1 What has changed since GDB-3.5?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6 * HP Precision Architecture supported
8 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
9 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
10 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
11 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
12 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
13 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
15 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
17 * Faster and better demangling
19 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
20 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
21 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
22 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
23 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
24 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
27 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
28 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
29 compiler does not actually implement.
31 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
33 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
34 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
35 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
36 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
37 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
38 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
41 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
42 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
44 * Improved configure script
46 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
47 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
48 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
49 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
51 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
52 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
53 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
54 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
55 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
56 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
58 * Documentation improvements
60 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
61 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
62 before submitting changes.
64 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
65 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
66 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
67 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
68 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
70 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
71 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
72 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
73 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
74 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
79 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
80 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
81 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
84 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
85 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
87 * New native hosts supported
89 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
90 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
92 * New targets supported
94 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
96 * New file formats supported
98 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
99 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
103 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
105 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
106 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
108 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
109 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
110 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
112 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
113 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
115 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
116 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
117 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
120 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
121 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
122 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
123 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
124 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
126 * Internal improvements
128 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
129 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
131 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
132 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
133 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
134 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
135 shared code that handles any of them.
137 * New command line options
139 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
143 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
144 General Public License.
146 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
148 * Host/native/target split
150 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
151 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
152 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
153 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
154 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
156 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
157 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
158 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
159 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
160 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
161 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
162 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
164 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
165 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
166 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
168 * New hosts supported
170 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
171 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
172 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
174 * New targets supported
176 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
177 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
179 * New native hosts supported
181 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
182 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
183 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
185 * New file formats supported
187 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
188 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
189 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
193 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
194 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
195 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
197 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
199 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
200 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
201 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
202 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
206 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
207 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
208 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
210 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
214 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
215 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
218 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
219 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
221 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
222 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
223 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
224 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
225 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
226 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
228 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
229 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
230 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
231 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
235 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
236 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
237 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
238 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
239 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
241 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
242 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
243 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
244 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
248 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
249 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
250 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
251 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
252 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
253 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
254 each instruction being stepped through.
256 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
257 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
259 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
260 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
261 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
262 processor with a serial port.
266 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
267 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
268 supported, and what files each one uses.
272 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
273 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
274 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
275 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
277 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
278 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
279 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
280 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
284 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
285 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
286 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
287 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
288 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
289 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
291 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
294 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
296 * Better support for C++ function names
298 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
299 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
300 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
301 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
302 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
304 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
305 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
306 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
307 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
308 for the list of formats.
310 * G++ symbol mangling problem
312 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
313 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
314 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
315 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
316 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
317 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
320 * New 'maintenance' command
322 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
323 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
324 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
326 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
327 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
328 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
329 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
330 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
331 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
333 The following commands are new:
335 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
336 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
337 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
339 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
341 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
342 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
343 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
344 read after argv processing.
346 * New hosts supported
348 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
350 Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
352 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
353 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
354 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
355 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
356 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
359 * New targets supported
361 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
363 * More smarts about finding #include files
365 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
366 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
367 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
368 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
369 the one that contains your sources.
371 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
372 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
373 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
375 * Interesting infernals change
377 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
378 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
379 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
380 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
382 * Bug fixes (of course!)
384 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
385 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
386 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
388 See the ChangeLog for details.
390 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
392 * New machines supported (host and target)
394 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
396 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
400 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
401 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
402 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
403 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
404 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
405 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
409 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
410 'help info proc' for details.
412 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
414 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
415 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
418 * File name changes for MS-DOS
420 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
421 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
422 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
423 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
424 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
425 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
427 * Cross byte order fixes
429 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
430 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
432 * New -mapped and -readnow options
434 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
435 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
436 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
437 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
438 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
439 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
440 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
441 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
442 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
443 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
445 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
446 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
447 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
448 slower, but makes future operations faster.
450 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
451 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
452 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
455 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
457 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
458 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
459 shared across multiple host platforms.
463 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
464 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
465 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
466 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
470 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
471 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
476 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
477 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
478 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
480 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
482 * New machines supported (host and target)
484 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
486 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
487 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
489 * New machines supported (target)
491 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
495 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
496 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
497 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
499 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
500 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
501 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
502 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
503 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
506 * New features for SVR4
508 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
509 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
510 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
512 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
513 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
514 it prints the address mappings of the process.
516 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
517 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
519 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
521 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
522 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
523 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
524 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
525 same code linked statically.
529 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
530 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
531 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
532 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
533 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
534 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
538 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
539 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
540 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
543 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
545 * New machines supported (host and target)
547 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
548 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
549 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
551 * Almost SCO Unix support
553 We had hoped to support:
554 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
555 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
556 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
557 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
559 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
561 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
562 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
563 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
564 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
569 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
570 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
571 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
575 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
576 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
577 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
579 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
581 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
582 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
583 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
585 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
586 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
587 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
588 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
591 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
592 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
593 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
594 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
597 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
598 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
601 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
602 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
603 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
606 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
608 * Improved configuration
610 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
611 Porting BFD is simpler.
615 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
616 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
617 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
618 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
622 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
624 * New host supported (not target)
626 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
629 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
631 * Multiple source language support
633 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
634 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
635 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
636 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
637 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
638 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
642 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
643 currently under development at the State University of New York at
644 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
645 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
647 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
648 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
649 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
651 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
652 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
656 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
657 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
658 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
659 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
662 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
664 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
665 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
666 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
667 examining core files.
671 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
674 * New machines supported (host and target)
676 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
677 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
678 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
680 * New hosts supported (not targets)
682 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
684 * New targets supported (not hosts)
686 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
687 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
688 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
690 * New remote interfaces
696 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
700 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
702 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
703 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
704 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
705 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
706 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
707 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
708 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
709 stub on the target system.
711 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
713 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
714 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
715 object file types such as a.out and coff.
717 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
718 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
721 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
723 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
724 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
726 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
727 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
728 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
730 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
731 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
732 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
733 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
735 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
736 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
737 it is already running. Default is ON.
739 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
740 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
741 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
742 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
745 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
746 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
747 or the value of the environment variable
750 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
751 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
754 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
755 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
756 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
758 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
759 history expansion will be performed on
760 command line input. The default is OFF.
762 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
763 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
764 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
766 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
767 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
768 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
771 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
772 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
773 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
776 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
777 ``set width'' instead.
779 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
780 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
781 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
782 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
784 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
787 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
790 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
793 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
796 * Support for Epoch Environment.
798 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
799 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
800 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
804 * Support for Shared Libraries
806 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
807 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
808 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
809 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
810 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
811 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
812 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
813 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
815 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
816 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
817 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
819 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
824 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
825 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
826 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
827 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
828 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
829 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
831 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
833 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
835 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
836 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
837 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
840 * C++ multiple inheritance
842 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
845 * C++ exception handling
847 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
848 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
849 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
852 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
853 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
854 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
856 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
860 * Minor command changes
862 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
863 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
864 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
866 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
867 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
868 frames without printing.
870 * New directory command
872 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
873 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
874 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
875 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
876 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
878 * Configuring GDB for compilation
880 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
883 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
884 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
885 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
886 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / external / binutils.git / blob