1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.3
6 * 'thread-exited' event is now available in the annotations interface.
8 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
9 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
10 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
11 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
12 such as in system-wide init files.
14 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
15 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
16 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
17 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
19 * Support for Pointer Authentication on AArch64 Linux.
21 * Two new convenience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
22 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
24 * New built-in convenience variables $_shell_exitcode and $_shell_exitsignal
25 provide the exitcode or exit status of the shell commands launched by
26 GDB commands such as "shell", "pipe" and "make".
30 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
31 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
32 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
33 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
34 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
36 ** gdb.Type has a new property 'objfile' which returns the objfile the
41 | [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
42 | -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
43 pipe [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
44 pipe -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
45 Executes COMMAND and sends its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
46 With no COMMAND, repeat the last executed command
47 and send its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
49 with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
50 w SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
51 Temporarily set SETTING, run COMMAND, and restore SETTING.
52 Usage: with SETTING -- COMMAND
53 With no COMMAND, repeats the last executed command.
54 SETTING is any GDB setting you can change with the "set"
55 subcommands. For example, 'with language c -- print someobj'
56 temporarily switches to the C language in order to print someobj.
57 Settings can be combined: 'w lang c -- w print elements unlimited --
58 usercmd' switches to the C language and runs usercmd with no limit
59 of array elements to print.
61 maint with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
62 Like "with", but works with "maintenance set" settings.
64 set may-call-functions [on|off]
65 show may-call-functions
66 This controls whether GDB will attempt to call functions in
67 the program, such as with expressions in the print command. It
68 defaults to on. Calling functions in the program being debugged
69 can have undesired side effects. It is now possible to forbid
70 such function calls. If function calls are forbidden, GDB will throw
71 an error when a command (such as print expression) calls a function
74 set print finish [on|off]
76 This controls whether the `finish' command will display the value
77 that is returned by the current function. When `off', the value is
78 still entered into the value history, but it is not printed. The
83 Allows deeply nested structures to be simplified when printing by
84 replacing deeply nested parts (beyond the max-depth) with ellipses.
85 The default max-depth is 20, but this can be set to unlimited to get
86 the old behavior back.
88 set logging debugredirect [on|off]
89 By default, GDB debug output will go to both the terminal and the logfile.
90 Set if you want debug output to go only to the log file.
92 set style title foreground COLOR
93 set style title background COLOR
94 set style title intensity VALUE
95 Control the styling of titles.
97 set style highlight foreground COLOR
98 set style highlight background COLOR
99 set style highlight intensity VALUE
100 Control the styling of highlightings.
102 maint set test-settings KIND
103 maint show test-settings KIND
104 A set of commands used by the testsuite for exercising the settings
110 The "help" command uses the title style to enhance the
111 readibility of its output by styling the classes and
115 Similarly to "help", the "apropos" command also uses the
116 title style for the command names. "apropos" accepts now
117 a flag "-v" (verbose) to show the full documentation
118 of matching commands and to use the highlight style to mark
119 the documentation parts matching REGEXP.
123 The GDB printf and eval commands can now print C-style and Ada-style
124 string convenience variables without calling functions in the program.
125 This allows to do formatted printing of strings without having
126 a running inferior, or when debugging a core dump.
129 The "show style" and its subcommands are now styling
130 a style name in their output using its own style, to help
131 the user visualize the different styles.
133 set print raw-frame-arguments
134 show print raw-frame-arguments
136 These commands replace the similarly-named "set/show print raw
137 frame-arguments" commands (now with a dash instead of a space). The
138 old commands are now deprecated and may be removed in a future
141 maint test-options require-delimiter
142 maint test-options unknown-is-error
143 maint test-options unknown-is-operand
144 maint show test-options-completion-result
145 Commands used by the testsuite to validate the command options
148 * New command options, command completion
150 GDB now has a standard infrastructure to support dash-style command
151 options ('-OPT'). One benefit is that commands that use it can
152 easily support completion of command line arguments. Try "CMD
153 -[TAB]" or "help CMD" to find options supported by a command. Over
154 time, we intend to migrate most commands to this infrastructure. A
155 number of commands got support for new command options in this
158 ** The "print" and "compile print" commands now support a number of
159 options that allow overriding relevant global print settings as
160 set by "set print" subcommands:
164 -array-indexes [on|off]
165 -elements NUMBER|unlimited
169 -repeats NUMBER|unlimited
170 -static-members [on|off]
175 Note that because the "print"/"compile print" commands accept
176 arbitrary expressions which may look like options (including
177 abbreviations), if you specify any command option, then you must
178 use a double dash ("--") to mark the end of argument processing.
180 ** The "backtrace" command now supports a number of options that
181 allow overriding relevant global print settings as set by "set
182 backtrace" and "set print" subcommands:
184 -entry-values no|only|preferred|if-needed|both|compact|default
185 -frame-arguments all|scalars|none
186 -raw-frame-arguments [on|off]
190 In addition, the full/no-filters/hide qualifiers are now also
191 exposed as command options too:
197 ** The "frame apply", "tfaas" and "faas" commands similarly now
198 support the following options:
203 All options above can also be abbreviated. The argument of boolean
204 (on/off) options can be 0/1 too, and also the argument is assumed
205 "on" if omitted. This allows writing compact command invocations,
208 (gdb) p -r -p -o 0 -- *myptr
210 The above is equivalent to:
212 (gdb) print -raw -pretty -object off -- *myptr
214 * Completion improvements
216 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "thread apply all" and
217 "taas" commands, and their "-ascending" option can now be
220 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "info threads", "info
221 functions", "info variables", "info locals", and "info args"
224 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "compile file" and
225 "compile code" commands. The "compile file" command now
226 completes on filenames.
228 ** GDB can now complete the backtrace command's
229 "full/no-filters/hide" qualifiers.
231 * In settings, you can now abbreviate "unlimited".
233 E.g., "set print elements u" is now equivalent to "set print
239 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
240 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by MI
241 frontends in cases when separate CLI and MI channels cannot be used.
243 -catch-throw, -catch-rethrow, and -catch-catch
244 These can be used to catch C++ exceptions in a similar fashion to
245 the CLI commands 'catch throw', 'catch rethrow', and 'catch catch'.
249 The testsuite now creates the files gdb.cmd (containing the arguments
250 used to launch GDB) and gdb.in (containing all the commands sent to
251 GDB) in the output directory for each test script. Multiple invocations
252 are appended with .1, .2, .3 etc.
254 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
256 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
257 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
260 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
261 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
262 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
265 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
268 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
269 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
270 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
272 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
273 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
275 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
276 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
277 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
278 in the GDB user manual.
280 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
283 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
285 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
286 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
287 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
288 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
289 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
290 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
291 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
292 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
293 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
294 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
295 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
296 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
298 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
299 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
300 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
303 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
308 set debug compile-cplus-types
309 show debug compile-cplus-types
310 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
311 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiliong
316 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
319 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
320 Apply a command to some frames.
321 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
322 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
325 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
326 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
329 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
330 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
333 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
335 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
337 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
338 maint show dwarf unwinders
339 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
342 Display a list of open files for a process.
346 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
347 These commands all now take a frame specification which
348 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
349 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
350 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
351 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
352 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
354 target remote FILENAME
355 target extended-remote FILENAME
356 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
357 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
359 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
360 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
361 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
362 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
363 These commands can now print only the searched entities
364 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
365 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
366 printing headers or informations messages.
372 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
373 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
374 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
377 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
378 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
379 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
380 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
382 set tui tab-width NCHARS
383 show tui tab-width NCHARS
384 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
386 set style enabled [on|off]
388 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
389 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
391 set style sources [on|off]
393 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
394 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
395 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
397 set style filename foreground COLOR
398 set style filename background COLOR
399 set style filename intensity VALUE
400 Control the styling of file names.
402 set style function foreground COLOR
403 set style function background COLOR
404 set style function intensity VALUE
405 Control the styling of function names.
407 set style variable foreground COLOR
408 set style variable background COLOR
409 set style variable intensity VALUE
410 Control the styling of variable names.
412 set style address foreground COLOR
413 set style address background COLOR
414 set style address intensity VALUE
415 Control the styling of addresses.
419 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
421 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
422 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
423 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
424 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
425 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
427 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
428 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
430 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
431 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
432 the following commands and events:
436 - =breakpoint-created
437 - =breakpoint-modified
439 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
440 this behavior with previous MI versions.
442 * New native configurations
444 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
445 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
449 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
451 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
452 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
454 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
458 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
463 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
465 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
466 space associated to that inferior.
468 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
469 of objfiles associated to that program space.
471 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
472 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
475 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
476 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
477 correct and did not work properly.
479 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
480 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
486 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
487 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
488 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
489 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
490 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
492 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
494 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
497 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
498 offset to all sections.
500 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
501 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
502 address of individual sections using '-s'.
504 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
505 (address of the text section).
507 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
508 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
509 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
510 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
513 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
514 for the rest of the current command.
516 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
517 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
519 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
520 files created on FreeBSD systems.
522 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
525 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
526 the vector length while the process is running.
532 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
534 set|show varsize-limit
535 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
536 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
537 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
539 set|show record btrace cpu
540 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
543 maint check libthread-db
544 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
547 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
548 maint show check-libthread-db
549 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
550 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
555 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
557 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
558 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
560 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
562 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
563 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
564 of convenience variables.
566 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
567 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
568 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
572 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
574 * Removed targets and native configurations
576 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
577 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
578 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
579 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
581 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
583 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
584 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
585 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
586 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
587 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
588 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
593 --enable-codesign=CERT
594 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
595 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
596 gdb to work properly.
598 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
599 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
601 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
603 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
604 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
605 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
607 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
608 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
610 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
611 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
612 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
613 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
614 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
616 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
617 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
618 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
619 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
621 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
622 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
624 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
625 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
626 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
628 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
629 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
630 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
632 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
633 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
634 environment" command.
636 * Completion improvements
638 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
639 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
640 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
641 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
644 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
645 (gdb) b function(int)
647 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
648 C++ anonymous namespaces:
651 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
652 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
653 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
655 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
656 completion support, that better understands what you're
657 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
658 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
659 setting a breakpoint.
661 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
663 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
665 * New command line options (gcore)
668 Dump all memory mappings.
670 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
672 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
673 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
674 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
676 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
681 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
684 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
685 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
686 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
687 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
688 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
689 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
690 a breakpoint from Python.
692 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
694 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
695 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
696 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
698 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
700 function[abi:cxx11](int)
703 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
706 (gdb) b function(int)
708 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
710 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
712 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
716 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
717 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
718 description of these.
720 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
721 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
722 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
724 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
725 manual for a further description of this feature.
728 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
730 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
731 specified initial working directory.
733 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
734 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
736 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
737 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
739 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
740 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
742 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
743 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
744 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
745 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
746 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
748 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
749 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
750 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
752 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
753 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
754 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
755 in the *stopped notification.
757 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
758 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
762 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
763 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
764 the inferior when starting it.
767 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
768 before starting the remote inferior.
771 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
772 user-set environment variables should be unset).
775 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
778 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
781 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
782 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
784 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
785 filter the tests to be run.
787 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
788 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
793 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
796 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
797 with the 'compile' commands.
799 set debug separate-debug-file
800 show debug separate-debug-file
801 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
803 set dump-excluded-mappings
804 show dump-excluded-mappings
805 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
806 dumped when generating a core file.
809 List the registered selftests.
812 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
815 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
817 set|show print type nested-type-limit
818 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
819 type printer will show.
821 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
824 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
826 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
829 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
830 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
831 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
832 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
834 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
835 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
836 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
837 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
838 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
839 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
841 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
842 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
843 unless you tell it the variable's type:
846 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
850 * New native configurations
852 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
853 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
857 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
858 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
859 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
861 * Removed targets and native configurations
863 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
865 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
867 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
868 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
869 available in future Intel CPUs.
871 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
875 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
876 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
878 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
881 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
883 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
885 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
886 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
889 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
891 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
892 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
894 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
896 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
897 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
898 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
899 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
902 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
904 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
905 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
908 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
910 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
911 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
913 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
915 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
920 eval "print $arg%d", $i
925 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
927 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
928 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
930 * New native configurations
932 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
936 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
937 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
939 * Removed targets and native configurations
941 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
942 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
947 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
949 maint print arc arc-instruction address
950 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
954 set disassembler-options
955 show disassembler-options
956 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
957 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
958 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
959 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
960 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
965 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
966 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
968 -file-list-shared-libraries
969 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
970 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
973 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
974 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
976 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
978 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
980 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
981 default. One must now explicitly configure with
982 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
983 option will be removed in a future release.
985 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
988 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
989 memory backward from the given address. For example:
992 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
993 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
994 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
995 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
996 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
997 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
998 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
999 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
1000 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
1002 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
1003 arrays of dynamic types.
1005 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
1006 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1007 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1008 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1009 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1010 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
1012 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
1015 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
1016 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
1017 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
1019 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
1021 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
1022 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
1023 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
1024 signal received and code location.
1028 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
1029 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
1030 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
1031 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
1033 * Rust language support.
1034 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
1035 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
1038 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
1040 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
1041 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
1042 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
1043 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
1044 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
1045 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
1046 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
1047 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
1048 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
1049 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
1052 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
1054 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
1055 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
1060 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
1061 skip -function function
1062 skip -rfunction regular-expression
1063 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
1064 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
1065 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
1067 maint info line-table REGEXP
1068 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
1071 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
1074 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
1075 using the TTY file for input/output.
1079 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
1080 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
1081 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
1082 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
1083 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
1085 signal-event EVENTID
1086 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
1087 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
1088 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
1089 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
1090 signalling an event.
1092 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
1093 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
1094 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
1096 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
1099 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
1100 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
1101 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
1102 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
1103 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
1104 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
1106 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
1107 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
1108 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
1109 bytecode into native code.
1111 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
1112 recording. For example:
1114 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
1116 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
1118 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
1122 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
1124 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
1126 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
1128 * Per-inferior thread numbers
1130 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
1131 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
1132 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
1136 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
1137 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
1138 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
1139 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
1141 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
1142 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
1143 are no longer unique between inferiors.
1145 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
1146 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
1147 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
1149 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
1152 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
1153 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
1156 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
1159 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
1160 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
1161 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
1162 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
1165 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
1168 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
1171 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
1174 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
1175 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
1178 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
1179 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
1181 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
1183 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
1185 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
1186 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
1188 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
1189 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
1192 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1193 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
1196 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
1197 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
1200 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1202 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
1203 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
1204 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
1206 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
1207 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
1211 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
1212 maint show target-non-stop
1213 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
1214 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
1215 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
1217 maint set bfd-sharing
1218 maint show bfd-sharing
1219 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
1222 show debug bfd-cache
1223 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
1227 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
1229 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1230 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1231 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
1233 set remote thread-events
1234 show remote thread-events
1235 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
1237 set ada print-signatures on|off
1238 show ada print-signatures"
1239 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
1240 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
1244 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
1245 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
1246 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1248 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1249 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1250 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1251 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1252 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1253 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1255 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1256 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1258 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1259 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1261 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1263 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1264 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1265 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1266 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1267 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1268 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1270 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1271 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1274 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1276 * New remote packets
1279 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1281 exec-events feature in qSupported
1282 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1283 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1284 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1285 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1288 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1291 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1292 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1294 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1295 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1298 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1299 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1300 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1301 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1302 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1303 stop for that same thread.
1306 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1307 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1308 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1311 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1312 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1314 syscall_entry stop reason
1315 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1317 syscall_return stop reason
1318 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
1320 * Extended-remote exec events
1322 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
1323 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
1324 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
1326 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
1327 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
1328 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
1330 * Thread names in remote protocol
1332 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
1335 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
1337 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
1338 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
1339 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
1340 fork and exec catchpoints.
1342 * Remote syscall events
1344 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
1345 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
1347 set remote catch-syscall-packet
1348 show remote catch-syscall-packet
1349 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
1353 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
1354 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
1359 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
1360 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
1361 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
1362 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
1363 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
1364 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
1366 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
1368 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
1369 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
1370 including advance SIMD instructions.
1372 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
1374 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
1375 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
1376 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
1377 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
1378 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
1379 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
1380 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
1382 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1384 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
1386 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
1387 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
1390 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
1391 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
1392 and may include things like its command line arguments.
1394 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
1395 is now available on all platforms.
1397 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
1398 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
1399 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
1400 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
1401 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
1402 backward compatibility.
1404 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
1405 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
1406 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
1407 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
1409 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
1410 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
1411 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
1412 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
1415 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
1417 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
1419 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
1420 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
1421 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
1422 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
1423 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
1424 See "New remote packets" below.
1426 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
1427 available register groups, including target specific groups.
1429 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
1430 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
1431 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
1432 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
1437 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
1441 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
1442 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
1443 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
1444 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
1445 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
1446 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
1447 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
1448 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
1449 "const" version of the value respectively.
1453 maint print symbol-cache
1454 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
1456 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
1457 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
1459 maint flush-symbol-cache
1460 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
1464 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
1467 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
1471 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
1474 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
1475 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
1479 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
1482 Print information about branch tracing internals.
1484 maint btrace packet-history
1485 Print the raw branch tracing data.
1487 maint btrace clear-packet-history
1488 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
1491 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
1492 anew by the next "record" command.
1497 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
1498 show debug dwarf-die
1499 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
1501 set debug dwarf-read
1502 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
1503 show debug dwarf-read
1504 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
1506 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
1507 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1508 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
1509 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1511 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
1512 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1513 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
1514 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1516 set debug dwarf-line
1517 show debug dwarf-line
1518 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
1521 show max-completions
1522 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
1523 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
1524 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
1525 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
1527 set history remove-duplicates
1528 show history remove-duplicates
1529 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
1531 maint set symbol-cache-size
1532 maint show symbol-cache-size
1533 Control the size of the symbol cache.
1535 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
1536 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1538 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1539 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1541 set debug linux-namespaces
1542 show debug linux-namespaces
1543 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
1545 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
1546 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1547 Intel Processor Trace format.
1548 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1549 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1551 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
1552 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
1555 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
1556 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
1558 * Python/Guile scripting
1560 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
1561 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
1563 * New remote packets
1565 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
1566 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
1568 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
1569 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
1572 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
1573 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
1576 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
1577 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
1581 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
1582 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
1583 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
1587 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
1588 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
1591 Return information about files on the remote system.
1593 qXfer:exec-file:read
1594 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
1595 create a process running on the remote system.
1598 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
1599 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
1600 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1601 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1604 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1607 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1609 vforkdone stop reason
1610 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1611 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1613 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1614 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1615 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1616 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1617 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1618 whether these features are enabled.
1620 * Extended-remote fork events
1622 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1623 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1624 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1625 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1627 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1628 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1629 the btrace record target.
1630 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1632 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1633 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1635 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1638 * Removed command line options
1640 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1642 * Removed targets and native configurations
1644 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1645 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1647 * New configure options
1650 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1651 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1653 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1654 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1655 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1656 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1658 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1662 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1664 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1666 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1670 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1671 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1672 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1673 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1674 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1675 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1676 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1677 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1678 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1679 selecting a new file to debug.
1680 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1681 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1683 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1686 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1687 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1688 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1689 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1691 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1693 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1694 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1695 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1696 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1698 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1699 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1700 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1701 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1702 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1703 interface with this new feature are:
1705 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1706 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1710 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1711 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1712 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1713 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1714 as "maint demangler-warning".
1716 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1717 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1719 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1720 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1723 maint print user-registers
1724 List all currently available "user" registers.
1726 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1727 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1728 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1730 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1731 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1732 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1735 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1736 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1737 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1738 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1741 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1742 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1743 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1744 switched threads meanwhile.
1746 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1748 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1749 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1750 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1751 is now the default mode.
1755 set debug symbol-lookup
1756 show debug symbol-lookup
1757 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1761 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1762 inferiors that have exited.
1766 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1770 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1772 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1773 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1774 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1775 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1776 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1778 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1779 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1780 its alias "share", instead.
1782 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1784 * New command line options
1787 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1789 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1790 as specified in ISO C99.
1792 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1793 with or without disassembly.
1797 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1798 available is determined at configure time.
1799 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1800 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1802 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1806 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1810 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1812 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1813 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1815 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1816 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1820 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1821 show print symbol-loading
1822 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1823 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1824 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1825 becomes less useful.
1827 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1828 show guile print-stack
1829 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1831 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1832 show auto-load guile-scripts
1833 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1835 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1836 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1837 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1838 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1839 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1840 usage of this option.
1842 set auto-connect-native-target
1844 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1845 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1846 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1848 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1849 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1850 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1852 maint set target-async (on|off)
1853 maint show target-async
1854 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1855 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1856 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1857 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1859 set mi-async (on|off)
1861 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1862 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1864 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1865 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1867 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1868 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1869 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1870 "set target-async on" command.
1872 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1874 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1875 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1876 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1877 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1878 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1880 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1881 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1882 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1884 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1885 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1886 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1887 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1888 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1889 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1890 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1892 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1893 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1895 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1896 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1897 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1899 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1900 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1901 memory or registers.
1903 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1905 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1906 remote. It now works with all targets.
1908 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1909 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1910 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1911 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1912 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1913 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1914 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1915 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1916 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1919 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1920 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1921 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1923 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1925 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1926 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1927 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1929 * New remote packets
1931 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1932 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1933 branch trace incrementally.
1937 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1938 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1940 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1941 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1942 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1943 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1944 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1947 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1949 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1950 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1951 its alias "share", instead.
1953 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1954 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1959 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1960 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1961 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1962 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1963 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1964 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1965 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1966 commands and CLI execution commands.
1968 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1970 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1971 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1972 recording has been added.
1974 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1976 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1977 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1979 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1980 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1981 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1982 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1983 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1984 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1987 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1989 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1991 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1992 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1993 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1994 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1999 (gdb) info registers rax
2002 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
2003 "*value not available*".
2005 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
2010 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
2011 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
2012 ** Line tables representation has been added.
2013 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
2014 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
2015 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
2019 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
2020 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
2021 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
2023 * Removed native configurations
2025 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
2026 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
2028 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2029 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2030 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
2031 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
2032 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2033 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2034 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2038 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
2039 maint check-psymtabs
2040 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
2042 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
2043 maint expand-symtabs
2044 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
2047 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2049 maint set|show per-command
2050 maint set|show per-command space
2051 maint set|show per-command time
2052 maint set|show per-command symtab
2053 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
2055 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
2056 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
2057 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
2058 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
2059 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
2062 info exceptions REGEXP
2063 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
2064 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
2069 set debug symfile off|on
2071 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
2072 symbol tables within those files
2074 set print raw frame-arguments
2075 show print raw frame-arguments
2076 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
2077 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
2079 set remote trace-status-packet
2080 show remote trace-status-packet
2081 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
2085 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
2089 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
2091 set startup-with-shell
2092 show startup-with-shell
2093 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
2098 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
2099 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
2101 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
2102 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
2103 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
2104 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
2107 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
2108 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
2109 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
2111 * New command-line options
2113 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2115 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
2116 buffer in Common Trace Format.
2118 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
2121 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
2123 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
2124 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
2126 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
2127 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
2129 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
2130 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
2131 due to an uncaught signal.
2135 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
2136 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
2137 command, which should contain "language-option".
2139 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
2140 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
2142 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
2143 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
2144 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
2145 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2146 "undefined-command-error-code".
2148 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
2151 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
2153 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
2154 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
2157 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
2158 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
2160 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
2161 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
2162 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
2164 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
2165 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
2166 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
2167 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
2168 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2169 "exec-run-start-option".
2171 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
2172 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
2174 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
2175 the new "info exceptions" command.
2177 * New system-wide configuration scripts
2178 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
2179 configuration scripts for the following systems:
2183 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
2184 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
2185 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
2188 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
2189 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
2191 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
2192 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
2193 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
2195 * New remote packets
2199 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
2200 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
2201 involvemement at each single-step.
2203 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
2204 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
2205 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
2206 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
2207 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
2208 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
2211 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2213 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
2214 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
2216 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
2217 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
2218 trace state variables.
2220 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
2223 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
2224 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
2226 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
2228 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
2229 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
2230 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
2231 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2233 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
2235 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
2236 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
2237 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
2238 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
2240 set|show record full insn-number-max
2241 set|show record full stop-at-limit
2242 set|show record full memory-query
2244 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
2245 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
2246 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
2247 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2248 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2252 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2253 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2255 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2256 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2257 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2259 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2260 instruction granularity
2262 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2263 function granularity
2265 * New native configurations
2267 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2268 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2269 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2270 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2274 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2275 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2276 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2277 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2278 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2280 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2281 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2282 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2283 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2284 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2285 --data-directory command-line option.
2287 * New command line options:
2289 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2290 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2292 * Removed command line options
2294 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2297 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2300 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2304 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2306 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2308 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2310 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2312 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2313 of architecture in the Python API.
2315 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2316 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2318 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2320 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
2321 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
2323 ** $_regex(str, regex)
2325 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
2328 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
2329 default for GCC since November 2000.
2331 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
2333 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
2334 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
2336 * New configure options
2338 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
2339 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
2340 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
2341 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
2342 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
2343 options allow the user to override that default.
2344 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
2345 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
2346 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
2348 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2351 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
2352 conditions to be attached.
2355 List the BFDs known to GDB.
2357 python-interactive [command]
2359 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
2360 and print the result of expressions.
2363 "py" is a new alias for "python".
2365 enable type-printer [name]...
2366 disable type-printer [name]...
2367 Enable or disable type printers.
2371 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
2372 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
2377 set print type methods (on|off)
2378 show print type methods
2379 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
2380 The default is to show them.
2382 set print type typedefs (on|off)
2383 show print type typedefs
2384 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
2385 The default is to show them.
2387 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
2388 show filename-display
2389 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
2390 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
2392 set trace-buffer-size
2393 show trace-buffer-size
2394 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
2396 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
2397 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
2398 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
2402 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
2405 set debug coff-pe-read
2406 show debug coff-pe-read
2407 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
2412 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
2415 set debug notification
2416 show debug notification
2417 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
2421 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
2422 "=cmd-param-changed".
2423 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
2424 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
2425 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
2426 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
2427 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
2428 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
2429 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
2430 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
2432 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
2433 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
2434 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
2435 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
2436 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
2437 library load/unload events.
2438 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
2439 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
2440 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
2441 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
2442 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
2443 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
2444 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
2445 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
2447 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
2448 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
2449 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
2450 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
2452 * New remote packets
2455 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
2456 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2459 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
2460 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
2464 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
2465 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2468 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
2469 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2471 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
2473 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
2474 for more x32 ABI info.
2476 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
2478 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
2480 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2481 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
2482 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
2483 "info os files" lists file descriptors
2484 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
2485 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
2486 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
2487 "info os msg" lists message queues
2488 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
2490 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
2491 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
2492 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
2493 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
2494 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
2495 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
2497 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
2498 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
2499 record/replay support.
2501 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
2505 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
2508 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
2510 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
2511 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
2513 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
2515 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
2516 the source at which the symbol was defined.
2518 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
2519 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
2520 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
2523 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
2524 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
2526 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
2527 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
2528 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
2530 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
2531 object associated with a PC value.
2533 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
2534 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
2536 * Go language support.
2537 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
2540 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
2541 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
2543 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
2544 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
2546 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
2547 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
2548 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
2549 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
2550 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
2553 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
2554 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
2555 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
2556 build/libcpp/expr.c.
2558 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
2559 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
2561 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
2562 since December 2007.
2564 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
2565 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
2566 command does. For instance:
2568 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
2570 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
2571 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
2572 created, using the "condition" command.
2574 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
2575 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
2577 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
2579 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
2580 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
2581 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
2582 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
2583 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
2584 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
2585 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
2586 files with older .gdb_index sections.
2588 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
2589 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
2590 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
2591 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
2592 the .gdb_index section.
2594 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
2596 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
2601 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2603 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2607 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2608 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2609 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2611 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2612 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2614 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2617 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2618 C++ and Java objects.
2620 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2621 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2622 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2623 configured with '--with-python'.
2625 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2626 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2627 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2628 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2629 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2630 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2631 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2633 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2634 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2635 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2636 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2638 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2639 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2640 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2641 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2643 ** "set print symbol"
2645 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2646 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2647 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2649 * Deprecated commands
2651 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2652 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2656 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2657 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2659 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2660 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2661 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2662 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2667 set mips compression
2668 show mips compression
2669 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2670 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2673 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2675 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2676 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2677 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2678 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2680 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2684 Disable auto-loading globally.
2687 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2689 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2690 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2691 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2693 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2694 show auto-load python-scripts
2695 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2697 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2698 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2699 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2701 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2702 show auto-load libthread-db
2703 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2705 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2706 show auto-load scripts-directory
2707 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2708 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2709 of the directories listed by this option.
2710 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2712 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2713 show auto-load safe-path
2714 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2715 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2717 set debug auto-load on|off
2718 show debug auto-load
2719 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2721 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2723 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2724 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2725 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2726 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2728 set dprintf-function <expr>
2729 show dprintf-function
2730 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2731 show dprintf-channel
2732 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2733 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2735 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2736 show disconnected-dprintf
2737 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2738 after GDB disconnects.
2740 * New configure options
2742 --with-auto-load-dir
2743 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2744 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2745 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2746 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2747 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2749 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2750 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2751 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2753 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2754 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2757 * New remote packets
2759 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2761 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2762 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2763 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2764 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2768 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2769 program without GDB involvement.
2771 * New command line options
2773 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2774 before loading inferior.
2775 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2776 execute it before loading inferior.
2778 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2780 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2781 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2782 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2783 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2786 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2787 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2789 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2790 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2791 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2792 target hardware watchpoint.
2794 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2795 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2796 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2797 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2801 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2802 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2805 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2806 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2807 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2808 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2809 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2812 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2815 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2816 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2817 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2818 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2819 corresponding value.
2821 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2822 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2823 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2826 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2827 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2828 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2829 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2831 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2833 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2836 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2837 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2838 available in the CLI.
2840 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2841 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2842 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2843 "some_type.items()".
2845 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2848 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2849 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2850 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2851 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2852 any anonymous fields.
2856 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2859 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2860 "=breakpoint-modified".
2862 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2864 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2865 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2866 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2869 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2870 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2871 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2872 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2873 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2875 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2876 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2878 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2879 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2880 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2881 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2882 use this option to specify where to find it.
2884 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2885 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2886 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2887 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2888 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2889 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2890 section in the user manual for more details.
2892 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2893 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2894 become available after that.
2896 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2898 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2899 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2905 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2906 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2910 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2911 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2912 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2914 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2915 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2916 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2918 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2919 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2920 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2921 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2922 name starts with a hyphen.
2924 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2925 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2926 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2927 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2928 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2929 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2930 number of bytes that will be collected.
2933 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2934 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2935 setting the variable trace-notes.
2938 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2939 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2940 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2943 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2944 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2945 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2946 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2947 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2950 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2951 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2952 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2956 set debug dwarf2-read
2957 show debug dwarf2-read
2958 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2959 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2961 set debug symtab-create
2962 show debug symtab-create
2963 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2964 creation. The default is off.
2967 show extended-prompt
2968 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2969 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2970 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2971 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2972 prompt is displayed.
2974 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2975 show print entry-values
2976 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2977 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2978 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2980 set debug entry-values
2981 show debug entry-values
2982 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2983 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2985 set basenames-may-differ
2986 show basenames-may-differ
2987 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2988 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2989 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2990 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2991 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2992 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2993 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2994 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
3000 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
3001 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
3002 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
3003 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
3005 set trace-stop-notes
3006 show trace-stop-notes
3007 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
3008 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
3009 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
3010 started by someone else.
3012 * New remote packets
3016 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3020 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3024 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
3028 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
3032 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
3035 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
3036 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
3040 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
3044 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3046 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
3048 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
3050 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
3052 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
3053 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
3054 matches the given regular expression.
3056 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
3058 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
3059 dumping the instruction opcodes.
3061 * New command line options
3063 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
3064 This is mostly for testing purposes.
3066 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
3067 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
3069 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
3070 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
3071 source path list instead of augmenting it.
3073 * GDB now understands thread names.
3075 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
3076 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
3078 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
3079 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
3082 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
3083 has been integrated into GDB.
3087 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
3088 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
3089 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
3091 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3092 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
3093 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
3094 and allows for more dynamic content.
3096 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
3097 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
3098 have an is_valid method.
3100 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3101 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
3102 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
3104 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
3106 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
3107 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
3108 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
3109 that function like so:
3111 result = some_value (10,20)
3113 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
3114 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
3115 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
3117 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
3118 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
3119 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
3120 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
3121 New function: register_pretty_printer.
3123 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
3124 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
3126 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
3128 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
3131 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
3132 holds the thread's name.
3134 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
3135 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
3136 occurring in the process being debugged.
3137 The following events are currently supported:
3138 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
3139 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
3140 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
3144 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
3145 instantiation. For example, if you have:
3147 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
3149 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
3150 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
3151 was added to GCC 4.5.
3153 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
3154 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
3155 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
3156 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
3157 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
3158 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
3160 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
3161 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
3162 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
3163 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
3164 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
3166 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
3167 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
3168 execution to a label.
3170 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
3171 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
3172 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
3173 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
3175 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
3176 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
3177 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
3180 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
3182 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
3183 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
3184 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
3185 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
3186 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
3187 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
3190 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
3192 While now you see this:
3195 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
3197 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
3200 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
3201 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
3202 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
3203 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
3205 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3206 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
3207 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
3208 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3209 section in the user manual for more details.
3211 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3213 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
3214 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
3216 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
3218 * New native configurations
3220 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
3224 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
3226 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
3227 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
3228 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
3229 in the GDB user manual.
3231 * Guile support was removed.
3233 * New features in the GNU simulator
3235 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
3237 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
3239 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
3241 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
3243 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
3244 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
3245 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
3246 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
3247 was always disabled for such configurations.
3251 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3253 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3254 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3264 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3265 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3266 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3268 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3270 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3271 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3272 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3273 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3275 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3276 mentioned flavors of operators.
3278 ** static const class members
3280 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3281 class definition has been fixed.
3283 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3285 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3286 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3287 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3288 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3289 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3290 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3292 * Static tracepoints
3294 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3295 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3296 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3297 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3298 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3299 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3300 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3301 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3302 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3303 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3304 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3305 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3306 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3307 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3308 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3309 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3310 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3311 the "New remote packets" section below.
3313 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3315 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3316 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3317 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3318 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
3322 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
3323 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
3324 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
3325 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
3326 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
3327 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
3328 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
3330 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
3333 * New remote packets
3337 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
3341 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
3342 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
3343 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
3344 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
3345 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
3346 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
3350 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
3354 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
3357 qXfer:statictrace:read
3359 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
3360 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
3361 to gdb's qSupported query.
3365 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
3369 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
3370 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
3372 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
3373 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
3376 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3378 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
3379 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
3380 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
3381 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
3383 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
3384 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
3385 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
3386 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
3387 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
3388 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
3389 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
3391 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
3392 for static tracepoints support.
3394 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
3396 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
3397 it understands register description.
3399 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
3401 * X86 general purpose registers
3403 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
3404 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
3405 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
3406 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
3407 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
3409 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
3410 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
3411 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
3412 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
3413 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
3414 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
3416 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
3417 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
3418 in the specified file.
3420 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
3421 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
3422 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
3423 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
3424 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
3425 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
3426 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
3427 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
3428 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
3429 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
3433 eval template, expressions...
3434 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
3435 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
3437 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
3438 show target-file-system-kind
3439 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
3442 save breakpoints <filename>
3443 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
3444 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
3445 definitions, use the `source' command.
3447 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
3450 info static-tracepoint-markers
3451 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
3453 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
3454 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
3455 function, line, address, or marker ID.
3459 Enable and disable observer mode.
3461 set may-write-registers on|off
3462 set may-write-memory on|off
3463 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
3464 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
3465 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
3466 set may-interrupt on|off
3467 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
3468 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
3469 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
3470 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
3471 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
3472 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
3473 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
3475 set record memory-query on|off
3476 show record memory-query
3477 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
3478 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
3483 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
3487 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
3488 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
3489 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
3490 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
3491 GDB using Python' in the manual.
3493 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
3494 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
3495 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
3496 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
3498 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
3499 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
3501 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
3503 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
3505 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
3507 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
3508 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
3509 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
3511 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
3512 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
3513 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
3514 regular breakpoints.
3518 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
3520 * D language support.
3521 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
3524 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
3525 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
3526 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
3527 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
3528 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
3530 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
3531 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
3532 conditions of the form:
3534 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
3536 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
3537 interface mentioned above.
3539 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
3543 ** Namespace Support
3545 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
3546 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
3547 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
3548 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
3549 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
3553 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
3554 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
3559 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
3560 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
3564 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
3569 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
3572 * Multi-program debugging.
3574 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
3575 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
3576 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
3577 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
3578 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
3579 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
3580 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
3581 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
3583 * New tracing features
3585 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
3587 ** Trace state variables
3589 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
3590 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
3591 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
3592 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
3593 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
3594 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
3595 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
3596 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
3597 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
3598 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
3602 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3603 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3604 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3605 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3606 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3607 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3608 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3609 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3610 the regular trace command.
3612 ** Disconnected tracing
3614 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3615 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3616 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3617 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3618 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3622 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3623 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3624 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3625 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3626 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3627 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3630 ** Circular trace buffer
3632 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3633 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3634 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3635 not be available for all target agents.
3640 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3641 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3644 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3645 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3648 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3649 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3652 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3653 "set script-extension" (see below).
3655 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3657 record save [<FILENAME>]
3658 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3659 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3661 record restore <FILENAME>
3662 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3663 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3665 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3668 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3669 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3670 inferior has loaded.
3675 maint info program-spaces
3676 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3678 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3679 show remote interrupt-sequence
3680 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3681 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3682 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3683 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3684 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3686 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3687 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3688 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3689 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3692 set remotebreak [on | off]
3694 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3696 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3697 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3700 List trace state variables and their values.
3702 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3703 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3706 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3707 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3709 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3710 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3712 * New expression syntax
3714 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3715 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3719 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3720 show follow-exec-mode
3721 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3722 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3723 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3725 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3726 show default-collect
3727 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3728 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3729 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3731 set disconnected-tracing
3732 show disconnected-tracing
3733 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3734 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3737 set circular-trace-buffer
3738 show circular-trace-buffer
3739 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3740 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3741 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3742 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3744 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3745 show script-extension
3746 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3747 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3748 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3749 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3751 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3753 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3754 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3755 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3756 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3757 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3758 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3759 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3762 * Python API Improvements
3764 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3765 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3766 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3768 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3769 `is_base_class' attribute.
3771 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3773 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3774 evaluate an expression.
3776 * New remote packets
3779 Define a trace state variable.
3782 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3785 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3788 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3791 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3795 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3797 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3798 much more reliable. In particular:
3799 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3800 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3801 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3802 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3803 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3804 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3805 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3806 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3807 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3808 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3809 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3810 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3811 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3812 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3813 non-threaded programs.
3815 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3816 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3817 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3820 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3822 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3823 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3824 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3825 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3826 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3828 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3829 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3830 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3831 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3832 for tracepoint actions.
3834 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3835 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3836 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3838 * Process record and replay
3840 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3841 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3842 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3845 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3846 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3847 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3850 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3851 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3854 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3855 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3856 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3857 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3858 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3859 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3860 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3861 the installation instructions for more information.
3863 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3864 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3865 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3866 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3868 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3869 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3871 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3872 now complete on file names.
3874 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3875 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3876 For instance, consider:
3878 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3879 # struct example variable;
3882 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3883 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3885 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3886 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3888 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3889 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3892 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3893 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3894 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3896 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3897 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3898 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3899 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3901 * New remote packets
3904 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3907 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3908 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3909 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3912 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3913 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3916 Obtains additional operating system information
3920 Read or write additional signal information.
3922 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3924 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3925 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3926 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3928 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3929 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3931 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3932 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3933 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3935 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3936 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3938 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3940 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3942 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3943 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3945 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3946 list of section offsets.
3948 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3949 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3950 have also been fixed.
3952 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3953 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3954 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3956 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3959 template<typename T> class C { };
3962 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3964 ptype C<char const *>
3965 ptype C<char const*>
3966 ptype C<const char *>
3967 ptype C<const char*>
3969 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3971 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3972 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3974 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3975 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3976 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3978 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3979 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3981 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3984 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3985 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3987 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3988 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3993 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3994 available is determined at configure time.
3996 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3998 * Ada tasking support
4000 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
4004 Print the list of Ada tasks.
4006 Print detailed information about task number N.
4008 Print the task number of the current task.
4010 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
4012 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
4013 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
4015 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
4017 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
4018 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
4019 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
4020 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
4021 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
4022 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
4025 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
4026 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
4029 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
4030 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
4031 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
4032 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
4035 * Multi-architecture debugging.
4037 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
4038 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
4039 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
4040 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
4041 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
4043 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
4044 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
4045 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
4046 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
4047 --enable-targets configure option.
4049 * Non-stop mode debugging.
4051 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
4052 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
4053 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
4054 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
4055 section in the user manual for more information.
4057 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
4058 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
4059 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
4060 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
4061 extensions on linux targets.
4063 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4065 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
4066 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
4067 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
4068 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
4069 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
4070 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
4071 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
4072 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
4073 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
4075 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
4077 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4079 maint set python print-stack
4080 maint show python print-stack
4081 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
4084 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
4089 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
4093 Show operating system information about processes.
4096 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
4099 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
4102 Detach from inferior number NUM.
4105 Kill inferior number NUM.
4109 set spu stop-on-load
4110 show spu stop-on-load
4111 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4113 set spu auto-flush-cache
4114 show spu auto-flush-cache
4115 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
4116 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4118 set sh calling-convention
4119 show sh calling-convention
4120 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
4123 show debug timestamp
4124 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
4126 set disassemble-next-line
4127 show disassemble-next-line
4128 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
4131 set remote noack-packet
4132 show remote noack-packet
4133 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
4134 under "New remote packets."
4136 set remote query-attached-packet
4137 show remote query-attached-packet
4138 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
4140 set remote read-siginfo-object
4141 show remote read-siginfo-object
4142 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
4145 set remote write-siginfo-object
4146 show remote write-siginfo-object
4147 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
4150 set remote reverse-continue
4151 show remote reverse-continue
4152 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
4154 set remote reverse-step
4155 show remote reverse-step
4156 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
4158 set displaced-stepping
4159 show displaced-stepping
4160 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
4161 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
4162 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
4165 show debug displaced
4166 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
4168 maint set internal-error
4169 maint show internal-error
4170 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
4172 maint set internal-warning
4173 maint show internal-warning
4174 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
4179 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4181 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
4182 show multiple-symbols
4183 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
4184 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
4185 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
4187 set breakpoint always-inserted
4188 show breakpoint always-inserted
4189 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
4190 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
4191 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
4193 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4194 show arm fallback-mode
4195 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4197 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
4198 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
4199 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
4200 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
4202 set disable-randomization
4203 show disable-randomization
4204 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
4205 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
4206 multiple debugging sessions.
4210 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
4215 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
4216 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
4217 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
4218 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
4220 set target-wide-charset
4221 show target-wide-charset
4222 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
4223 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
4225 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
4227 set tcp connect-timeout
4228 show tcp connect-timeout
4229 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
4230 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
4231 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
4233 set libthread-db-search-path
4234 show libthread-db-search-path
4235 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
4238 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
4239 show schedule-multiple
4240 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
4241 the current process.
4245 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
4246 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
4247 affecting correctness.
4249 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4250 show interactive-mode
4251 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4252 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4253 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4254 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4255 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4260 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4261 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4262 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4266 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4267 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4268 alias for the `fork' command.
4271 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4272 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4273 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4276 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4277 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4278 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4282 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4283 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4284 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4287 * New native configurations
4289 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4291 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4295 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4296 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4297 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4300 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4301 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4307 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4309 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4311 * New native configurations
4313 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4314 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4318 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
4319 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
4321 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4323 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
4324 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
4325 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
4326 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
4328 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
4329 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
4331 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
4334 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
4335 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
4336 and in inlined functions.
4338 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
4339 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
4340 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
4342 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
4344 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
4345 registers on PowerPC targets.
4347 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
4348 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
4350 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
4351 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
4353 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
4354 extended-remote mode.
4356 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
4357 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
4358 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
4359 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
4361 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
4362 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
4363 target architectures.
4365 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
4366 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
4367 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
4368 stored in two consecutive float registers.
4370 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
4373 * Improved support for debugging Ada
4374 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
4376 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
4377 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
4378 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
4379 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
4381 - Improved command completion in Ada
4384 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
4389 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
4390 show print frame-arguments
4391 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
4392 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
4397 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4404 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4406 * New remote packets
4413 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
4416 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
4420 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
4422 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
4424 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
4425 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
4426 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
4428 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
4429 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
4430 -Bsymbolic linker option.
4432 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
4433 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
4436 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
4437 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
4439 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
4440 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
4442 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
4444 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
4445 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
4446 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
4448 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
4449 automatically displayed as character or string data.
4451 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
4452 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
4455 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
4456 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
4457 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
4459 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
4462 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
4463 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
4464 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
4466 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
4468 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
4470 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
4471 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
4472 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
4474 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
4475 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
4477 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
4478 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
4479 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
4480 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
4481 Windows and SymbianOS).
4483 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
4484 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
4486 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
4487 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
4493 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
4494 when debugging using remote targets.
4496 set mem inaccessible-by-default
4497 show mem inaccessible-by-default
4498 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4499 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4500 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
4501 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
4502 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
4504 set breakpoint auto-hw
4505 show breakpoint auto-hw
4506 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4507 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4508 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
4509 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
4510 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
4511 including "next" and "finish".
4514 catch exception unhandled
4515 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
4518 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
4522 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
4523 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
4524 an alias to "set sysroot".
4527 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
4528 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
4531 * New native configurations
4533 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
4536 unset tdesc filename
4538 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
4539 not query the target for its built-in description.
4543 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
4544 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
4545 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
4547 * New remote packets
4550 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
4551 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
4553 qXfer:features:read:
4554 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
4559 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
4560 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
4562 qXfer:libraries:read:
4563 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
4564 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
4565 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
4566 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
4570 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
4578 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
4579 i[34567]86-*-netware*
4580 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
4581 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
4583 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
4586 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
4587 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
4596 * Other removed features
4603 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4610 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4615 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4616 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4621 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4622 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4624 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4626 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4627 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4628 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4629 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4631 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4633 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4634 in debugging information.
4638 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4639 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4641 set mips stack-arg-size
4642 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4644 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4646 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4651 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4653 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4654 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4655 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4657 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4658 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4661 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4662 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4664 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4665 stub provides the required support.
4667 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4668 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4673 unset substitute-path
4674 show substitute-path
4675 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4676 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4677 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4678 between compilation and debugging.
4682 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4683 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4684 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4688 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4690 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4691 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4693 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4695 * New remote packets
4698 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4699 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4700 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4701 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4705 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4706 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4708 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4709 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4710 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4715 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4717 * Removed remote packets
4720 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4721 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4723 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4727 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4729 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4733 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4734 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4736 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4738 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4740 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4741 previously saved state.
4743 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4745 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4747 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4748 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4750 info forks List forks of the user program that
4751 are available to be debugged.
4753 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4754 forks of the user program that are
4755 available to be debugged.
4757 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4758 that are available to be debugged (and
4759 kill the forked process).
4761 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4762 that are available to be debugged (and
4763 allow the process to continue).
4767 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4769 * Improved Windows host support
4771 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4772 native console support, and remote communications using either
4773 network sockets or serial ports.
4775 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4777 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4778 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4779 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4780 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4781 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4782 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4786 The ARM rdi-share module.
4788 The Netware NLM debug server.
4790 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4792 * New native configurations
4794 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4795 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4799 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4801 * New command line options
4803 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4804 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4805 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4806 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4807 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4808 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4809 with the --command (-x) option.
4811 * Deprecated commands removed
4813 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4817 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4818 othernames set arm disassembler
4819 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4820 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4821 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4824 * New BSD user-level threads support
4826 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4827 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4830 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4831 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4832 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4834 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4835 are not yet supported.
4837 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4838 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4840 * REMOVED configurations and files
4842 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4843 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4844 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4846 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4848 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4849 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4852 * VAX floating point support
4854 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4856 * User-defined command support
4858 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4859 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4860 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4862 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4864 * New command line option
4866 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4869 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4871 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4872 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4873 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4874 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4875 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4877 * Internationalization
4879 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4880 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4881 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4885 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4886 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4887 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4889 * New native configurations
4891 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4895 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4896 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4898 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4900 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4901 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4902 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4905 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4906 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4907 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4917 powerpc bdm protocol
4919 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4920 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4922 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4924 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4925 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4926 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4927 permanently REMOVED.
4936 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4938 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4940 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4941 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4944 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4946 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4947 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4948 IRIX long double values).
4952 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4953 command. This problem has been fixed.
4955 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4957 * Fix for ``many threads''
4959 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4960 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4963 ptrace: No such process.
4964 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4966 This problem has been fixed.
4968 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4970 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4973 * New ``start'' command.
4975 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4977 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4979 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4980 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4981 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4983 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4984 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4985 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4986 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4987 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4988 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4989 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4990 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4991 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4993 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4995 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4996 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4997 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4998 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4999 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
5001 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
5002 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
5003 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
5005 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
5007 * New native configurations
5009 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
5010 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
5011 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
5012 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
5013 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
5014 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
5015 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
5017 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
5019 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5020 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
5021 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
5022 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
5023 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
5024 work, was also included.
5026 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
5027 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
5037 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5038 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
5040 * REMOVED configurations and files
5042 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5043 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5044 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5045 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5046 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5047 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5048 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5049 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5050 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5051 sonymips mips-sony-*
5052 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5054 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
5056 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
5058 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
5059 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
5060 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
5061 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
5064 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
5066 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
5067 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
5068 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
5069 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
5070 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
5071 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
5074 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
5076 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
5078 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
5079 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
5080 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
5082 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
5084 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
5085 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
5087 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
5089 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
5090 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
5091 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
5093 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
5095 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
5096 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
5098 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
5100 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
5101 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
5102 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
5104 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
5106 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
5107 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
5108 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
5110 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
5112 * Removed --with-mmalloc
5114 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
5115 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
5117 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
5119 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
5120 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
5121 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
5122 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
5124 * Revised SPARC target
5126 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
5127 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
5128 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
5129 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
5130 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
5134 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
5135 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
5136 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
5139 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5141 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
5142 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
5145 * C++ nested types and namespaces
5147 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
5148 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
5149 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
5150 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
5151 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
5152 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
5153 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
5154 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
5155 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
5157 * New native configurations
5159 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
5160 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5161 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
5162 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5163 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
5165 * New debugging protocols
5167 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
5169 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
5171 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
5172 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
5173 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
5175 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5177 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5178 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5179 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5180 permanently REMOVED.
5182 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5183 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5184 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5185 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5186 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5187 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5188 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5189 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5190 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5191 sonymips mips-sony-*
5192 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5194 * REMOVED configurations and files
5196 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5197 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5198 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5199 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5200 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5201 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5202 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5203 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5204 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5205 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
5206 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5207 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5208 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5209 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
5210 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
5211 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5212 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5214 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
5218 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
5219 integrated into GDB.
5221 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
5223 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
5224 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
5225 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
5228 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
5229 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
5230 DWARF 2 CFI support.
5234 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
5235 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
5236 remote protocol documentation for details.
5238 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
5240 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
5241 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
5242 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
5245 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
5247 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5248 per-thread variables.
5250 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5252 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5253 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5255 * Separate debug info.
5257 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5258 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5259 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5260 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5261 and optional debug files.
5263 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5265 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5266 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5269 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5270 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5274 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5275 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5276 considered "useable".
5278 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5280 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5281 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5284 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5286 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5287 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5289 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5291 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5292 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5295 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5297 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5298 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5302 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5303 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5304 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5305 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5306 data, for more informative profiling results.
5308 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5310 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5311 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5312 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5314 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5317 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5318 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
5319 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
5320 in a subsequent -var-update.
5322 * New native configurations.
5324 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5326 * Multi-arched targets.
5328 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
5329 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5331 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5333 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5334 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5335 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5336 permanently REMOVED.
5338 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5339 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5340 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5341 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5342 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5343 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5344 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5345 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5346 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5347 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5348 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5349 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5351 * REMOVED configurations and files
5354 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5355 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5356 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5357 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5358 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5359 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5361 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5362 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5363 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5364 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5365 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5366 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5368 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
5370 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
5371 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
5372 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
5373 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
5374 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
5376 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
5378 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
5380 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
5381 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
5382 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
5383 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
5384 shared libs like mad''.
5386 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
5388 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
5389 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
5390 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
5391 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
5393 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
5395 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
5396 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
5399 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
5400 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
5402 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
5403 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
5405 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
5406 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
5407 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
5408 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
5410 * Multi-arched targets.
5412 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
5413 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
5415 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
5416 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
5417 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5421 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
5424 * New native configurations
5426 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
5427 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
5428 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
5429 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
5431 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5433 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5434 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5435 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5436 permanently REMOVED.
5438 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5439 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5440 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5441 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5442 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5443 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5444 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5445 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5446 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5447 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5449 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5450 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5452 * OBSOLETE languages
5454 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
5456 * REMOVED configurations and files
5458 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5459 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5460 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5461 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5462 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5464 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5466 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
5468 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
5469 commands. The default is 1024.
5471 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
5473 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
5475 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
5477 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
5478 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
5479 from a file into memory (restore).
5481 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
5483 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
5484 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
5485 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
5487 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
5495 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
5496 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
5497 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
5499 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
5500 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
5501 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
5503 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
5504 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
5505 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
5507 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
5508 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
5509 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
5511 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
5513 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
5515 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
5516 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
5517 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
5518 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
5519 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
5520 (notably embedded) targets.
5522 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
5524 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
5525 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
5526 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
5527 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
5529 * New command line option
5531 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
5533 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
5535 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
5536 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
5537 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
5538 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
5539 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
5540 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
5541 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
5542 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
5543 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
5544 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
5546 * Changes in ARM configurations.
5548 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
5549 configuration is fully multi-arch.
5551 * New native configurations
5553 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
5554 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
5555 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
5556 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
5560 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
5562 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5564 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5565 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5566 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5567 permanently REMOVED.
5569 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5570 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5571 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5572 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5573 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5575 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5577 * REMOVED configurations and files
5579 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5581 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5582 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5583 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5584 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5585 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5586 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5587 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5588 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5589 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5590 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5591 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
5593 * Changes to command line processing
5595 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
5596 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
5598 * Changes to key bindings
5600 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5602 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5604 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5606 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5609 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5611 Numerous documentation fixes.
5613 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5615 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5617 * New native configurations
5619 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5620 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5621 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5622 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5623 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5624 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5628 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5630 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5632 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5634 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5635 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5636 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5637 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5638 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5640 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5641 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5642 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5643 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5644 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5645 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5646 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5647 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5649 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5650 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5652 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5653 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5654 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5655 permanently REMOVED.
5657 * REMOVED configurations and files
5659 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5660 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5662 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5666 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5668 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5669 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5674 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5676 * The MI enabled by default.
5678 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5679 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5680 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5681 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5682 which is now deprecated.
5684 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5686 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5687 main features are supported:
5689 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5691 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5694 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5696 - a Pascal expression parser.
5698 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5700 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5702 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5704 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5705 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5707 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5709 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5711 * Changes in completion.
5713 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5714 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5715 users expect at the shell prompt.
5717 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5718 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5719 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5720 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5721 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5722 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5723 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5725 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5727 * New platform-independent commands:
5729 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5730 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5731 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5733 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5735 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5736 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5737 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5739 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5741 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5742 multi-threaded programs though.
5744 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5746 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5748 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5749 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5752 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5754 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5755 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5756 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5757 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5758 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5761 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5762 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5763 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5765 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5767 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5768 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5770 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5771 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5774 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5775 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5776 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5777 a given linear address.
5779 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5780 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5781 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5783 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5785 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5787 * Changes in documentation.
5789 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5790 Documentation License.
5792 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5795 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5797 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5800 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5801 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5802 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5804 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5806 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5807 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5808 contents of this file.
5812 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5814 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5816 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5818 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5819 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5820 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5821 greater level of detail.
5823 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5825 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5826 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5827 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5830 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5832 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5833 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5834 machines ``out of the box''.
5836 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5837 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5838 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5839 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5840 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5842 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5843 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5844 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5845 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5846 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5848 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5849 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5852 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5855 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5856 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5857 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5858 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5860 * New native configurations
5862 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5863 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5867 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5868 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5869 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5870 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5872 * OBSOLETE configurations
5874 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5875 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5877 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5880 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5881 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5882 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5883 be permanently REMOVED.
5885 * Gould support removed
5887 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5889 * New features for SVR4
5891 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5892 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5893 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5895 * Many C++ enhancements
5897 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5898 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5900 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5902 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5903 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5904 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5905 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5907 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5908 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5910 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5912 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5913 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5914 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5916 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5917 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5919 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5921 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5922 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5923 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5925 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5927 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5928 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5929 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5931 * ``apropos'' command added.
5933 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5934 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5935 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5939 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5940 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5941 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5942 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5943 enabled by configuring with:
5945 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5947 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5949 * New native configurations
5951 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5952 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5953 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5957 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5958 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5959 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5961 * OBSOLETE configurations
5963 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5965 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5966 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5967 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5968 be permanently REMOVED.
5972 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5973 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5974 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5975 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5976 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5977 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5978 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5983 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5985 * set extension-language
5987 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5988 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5989 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5990 set extension-language .c c++
5991 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5992 and their associated languages.
5994 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5996 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5997 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5998 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
6002 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
6003 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
6005 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
6006 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
6008 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
6009 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
6010 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
6011 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
6012 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
6013 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
6014 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
6015 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
6017 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
6018 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
6019 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
6020 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
6024 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
6025 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
6026 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
6027 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
6028 for xdb and dbx commands.
6032 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
6033 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
6034 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
6036 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
6037 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
6038 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
6040 * Debugging across forks
6042 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
6047 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
6048 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
6049 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
6051 * GDB remote protocol additions
6053 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
6054 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
6055 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
6056 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
6058 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
6059 full 64-bit address. The command
6061 set remoteaddresssize 32
6063 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
6064 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
6067 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
6068 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
6070 maint packet heythere
6072 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
6073 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
6076 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
6077 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
6078 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
6080 * Tracing can collect general expressions
6082 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
6083 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
6084 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
6086 * mask-address variable for Mips
6088 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
6089 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
6090 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
6092 * Higher serial baud rates
6094 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
6095 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
6096 to achieve all of these rates.)
6100 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
6101 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
6104 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
6106 * New native configurations
6108 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
6109 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
6110 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6111 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6112 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6113 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
6114 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
6118 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6119 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
6120 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
6121 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
6122 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
6123 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
6124 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
6125 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
6126 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6127 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6128 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
6130 * New debugging protocols
6132 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
6133 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
6134 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
6135 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6136 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6137 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6141 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
6142 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
6147 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
6148 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
6150 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
6152 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
6153 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
6154 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
6156 * Live range splitting
6158 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
6159 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
6160 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
6164 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
6165 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
6169 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
6170 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
6171 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
6176 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
6181 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
6182 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
6183 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
6184 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
6185 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
6186 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
6190 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
6191 the symbol at the specified address.
6195 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
6196 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
6197 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
6198 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
6199 file tracepoint.c for more details.
6203 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
6204 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
6205 of most MIPS variants.
6209 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
6210 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
6211 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
6215 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
6216 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
6217 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
6218 the possible architectures.
6220 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
6222 * New native configurations
6224 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
6225 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
6226 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
6227 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
6228 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6229 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
6233 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
6234 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6235 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
6236 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
6237 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
6239 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6243 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
6244 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
6245 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
6246 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
6247 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6251 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6253 * Windows 95/NT native
6255 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6256 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6257 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6258 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6259 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6261 * dont-repeat command
6263 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6264 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6265 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6266 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6268 * Send break instead of ^C
6270 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6271 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6272 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6274 * Remote protocol timeout
6276 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6277 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6278 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6280 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6282 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6283 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6284 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6285 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6286 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6288 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6289 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6290 automatically on hpux10.
6292 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6294 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6296 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6298 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6299 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6300 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6301 every character. The default value is 1050.
6303 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6305 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6306 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6307 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6308 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6309 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6310 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6312 * Speedups for remote debugging
6314 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6315 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6316 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6318 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
6320 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
6321 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
6323 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
6325 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
6327 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
6328 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
6330 * Remote targets use caching
6332 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
6333 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
6334 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
6335 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
6336 off' turns the the data cache off.
6338 * Remote targets may have threads
6340 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
6341 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
6342 gdb/remote.c for details.
6346 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
6347 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
6348 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
6349 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
6350 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
6351 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
6352 sequence is something like
6354 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
6356 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
6360 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
6361 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
6362 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
6363 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
6364 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
6365 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
6366 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
6367 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
6371 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
6372 but does simplify configuration and building.
6376 GDB now supports hpux10.
6378 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
6380 * New native configurations
6382 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
6383 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
6384 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
6385 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
6389 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6390 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
6391 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
6392 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
6395 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
6397 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
6398 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
6399 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
6400 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
6401 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
6403 * Arguments to user-defined commands
6405 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
6406 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
6409 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
6411 To execute the command use:
6414 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
6415 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
6416 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
6418 * New `if' and `while' commands
6420 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
6421 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
6422 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
6423 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
6424 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
6425 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
6426 if the expression is zero.
6428 * Fortran source language mode
6430 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
6431 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
6432 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
6433 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
6436 * Better HPUX support
6438 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
6439 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
6440 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
6441 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
6442 that behavior do the following before running the program:
6448 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
6449 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
6455 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
6456 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
6459 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
6460 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
6462 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
6464 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
6465 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
6466 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
6467 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
6468 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
6469 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
6471 * New DOS host serial code
6473 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
6474 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
6477 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
6479 * New "complete" command
6481 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
6482 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
6484 * Trailing space optional in prompt
6486 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
6487 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
6489 * Breakpoint hit counts
6491 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
6492 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
6493 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
6494 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
6495 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
6498 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
6500 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
6501 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
6502 arrays actually contain only short strings.
6504 * Shared library breakpoints
6506 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
6507 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
6509 * Hardware watchpoints
6511 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
6512 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
6514 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
6518 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
6519 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
6521 * Improved Irix 5 support
6523 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
6525 * Improved HPPA support
6527 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
6529 * New native configurations
6531 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
6532 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
6533 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
6534 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
6538 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6539 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
6542 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
6544 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
6545 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
6549 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
6550 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
6552 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
6554 * Irix 5 is now supported
6558 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
6559 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
6560 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
6561 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
6562 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
6565 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
6567 * User visible changes:
6571 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
6572 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
6573 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
6574 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
6575 debugging info for the mips target).
6577 * DEC Alpha native support
6579 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
6580 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
6581 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
6582 Alpha-specific notes.
6584 * Preliminary thread implementation
6586 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
6588 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
6590 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
6591 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
6594 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
6596 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
6597 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
6598 call methods, ...etc.
6600 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6602 * User visible changes:
6604 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6605 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6606 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6607 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6609 Filename completion now works.
6611 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6612 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6613 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6615 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6616 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6617 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6618 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6619 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6623 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6624 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6627 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6631 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6632 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6633 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6637 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6638 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6639 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6640 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6641 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6645 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6646 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6647 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6649 * New targets supported
6651 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6652 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6653 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6654 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6655 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6657 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6658 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6659 GO32 memory extender.
6661 * New remote protocols
6663 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6665 * New source languages supported
6667 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6668 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6669 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6672 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6674 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6676 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6677 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6678 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6679 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6680 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6681 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6683 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6685 * Faster and better demangling
6687 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6688 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6689 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6690 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6691 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6692 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6695 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6696 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6697 compiler does not actually implement.
6699 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6701 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6702 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6703 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6704 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6705 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6706 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6709 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6710 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6712 * Improved configure script
6714 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6715 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6716 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6717 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6719 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6720 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6721 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6722 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6723 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6724 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6726 * Documentation improvements
6728 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6729 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6730 before submitting changes.
6732 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6733 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6734 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6735 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6736 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6738 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6739 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6740 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6741 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6742 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6743 around this problem.
6747 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6748 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6749 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6752 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6753 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6755 * New native hosts supported
6757 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6758 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6760 * New targets supported
6762 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6764 * New file formats supported
6766 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6767 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6771 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6773 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6774 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6776 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6777 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6778 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6780 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6781 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6783 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6784 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6785 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6788 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6789 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6790 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6791 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6792 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6794 * Internal improvements
6796 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6797 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6799 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6800 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6801 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6802 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6803 shared code that handles any of them.
6805 * New command line options
6807 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6811 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6812 General Public License.
6814 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6816 * Host/native/target split
6818 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6819 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6820 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6821 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6822 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6824 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6825 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6826 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6827 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6828 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6829 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6830 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6832 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6833 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6834 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6836 * New hosts supported
6838 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6839 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6840 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6842 * New targets supported
6844 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6845 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6847 * New native hosts supported
6849 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6850 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6851 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6853 * New file formats supported
6855 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6856 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6857 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6861 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6862 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6863 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6865 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6867 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6868 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6869 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6870 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6874 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6875 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6876 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6878 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6882 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6883 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6886 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6887 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6889 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6890 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6891 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6892 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6893 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6894 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6896 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6897 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6898 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6899 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6903 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6904 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6905 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6906 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6907 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6909 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6910 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6911 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6912 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6916 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6917 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6918 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6919 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6920 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6921 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6922 each instruction being stepped through.
6924 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6925 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6927 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6928 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6929 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6930 processor with a serial port.
6934 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6935 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6936 supported, and what files each one uses.
6940 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6941 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6942 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6943 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6945 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6946 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6947 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6948 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6952 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6953 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6954 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6955 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6956 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6957 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6959 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6962 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6964 * Better support for C++ function names
6966 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6967 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6968 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6969 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6970 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6972 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6973 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6974 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6975 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6976 for the list of formats.
6978 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6980 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6981 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6982 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6983 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6984 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6985 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6988 * New 'maintenance' command
6990 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6991 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6992 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6994 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6995 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6996 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6997 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6998 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6999 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
7001 The following commands are new:
7003 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
7004 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
7005 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
7007 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
7009 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
7010 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
7011 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
7012 read after argv processing.
7014 * New hosts supported
7016 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
7018 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
7020 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
7021 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
7022 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
7023 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
7024 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
7027 * New targets supported
7029 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7031 * More smarts about finding #include files
7033 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
7034 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
7035 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
7036 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
7037 the one that contains your sources.
7039 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
7040 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
7041 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
7043 * Interesting infernals change
7045 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
7046 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
7047 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
7048 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
7050 * Bug fixes (of course!)
7052 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
7053 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
7054 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
7056 See the ChangeLog for details.
7058 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
7060 * New machines supported (host and target)
7062 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
7064 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
7066 * New malloc package
7068 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
7069 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
7070 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
7071 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
7072 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
7073 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
7077 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
7078 'help info proc' for details.
7080 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
7082 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
7083 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
7086 * File name changes for MS-DOS
7088 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
7089 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
7090 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
7091 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
7092 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
7093 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
7095 * Cross byte order fixes
7097 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
7098 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
7100 * New -mapped and -readnow options
7102 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
7103 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
7104 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
7105 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
7106 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
7107 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
7108 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
7109 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
7110 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
7111 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
7113 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
7114 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
7115 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
7116 slower, but makes future operations faster.
7118 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
7119 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
7120 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
7123 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
7125 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
7126 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
7127 shared across multiple host platforms.
7129 * longjmp() handling
7131 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
7132 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
7133 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
7134 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
7138 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
7139 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
7144 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
7145 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
7146 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
7148 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
7150 * New machines supported (host and target)
7152 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7154 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
7155 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
7157 * New machines supported (target)
7159 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
7163 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
7164 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
7165 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
7167 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
7168 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
7169 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
7170 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
7171 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
7174 * New features for SVR4
7176 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
7177 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
7178 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
7180 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
7181 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
7182 it prints the address mappings of the process.
7184 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
7185 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
7187 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
7189 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
7190 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
7191 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
7192 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
7193 same code linked statically.
7197 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
7198 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
7199 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
7200 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
7201 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
7202 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
7206 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7207 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7208 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7211 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
7213 * New machines supported (host and target)
7215 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
7216 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
7217 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7219 * Almost SCO Unix support
7221 We had hoped to support:
7222 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7223 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
7224 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
7225 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
7227 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
7229 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
7230 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
7231 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
7232 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
7237 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
7238 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
7239 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
7243 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7244 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7245 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7247 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7249 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7250 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7251 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7253 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7254 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7255 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7256 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7259 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7260 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7261 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7262 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7265 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7266 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7269 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7270 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7271 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7274 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7276 * Improved configuration
7278 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7279 Porting BFD is simpler.
7283 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7284 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7285 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7286 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7290 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7292 * New host supported (not target)
7294 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7297 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7299 * Multiple source language support
7301 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7302 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7303 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7304 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7305 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7306 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7310 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7311 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7312 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7313 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7315 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7316 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7317 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
7319 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
7320 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
7324 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
7325 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
7326 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
7327 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
7330 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
7332 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
7333 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
7334 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
7335 examining core files.
7339 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
7342 * New machines supported (host and target)
7344 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7345 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
7346 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
7348 * New hosts supported (not targets)
7350 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
7352 * New targets supported (not hosts)
7354 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7355 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7356 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
7358 * New remote interfaces
7364 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
7368 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
7370 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
7371 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
7372 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
7373 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
7374 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
7375 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
7376 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
7377 stub on the target system.
7379 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
7381 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
7382 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
7383 object file types such as a.out and coff.
7385 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
7386 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
7389 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
7391 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
7392 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
7394 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
7395 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
7396 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
7398 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
7399 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
7400 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
7401 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
7403 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
7404 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
7405 it is already running. Default is ON.
7407 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
7408 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
7409 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
7410 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
7413 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
7414 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
7415 or the value of the environment variable
7418 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
7419 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
7422 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
7423 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
7424 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
7426 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
7427 history expansion will be performed on
7428 command line input. The default is OFF.
7430 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
7431 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
7432 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
7434 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
7435 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
7436 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7439 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
7440 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
7441 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7444 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
7445 ``set width'' instead.
7447 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
7448 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
7449 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
7450 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
7452 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
7455 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
7458 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
7461 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
7464 * Support for Epoch Environment.
7466 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
7467 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
7468 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
7472 * Support for Shared Libraries
7474 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
7475 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
7476 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
7477 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
7478 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
7479 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
7480 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
7481 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
7483 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
7484 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
7485 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
7487 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
7492 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
7493 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
7494 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
7495 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
7496 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
7497 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
7499 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
7501 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
7503 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7504 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7505 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7508 * C++ multiple inheritance
7510 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
7513 * C++ exception handling
7515 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
7516 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
7517 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
7520 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
7521 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
7522 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
7524 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
7525 current stack frame.
7528 * Minor command changes
7530 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
7531 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
7532 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
7534 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
7535 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
7536 frames without printing.
7538 * New directory command
7540 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
7541 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
7542 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
7543 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
7544 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
7546 * Configuring GDB for compilation
7548 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
7551 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
7552 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
7553 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
7554 where the program that you are debugging will run.