4258 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4259 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4260 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4261 read after argv processing.
4263 * New hosts supported
4265 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4267 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4269 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4270 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4271 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4272 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4273 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4276 * New targets supported
4278 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4280 * More smarts about finding #include files
4282 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4283 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4284 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4285 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4286 the one that contains your sources.
4288 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4289 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4290 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4292 * Interesting infernals change
4294 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4295 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4296 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4297 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4299 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4301 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4302 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4303 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4305 See the ChangeLog for details.
4307 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4309 * New machines supported (host and target)
4311 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4313 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4315 * New malloc package
4317 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4318 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4319 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4320 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4321 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4322 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4326 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4327 'help info proc' for details.
4329 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4331 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4332 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4335 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4337 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4338 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4339 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4340 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4341 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4342 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4344 * Cross byte order fixes
4346 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4347 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4349 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4351 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4352 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4353 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4354 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4355 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4356 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4357 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4358 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4359 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4360 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4362 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4363 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4364 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4365 slower, but makes future operations faster.
4367 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4368 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4369 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4372 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4374 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4375 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4376 shared across multiple host platforms.
4378 * longjmp() handling
4380 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4381 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4382 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4383 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4387 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4388 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4393 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4394 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4395 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4397 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4399 * New machines supported (host and target)
4401 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4403 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4404 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4406 * New machines supported (target)
4408 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4412 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4413 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4414 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4416 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4417 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4418 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4419 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4420 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4423 * New features for SVR4
4425 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4426 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4427 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4429 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4430 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4431 it prints the address mappings of the process.
4433 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4434 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4436 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4438 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4439 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4440 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4441 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4442 same code linked statically.
4446 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4447 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4448 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4449 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4450 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4451 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4455 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4456 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4457 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4460 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4462 * New machines supported (host and target)
4464 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4465 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4466 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4468 * Almost SCO Unix support
4470 We had hoped to support:
4471 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4472 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4473 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4474 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4476 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4478 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4479 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4480 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4481 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4486 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4487 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4488 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4492 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4493 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4494 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4496 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4498 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4499 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4500 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4502 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4503 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4504 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4505 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4508 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4509 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4510 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4511 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4514 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4515 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4518 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4519 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4520 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4523 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4525 * Improved configuration
4527 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4528 Porting BFD is simpler.
4532 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4533 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4534 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4535 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4539 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4541 * New host supported (not target)
4543 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4546 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4548 * Multiple source language support
4550 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4551 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4552 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4553 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4554 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4555 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4559 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4560 currently under development at the State University of New York at
4561 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4562 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4564 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4565 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4566 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4568 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4569 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4573 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4574 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4575 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4576 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4579 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4581 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4582 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4583 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4584 examining core files.
4588 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4591 * New machines supported (host and target)
4593 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4594 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4595 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4597 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4599 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4601 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4603 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4604 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4605 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4607 * New remote interfaces
4613 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4617 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4619 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4620 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4621 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4622 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4623 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4624 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4625 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4626 stub on the target system.
4628 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4630 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4631 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4632 object file types such as a.out and coff.
4634 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4635 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4638 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4640 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4641 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4643 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4644 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4645 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4647 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4648 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4649 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4650 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4652 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4653 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4654 it is already running. Default is ON.
4656 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4657 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4658 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4659 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4662 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4663 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4664 or the value of the environment variable
4667 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4668 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4671 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4672 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4673 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4675 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4676 history expansion will be performed on
4677 command line input. The default is OFF.
4679 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4680 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4681 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4683 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4684 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4685 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4688 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4689 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4690 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4693 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4694 ``set width'' instead.
4696 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4697 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4698 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4699 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4701 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4704 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4707 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4710 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4713 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4715 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4716 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4717 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4721 * Support for Shared Libraries
4723 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4724 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4725 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4726 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4727 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4728 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4729 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4730 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4732 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4733 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4734 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4736 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4741 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4742 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4743 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4744 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4745 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4746 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4748 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4750 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4752 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4753 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4754 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4757 * C++ multiple inheritance
4759 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4762 * C++ exception handling
4764 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4765 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4766 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4769 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4770 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4771 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4773 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4774 current stack frame.
4777 * Minor command changes
4779 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4780 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4781 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4783 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4784 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4785 frames without printing.
4787 * New directory command
4789 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4790 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4791 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4792 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4793 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4795 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4797 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4800 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4801 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4802 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4803 where the program that you are debugging will run.