1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 5.2:
6 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multithreaded applications on some targets
8 Support for multithreaded applications using LinuxThreads has been added
9 for arm*-*-linux*, i[3456]86-*-linux*, mips*-*-linux*, powerpc*-*-linux*,
12 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
14 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
15 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
18 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
19 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
20 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
21 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
23 Here are the new commands for working with macros:
25 ** macro expand EXPRESSION
27 Expand any macro invocations in expression, and show the result.
29 ** show macro MACRO-NAME
31 Show the definition of the macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was
34 * Multi-arched targets.
36 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
37 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
39 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
40 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
41 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
45 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
48 * New native configurations
50 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
51 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
52 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
53 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
55 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
57 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
58 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
59 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
62 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
63 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
64 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
65 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
67 * REMOVED configurations and files
69 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
70 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
71 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
72 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
73 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
75 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
77 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
79 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
80 commands. The default is 1024.
82 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
84 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
86 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
88 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
89 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
90 from a file into memory (restore).
92 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
100 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
101 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
102 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
104 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
105 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
106 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
108 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
109 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
110 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
112 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
113 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
114 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
116 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
118 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
120 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
121 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
122 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
123 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
124 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
125 (notably embedded) targets.
127 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
129 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
130 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
131 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
132 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
134 * New command line option
136 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
138 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
140 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
141 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
142 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
143 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
144 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
145 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
146 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
147 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
148 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
149 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
151 * Changes in ARM configurations.
153 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
154 configuration is fully multi-arch.
156 * New native configurations
158 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
159 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
160 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
161 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
165 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
167 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
169 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
170 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
171 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
174 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
175 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
176 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
177 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
178 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
180 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
182 * REMOVED configurations and files
184 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
186 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
187 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
188 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
189 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
190 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
191 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
192 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
193 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
194 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
195 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
196 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
198 * Changes to command line processing
200 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
201 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
203 * Changes to key bindings
205 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
207 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
209 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
211 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
214 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
216 Numerous documentation fixes.
218 Numerous testsuite fixes.
220 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
222 * New native configurations
224 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
225 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
226 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
227 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
229 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
233 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
235 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
237 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
239 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
240 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
241 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
242 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
243 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
245 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
246 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
247 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
248 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
249 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
250 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
251 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
252 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
254 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
255 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
257 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
258 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
259 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
262 * REMOVED configurations and files
264 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
265 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
267 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
271 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
273 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
274 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
279 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
281 * The MI enabled by default.
283 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
284 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
285 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
286 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
287 which is now deprecated.
289 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
291 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
292 main features are supported:
294 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
296 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
299 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
301 - a Pascal expression parser.
303 However, some important features are not yet supported.
305 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
307 - there are some problems with boolean types;
309 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
310 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
312 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
314 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
316 * Changes in completion.
318 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
319 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
320 users expect at the shell prompt.
322 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
323 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
324 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
325 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
326 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
327 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
328 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
330 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
332 * New platform-independent commands:
334 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
335 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
336 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
338 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
340 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
341 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
342 many threads as your system allows you to have.
344 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
346 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
347 multi-threaded programs though.
349 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
351 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
353 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
354 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
357 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
359 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
360 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
361 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
362 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
363 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
366 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
367 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
368 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
370 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
372 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
373 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
375 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
376 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
379 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
380 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
381 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
382 a given linear address.
384 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
385 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
386 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
388 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
390 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
392 * Changes in documentation.
394 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
395 Documentation License.
397 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
400 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
402 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
405 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
406 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
407 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
409 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
411 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
412 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
413 contents of this file.
417 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
419 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
421 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
423 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
424 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
425 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
426 greater level of detail.
428 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
430 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
431 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
432 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
435 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
437 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
438 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
439 machines ``out of the box''.
441 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
442 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
443 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
444 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
445 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
447 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
448 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
449 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
450 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
451 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
453 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
454 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
457 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
460 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
461 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
462 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
463 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
465 * New native configurations
467 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
468 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
472 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
473 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
474 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
475 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
477 * OBSOLETE configurations
479 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
480 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
482 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
485 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
486 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
487 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
488 be permanently REMOVED.
490 * Gould support removed
492 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
494 * New features for SVR4
496 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
497 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
498 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
500 * Many C++ enhancements
502 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
503 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
505 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
507 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
508 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
509 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
510 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
512 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
513 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
515 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
517 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
518 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
519 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
521 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
522 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
524 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
526 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
527 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
528 include ``set remote P-packet''.
530 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
532 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
533 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
534 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
536 * ``apropos'' command added.
538 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
539 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
540 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
544 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
545 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
546 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
547 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
548 enabled by configuring with:
550 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
552 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
554 * New native configurations
556 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
557 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
558 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
562 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
563 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
564 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
566 * OBSOLETE configurations
568 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
570 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
571 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
572 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
573 be permanently REMOVED.
577 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
578 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
579 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
580 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
581 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
582 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
583 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
588 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
590 * set extension-language
592 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
593 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
594 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
595 set extension-language .c c++
596 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
597 and their associated languages.
599 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
601 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
602 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
603 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
607 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
608 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
610 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
611 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
613 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
614 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
615 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
616 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
617 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
618 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
619 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
620 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
622 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
623 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
624 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
625 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
629 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
630 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
631 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
632 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
633 for xdb and dbx commands.
637 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
638 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
639 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
641 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
642 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
643 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
645 * Debugging across forks
647 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
652 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
653 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
654 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
656 * GDB remote protocol additions
658 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
659 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
660 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
661 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
663 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
664 full 64-bit address. The command
666 set remoteaddresssize 32
668 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
669 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
672 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
673 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
675 maint packet heythere
677 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
678 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
681 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
682 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
683 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
685 * Tracing can collect general expressions
687 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
688 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
689 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
691 * mask-address variable for Mips
693 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
694 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
695 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
697 * Higher serial baud rates
699 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
700 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
701 to achieve all of these rates.)
705 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
706 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
709 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
711 * New native configurations
713 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
714 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
715 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
716 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
717 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
718 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
719 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
723 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
724 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
725 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
726 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
727 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
728 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
729 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
730 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
731 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
732 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
733 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
735 * New debugging protocols
737 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
738 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
739 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
740 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
741 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
742 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
746 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
747 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
752 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
753 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
755 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
757 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
758 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
759 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
761 * Live range splitting
763 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
764 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
765 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
769 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
770 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
774 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
775 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
776 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
781 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
786 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
787 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
788 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
789 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
790 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
791 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
795 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
796 the symbol at the specified address.
800 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
801 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
802 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
803 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
804 file tracepoint.c for more details.
808 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
809 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
810 of most MIPS variants.
814 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
815 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
816 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
820 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
821 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
822 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
823 the possible architectures.
825 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
827 * New native configurations
829 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
830 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
831 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
832 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
833 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
834 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
838 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
839 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
840 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
841 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
842 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
844 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
848 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
849 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
850 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
851 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
852 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
856 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
858 * Windows 95/NT native
860 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
861 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
862 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
863 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
864 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
866 * dont-repeat command
868 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
869 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
870 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
871 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
873 * Send break instead of ^C
875 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
876 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
877 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
879 * Remote protocol timeout
881 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
882 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
883 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
885 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
887 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
888 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
889 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
890 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
891 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
893 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
894 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
895 automatically on hpux10.
897 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
899 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
901 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
903 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
904 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
905 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
906 every character. The default value is 1050.
908 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
910 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
911 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
912 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
913 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
914 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
915 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
917 * Speedups for remote debugging
919 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
920 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
921 and more efficient S-record downloading.
923 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
925 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
926 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
928 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
932 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
933 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
935 * Remote targets use caching
937 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
938 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
939 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
940 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
941 off' turns the the data cache off.
943 * Remote targets may have threads
945 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
946 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
947 gdb/remote.c for details.
951 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
952 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
953 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
954 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
955 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
956 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
957 sequence is something like
959 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
961 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
965 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
966 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
967 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
968 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
969 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
970 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
971 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
972 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
976 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
977 but does simplify configuration and building.
981 GDB now supports hpux10.
983 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
985 * New native configurations
987 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
988 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
989 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
990 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
994 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
995 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
996 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
997 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1000 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1002 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1003 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1004 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1005 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1006 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1008 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1010 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1011 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1014 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1016 To execute the command use:
1019 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1020 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1021 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1023 * New `if' and `while' commands
1025 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1026 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1027 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1028 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1029 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1030 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1031 if the expression is zero.
1033 * Fortran source language mode
1035 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1036 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1037 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1038 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1041 * Better HPUX support
1043 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1044 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1045 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1046 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1047 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1053 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1054 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1060 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1061 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1064 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1065 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1067 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1069 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1070 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1071 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1072 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1073 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1074 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1076 * New DOS host serial code
1078 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1079 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1082 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1084 * New "complete" command
1086 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1087 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1089 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1091 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1092 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1094 * Breakpoint hit counts
1096 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1097 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1098 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1099 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1100 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1103 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1105 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1106 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1107 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1109 * Shared library breakpoints
1111 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1112 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1114 * Hardware watchpoints
1116 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1117 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1119 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1123 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1124 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1126 * Improved Irix 5 support
1128 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1130 * Improved HPPA support
1132 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1134 * New native configurations
1136 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1137 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1138 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1139 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1143 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1144 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1147 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1149 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1150 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1154 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1155 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1157 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1159 * Irix 5 is now supported
1163 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1164 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1165 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1166 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1167 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1170 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1172 * User visible changes:
1176 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1177 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1178 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1179 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1180 debugging info for the mips target).
1182 * DEC Alpha native support
1184 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1185 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1186 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1187 Alpha-specific notes.
1189 * Preliminary thread implementation
1191 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1193 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1195 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1196 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1199 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1201 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1202 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1203 call methods, ...etc.
1205 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1207 * User visible changes:
1209 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1210 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1211 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1212 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1214 Filename completion now works.
1216 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1217 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1218 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1220 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1221 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1222 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1223 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1224 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1228 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1229 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1232 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1236 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1237 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1238 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1242 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1243 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1244 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1245 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1246 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1250 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1251 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1252 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1254 * New targets supported
1256 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1257 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1258 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1259 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1260 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1262 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1263 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1264 GO32 memory extender.
1266 * New remote protocols
1268 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1270 * New source languages supported
1272 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1273 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1274 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1277 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1279 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1281 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1282 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1283 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1284 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1285 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1286 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1288 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1290 * Faster and better demangling
1292 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1293 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1294 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1295 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1296 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1297 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1300 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1301 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1302 compiler does not actually implement.
1304 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1306 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1307 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1308 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1309 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1310 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1311 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1314 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1315 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1317 * Improved configure script
1319 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1320 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1321 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1322 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1324 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1325 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1326 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1327 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1328 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1329 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1331 * Documentation improvements
1333 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1334 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1335 before submitting changes.
1337 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1338 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1339 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1340 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1341 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1343 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1344 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1345 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1346 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1347 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1348 around this problem.
1352 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1353 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1354 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1357 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1358 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1360 * New native hosts supported
1362 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1363 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1365 * New targets supported
1367 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1369 * New file formats supported
1371 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1372 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1376 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1378 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1379 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1381 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1382 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1383 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1385 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1386 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1388 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1389 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1390 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1393 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1394 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1395 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1396 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1397 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1399 * Internal improvements
1401 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1402 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1404 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1405 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1406 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1407 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1408 shared code that handles any of them.
1410 * New command line options
1412 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1416 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1417 General Public License.
1419 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1421 * Host/native/target split
1423 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1424 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1425 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1426 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1427 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1429 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1430 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1431 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1432 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1433 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1434 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1435 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1437 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1438 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1439 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1441 * New hosts supported
1443 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1444 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1445 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1447 * New targets supported
1449 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1450 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1452 * New native hosts supported
1454 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1455 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1456 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1458 * New file formats supported
1460 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1461 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1462 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1466 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1467 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1468 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1470 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1472 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1473 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1474 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1475 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1479 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1480 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1481 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1483 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1487 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1488 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1491 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1492 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1494 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1495 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1496 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1497 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1498 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1499 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1501 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1502 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1503 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1504 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1508 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1509 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1510 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1511 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1512 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1514 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1515 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1516 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1517 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1521 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1522 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1523 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1524 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1525 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1526 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1527 each instruction being stepped through.
1529 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1530 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1532 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1533 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1534 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1535 processor with a serial port.
1539 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1540 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1541 supported, and what files each one uses.
1545 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1546 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1547 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1548 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1550 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1551 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1552 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1553 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1557 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1558 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1559 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1560 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1561 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1562 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1564 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1567 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1569 * Better support for C++ function names
1571 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1572 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1573 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1574 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1575 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1577 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1578 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1579 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1580 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1581 for the list of formats.
1583 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1585 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1586 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1587 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1588 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1589 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1590 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1593 * New 'maintenance' command
1595 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1596 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1597 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1599 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1600 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1601 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1602 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1603 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1604 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1606 The following commands are new:
1608 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1609 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1610 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1612 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1614 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1615 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1616 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1617 read after argv processing.
1619 * New hosts supported
1621 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1623 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1625 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1626 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1627 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1628 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1629 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1632 * New targets supported
1634 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1636 * More smarts about finding #include files
1638 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1639 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1640 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1641 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1642 the one that contains your sources.
1644 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1645 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1646 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1648 * Interesting infernals change
1650 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1651 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1652 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1653 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1655 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1657 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1658 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1659 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1661 See the ChangeLog for details.
1663 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1665 * New machines supported (host and target)
1667 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1669 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1671 * New malloc package
1673 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1674 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1675 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1676 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1677 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1678 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1682 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1683 'help info proc' for details.
1685 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1687 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1688 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1691 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1693 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1694 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1695 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1696 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1697 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1698 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1700 * Cross byte order fixes
1702 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1703 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1705 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1707 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1708 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1709 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1710 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1711 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1712 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1713 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1714 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1715 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1716 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1718 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1719 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1720 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1721 slower, but makes future operations faster.
1723 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1724 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1725 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1728 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1730 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1731 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1732 shared across multiple host platforms.
1734 * longjmp() handling
1736 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1737 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1738 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1739 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1743 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1744 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1749 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1750 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1751 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1753 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1755 * New machines supported (host and target)
1757 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1759 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1760 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1762 * New machines supported (target)
1764 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1768 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1769 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1770 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1772 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1773 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1774 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1775 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1776 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1779 * New features for SVR4
1781 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1782 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1783 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1785 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1786 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1787 it prints the address mappings of the process.
1789 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1790 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1792 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1794 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1795 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1796 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1797 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1798 same code linked statically.
1802 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1803 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1804 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1805 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1806 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1807 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1811 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1812 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1813 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1816 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1818 * New machines supported (host and target)
1820 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1821 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1822 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1824 * Almost SCO Unix support
1826 We had hoped to support:
1827 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1828 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1829 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1830 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1832 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1834 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1835 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1836 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1837 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1842 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1843 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1844 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1848 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1849 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1850 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1852 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1854 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1855 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1856 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1858 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1859 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1860 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1861 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1864 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1865 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1866 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1867 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1870 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1871 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1874 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1875 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1876 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1879 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1881 * Improved configuration
1883 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1884 Porting BFD is simpler.
1888 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1889 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1890 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1891 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1895 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1897 * New host supported (not target)
1899 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1902 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1904 * Multiple source language support
1906 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1907 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1908 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1909 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1910 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1911 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1915 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1916 currently under development at the State University of New York at
1917 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1918 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1920 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1921 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1922 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1924 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1925 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1929 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1930 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1931 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1932 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1935 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1937 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1938 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1939 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1940 examining core files.
1944 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1947 * New machines supported (host and target)
1949 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1950 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1951 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1953 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1955 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1957 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1959 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1960 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1961 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1963 * New remote interfaces
1969 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1973 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1975 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1976 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1977 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1978 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1979 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1980 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1981 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1982 stub on the target system.
1984 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1986 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1987 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1988 object file types such as a.out and coff.
1990 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1991 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1994 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1996 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1997 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1999 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2000 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2001 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2003 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2004 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2005 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2006 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2008 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2009 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2010 it is already running. Default is ON.
2012 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2013 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2014 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2015 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2018 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2019 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2020 or the value of the environment variable
2023 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2024 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2027 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2028 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2029 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2031 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2032 history expansion will be performed on
2033 command line input. The default is OFF.
2035 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2036 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2037 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2039 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2040 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2041 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2044 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2045 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2046 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2049 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2050 ``set width'' instead.
2052 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2053 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2054 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2055 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2057 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2060 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2063 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2066 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2069 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2071 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2072 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2073 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2077 * Support for Shared Libraries
2079 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2080 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2081 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2082 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2083 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2084 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2085 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2086 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2088 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2089 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2090 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2092 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2097 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2098 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2099 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2100 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2101 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2102 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2104 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2106 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2108 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2109 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2110 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2113 * C++ multiple inheritance
2115 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2118 * C++ exception handling
2120 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2121 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2122 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2125 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2126 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2127 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2129 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2130 current stack frame.
2133 * Minor command changes
2135 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2136 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2137 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2139 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2140 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2141 frames without printing.
2143 * New directory command
2145 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2146 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2147 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2148 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2149 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2151 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2153 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2156 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2157 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2158 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2159 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / external / binutils.git / blob