1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.3.1
6 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
7 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
8 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
9 target hardware watchpoint.
11 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
12 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
13 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
14 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
18 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
19 deprecated, and a new command: "set python print-stack on|off" has
20 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is now
23 ** A prompt subsitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
26 ** A new command set/show extended-prompt has been added.
28 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
29 modules library. This module provides functionality for
30 escape sequentions in prompts (used by set/show
31 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
34 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
35 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
36 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
39 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
41 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
44 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
45 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
46 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
49 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
50 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
51 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
54 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
55 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
56 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
57 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
58 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
60 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
61 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
63 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
64 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
65 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
66 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
67 use this option to specify where to find it.
69 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
70 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
71 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
72 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
73 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
74 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
75 section in the user manual for more details.
77 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
78 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
79 become available after that.
81 * New commands "info macros", and "info definitions" have been added.
85 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
86 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
87 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
89 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
90 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
91 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
93 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
94 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
95 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
96 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
97 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
104 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
108 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
110 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
111 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
115 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
117 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
119 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
121 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
123 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
124 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
125 matches the given regular expression.
127 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
129 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
130 dumping the instruction opcodes.
132 * New command line options
134 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
135 This is mostly for testing purposes.
137 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
138 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
140 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
141 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
142 source path list instead of augmenting it.
144 * GDB now understands thread names.
146 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
147 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
149 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
150 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
153 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
154 has been integrated into GDB.
158 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
159 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
160 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
162 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
163 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
164 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
165 and allows for more dynamic content.
167 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
168 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
169 have an is_valid method.
171 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
172 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
173 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
175 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
177 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
178 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
179 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
180 that function like so:
182 result = some_value (10,20)
184 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
185 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
186 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
188 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
189 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
190 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
191 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
192 New function: register_pretty_printer.
194 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
195 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
197 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
199 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
202 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
203 holds the thread's name.
205 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
206 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
207 occurring in the process being debugged.
208 The following events are currently supported:
209 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
210 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
211 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
215 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
216 instantiation. For example, if you have:
218 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
220 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
221 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
222 was added to GCC 4.5.
224 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
225 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
226 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
227 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
228 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
229 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
231 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
232 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
233 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
234 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
235 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
237 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
238 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
239 execution to a label.
241 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
242 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
243 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
244 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
246 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
247 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
248 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
251 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
253 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
254 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
255 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
256 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
257 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
258 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
261 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
263 While now you see this:
266 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
268 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
271 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
272 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
273 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
274 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
276 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
277 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
278 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
279 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
280 section in the user manual for more details.
282 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
284 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
285 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
287 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
289 * New native configurations
291 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
295 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
297 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
298 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
299 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
300 in the GDB user manual.
302 * Guile support was removed.
304 * New features in the GNU simulator
306 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
308 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
310 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
312 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
314 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
315 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
316 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
317 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
318 was always disabled for such configurations.
322 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
324 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
325 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
335 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
336 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
337 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
339 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
341 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
342 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
343 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
344 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
346 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
347 mentioned flavors of operators.
349 ** static const class members
351 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
352 class definition has been fixed.
354 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
356 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
357 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
358 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
359 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
360 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
361 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
365 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
366 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
367 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
368 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
369 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
370 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
371 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
372 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
373 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
374 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
375 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
376 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
377 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
378 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
379 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
380 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
381 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
382 the "New remote packets" section below.
384 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
386 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
387 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
388 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
389 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
393 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
394 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
395 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
396 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
397 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
398 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
399 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
401 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
408 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
412 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
413 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
414 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
415 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
416 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
417 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
421 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
425 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
428 qXfer:statictrace:read
430 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
431 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
432 to gdb's qSupported query.
436 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
440 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
441 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
443 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
444 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
447 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
449 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
450 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
451 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
452 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
454 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
455 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
456 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
457 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
458 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
459 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
460 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
462 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
463 for static tracepoints support.
465 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
467 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
468 it understands register description.
470 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
472 * X86 general purpose registers
474 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
475 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
476 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
477 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
478 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
480 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
481 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
482 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
483 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
484 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
485 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
487 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
488 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
489 in the specified file.
491 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
492 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
493 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
494 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
495 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
496 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
497 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
498 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
499 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
500 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
504 eval template, expressions...
505 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
506 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
508 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
509 show target-file-system-kind
510 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
513 save breakpoints <filename>
514 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
515 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
516 definitions, use the `source' command.
518 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
521 info static-tracepoint-markers
522 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
524 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
525 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
526 function, line, address, or marker ID.
530 Enable and disable observer mode.
532 set may-write-registers on|off
533 set may-write-memory on|off
534 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
535 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
536 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
537 set may-interrupt on|off
538 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
539 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
540 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
541 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
542 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
543 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
544 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
546 set record memory-query on|off
547 show record memory-query
548 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
549 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
554 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
558 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
559 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
560 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
561 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
562 GDB using Python' in the manual.
564 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
565 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
566 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
567 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
569 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
570 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
572 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
574 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
576 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
578 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
579 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
580 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
582 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
583 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
584 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
589 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
591 * D language support.
592 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
595 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
596 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
597 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
598 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
599 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
601 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
602 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
603 conditions of the form:
605 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
607 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
608 interface mentioned above.
610 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
616 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
617 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
618 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
619 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
620 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
624 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
625 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
630 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
631 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
635 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
640 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
643 * Multi-program debugging.
645 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
646 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
647 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
648 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
649 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
650 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
651 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
652 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
654 * New tracing features
656 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
658 ** Trace state variables
660 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
661 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
662 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
663 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
664 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
665 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
666 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
667 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
668 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
669 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
673 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
674 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
675 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
676 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
677 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
678 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
679 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
680 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
681 the regular trace command.
683 ** Disconnected tracing
685 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
686 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
687 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
688 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
689 connection is lost unexpectedly.
693 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
694 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
695 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
696 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
697 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
698 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
701 ** Circular trace buffer
703 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
704 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
705 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
706 not be available for all target agents.
711 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
712 the arguments to be comma-separated.
715 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
716 which only declare a variable are not shown.
719 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
720 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
723 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
724 "set script-extension" (see below).
726 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
728 record save [<FILENAME>]
729 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
730 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
732 record restore <FILENAME>
733 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
734 earlier time, for replay debugging.
736 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
739 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
740 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
746 maint info program-spaces
747 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
749 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
750 show remote interrupt-sequence
751 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
752 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
753 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
754 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
755 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
757 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
758 show remote interrupt-on-connect
759 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
760 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
763 set remotebreak [on | off]
765 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
767 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
768 Create or modify a trace state variable.
771 List trace state variables and their values.
773 delete tvariable $NAME ...
774 Delete one or more trace state variables.
777 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
778 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
780 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
781 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
783 * New expression syntax
785 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
786 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
790 set follow-exec-mode new|same
791 show follow-exec-mode
792 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
793 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
794 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
796 set default-collect EXPR, ...
798 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
799 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
800 such as registers or a critical global variable.
802 set disconnected-tracing
803 show disconnected-tracing
804 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
805 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
808 set circular-trace-buffer
809 show circular-trace-buffer
810 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
811 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
812 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
813 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
815 set script-extension off|soft|strict
816 show script-extension
817 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
818 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
819 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
820 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
822 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
824 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
825 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
826 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
827 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
828 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
829 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
830 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
833 * Python API Improvements
835 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
836 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
837 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
839 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
840 `is_base_class' attribute.
842 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
844 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
845 evaluate an expression.
850 Define a trace state variable.
853 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
856 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
859 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
862 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
866 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
868 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
869 much more reliable. In particular:
870 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
871 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
872 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
873 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
874 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
875 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
876 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
877 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
878 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
879 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
880 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
881 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
882 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
883 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
884 non-threaded programs.
886 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
887 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
888 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
891 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
893 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
894 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
895 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
896 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
897 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
899 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
900 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
901 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
902 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
903 for tracepoint actions.
905 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
906 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
907 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
909 * Process record and replay
911 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
912 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
913 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
916 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
917 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
918 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
921 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
922 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
925 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
926 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
927 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
928 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
929 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
930 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
931 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
932 the installation instructions for more information.
934 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
935 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
936 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
937 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
939 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
940 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
942 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
943 now complete on file names.
945 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
946 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
947 For instance, consider:
949 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
950 # struct example variable;
953 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
954 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
956 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
957 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
959 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
960 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
963 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
964 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
965 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
967 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
968 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
969 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
970 and simulator targets may also provide them.
975 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
978 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
979 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
980 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
983 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
984 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
987 Obtains additional operating system information
991 Read or write additional signal information.
993 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
995 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
996 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
997 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
999 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1000 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1002 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1003 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1004 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1006 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1007 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1009 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1011 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1013 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1014 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1016 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1017 list of section offsets.
1019 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1020 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1021 have also been fixed.
1023 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1024 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1025 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1027 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1030 template<typename T> class C { };
1033 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1035 ptype C<char const *>
1036 ptype C<char const*>
1037 ptype C<const char *>
1038 ptype C<const char*>
1040 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1042 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1043 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1045 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1046 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1047 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1049 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1050 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1052 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1055 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1056 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1058 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1059 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1064 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1065 available is determined at configure time.
1067 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1069 * Ada tasking support
1071 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1075 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1077 Print detailed information about task number N.
1079 Print the task number of the current task.
1081 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1083 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1084 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1086 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1088 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1089 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1090 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1091 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1092 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1093 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1096 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1097 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1100 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1101 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1102 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1103 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1106 * Multi-architecture debugging.
1108 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1109 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1110 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1111 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1112 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1114 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1115 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1116 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1117 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1118 --enable-targets configure option.
1120 * Non-stop mode debugging.
1122 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1123 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1124 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1125 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1126 section in the user manual for more information.
1128 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1129 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1130 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1131 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1132 extensions on linux targets.
1134 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1136 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1137 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1138 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1139 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1140 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1141 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1142 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1143 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1144 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1146 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1148 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1150 maint set python print-stack
1151 maint show python print-stack
1152 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1155 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1160 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1164 Show operating system information about processes.
1167 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1170 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1173 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1176 Kill inferior number NUM.
1180 set spu stop-on-load
1181 show spu stop-on-load
1182 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1184 set spu auto-flush-cache
1185 show spu auto-flush-cache
1186 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1187 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1189 set sh calling-convention
1190 show sh calling-convention
1191 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1194 show debug timestamp
1195 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1197 set disassemble-next-line
1198 show disassemble-next-line
1199 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1202 set remote noack-packet
1203 show remote noack-packet
1204 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1205 under "New remote packets."
1207 set remote query-attached-packet
1208 show remote query-attached-packet
1209 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1211 set remote read-siginfo-object
1212 show remote read-siginfo-object
1213 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1216 set remote write-siginfo-object
1217 show remote write-siginfo-object
1218 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1221 set remote reverse-continue
1222 show remote reverse-continue
1223 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1225 set remote reverse-step
1226 show remote reverse-step
1227 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1229 set displaced-stepping
1230 show displaced-stepping
1231 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1232 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1233 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1236 show debug displaced
1237 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1239 maint set internal-error
1240 maint show internal-error
1241 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1243 maint set internal-warning
1244 maint show internal-warning
1245 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
1250 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1252 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1253 show multiple-symbols
1254 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1255 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1256 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1258 set breakpoint always-inserted
1259 show breakpoint always-inserted
1260 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1261 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1262 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1264 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1265 show arm fallback-mode
1266 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1268 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1269 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1270 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1271 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1273 set disable-randomization
1274 show disable-randomization
1275 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1276 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1277 multiple debugging sessions.
1281 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1286 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1287 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1288 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1289 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1291 set target-wide-charset
1292 show target-wide-charset
1293 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1294 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1296 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1298 set tcp connect-timeout
1299 show tcp connect-timeout
1300 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1301 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1302 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1304 set libthread-db-search-path
1305 show libthread-db-search-path
1306 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1309 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1310 show schedule-multiple
1311 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1312 the current process.
1316 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1317 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1318 affecting correctness.
1320 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1321 show interactive-mode
1322 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1323 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1324 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1325 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1326 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1331 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1332 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1333 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1337 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1338 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1339 alias for the `fork' command.
1342 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1343 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1344 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1347 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1348 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1349 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1353 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1354 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1355 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1358 * New native configurations
1360 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1362 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1366 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
1367 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
1368 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
1371 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1372 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1378 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1380 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
1382 * New native configurations
1384 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
1385 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
1389 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
1390 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
1392 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1394 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1395 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1396 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1397 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1399 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1400 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1402 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
1405 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
1406 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1407 and in inlined functions.
1409 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1410 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1411 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1413 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1415 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1416 registers on PowerPC targets.
1418 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1419 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1421 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1422 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1424 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1425 extended-remote mode.
1427 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
1428 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1429 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1430 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
1432 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1433 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1434 target architectures.
1436 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1437 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1438 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1439 stored in two consecutive float registers.
1441 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1444 * Improved support for debugging Ada
1445 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1447 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1448 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1449 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1450 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1452 - Improved command completion in Ada
1455 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1460 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1461 show print frame-arguments
1462 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1463 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1468 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1475 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1477 * New remote packets
1484 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
1487 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1491 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1493 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
1495 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1496 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1497 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1499 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1500 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1501 -Bsymbolic linker option.
1503 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1504 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1507 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1508 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1510 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1511 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
1513 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1515 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1516 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1517 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1519 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1520 automatically displayed as character or string data.
1522 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1523 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1526 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1527 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
1528 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
1530 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1533 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1534 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1535 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1537 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1539 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1541 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1542 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1543 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1545 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1546 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1548 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1549 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1550 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1551 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1552 Windows and SymbianOS).
1554 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1555 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
1557 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1558 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
1564 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1565 when debugging using remote targets.
1567 set mem inaccessible-by-default
1568 show mem inaccessible-by-default
1569 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1570 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1571 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1572 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1573 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1575 set breakpoint auto-hw
1576 show breakpoint auto-hw
1577 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1578 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1579 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1580 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1581 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1582 including "next" and "finish".
1585 catch exception unhandled
1586 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1589 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1593 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1594 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1595 an alias to "set sysroot".
1598 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1599 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1602 * New native configurations
1604 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1607 unset tdesc filename
1609 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1610 not query the target for its built-in description.
1614 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
1615 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
1616 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
1618 * New remote packets
1621 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1622 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1624 qXfer:features:read:
1625 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1630 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1631 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1633 qXfer:libraries:read:
1634 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1635 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1636 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1637 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1641 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1649 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1650 i[34567]86-*-netware*
1651 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1652 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1654 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1657 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1658 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1667 * Other removed features
1674 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1681 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1686 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1687 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1692 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1693 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1695 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1697 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1698 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1699 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1700 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1702 MIPS ".pdr" sections
1704 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1705 in debugging information.
1709 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1710 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1712 set mips stack-arg-size
1713 set mips saved-gpreg-size
1715 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1717 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
1722 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
1724 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1725 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1726 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1728 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1729 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1732 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1733 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1735 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1736 stub provides the required support.
1738 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1739 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1744 unset substitute-path
1745 show substitute-path
1746 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1747 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1748 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1749 between compilation and debugging.
1753 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1754 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1755 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1759 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1761 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1762 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1764 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1766 * New remote packets
1769 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1770 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1771 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1772 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1776 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1777 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1779 qXfer:memory-map:read:
1780 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1781 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1786 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1788 * Removed remote packets
1791 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1792 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1794 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
1798 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1800 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1804 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1805 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1807 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1809 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1811 restart <n> Return the program state to a
1812 previously saved state.
1814 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1816 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1818 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1819 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1821 info forks List forks of the user program that
1822 are available to be debugged.
1824 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1825 forks of the user program that are
1826 available to be debugged.
1828 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1829 that are available to be debugged (and
1830 kill the forked process).
1832 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1833 that are available to be debugged (and
1834 allow the process to continue).
1838 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1840 * Improved Windows host support
1842 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1843 native console support, and remote communications using either
1844 network sockets or serial ports.
1846 * Improved Modula-2 language support
1848 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1849 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1850 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1851 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1852 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1853 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1857 The ARM rdi-share module.
1859 The Netware NLM debug server.
1861 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
1863 * New native configurations
1865 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
1866 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1870 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1872 * New command line options
1874 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1875 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1876 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1877 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1878 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1879 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1880 with the --command (-x) option.
1882 * Deprecated commands removed
1884 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1888 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1889 othernames set arm disassembler
1890 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1891 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1892 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1895 * New BSD user-level threads support
1897 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1898 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1901 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1902 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1903 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1905 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1906 are not yet supported.
1908 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1909 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1911 * REMOVED configurations and files
1913 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
1914 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1915 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
1917 * New "set print array-indexes" command
1919 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1920 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1923 * VAX floating point support
1925 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1927 * User-defined command support
1929 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1930 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1931 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1933 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1935 * New command line option
1937 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1940 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1942 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1943 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1944 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1945 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1946 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
1948 * Internationalization
1950 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1951 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1952 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1956 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1957 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1958 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1960 * New native configurations
1962 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1966 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1967 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1969 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1971 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1972 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1973 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1976 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1977 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1978 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1988 powerpc bdm protocol
1990 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1991 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1993 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1995 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1996 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1997 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1998 permanently REMOVED.
2007 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2009 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2011 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2012 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2015 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2017 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2018 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2019 IRIX long double values).
2023 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2024 command. This problem has been fixed.
2026 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2028 * Fix for ``many threads''
2030 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2031 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2034 ptrace: No such process.
2035 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2037 This problem has been fixed.
2039 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2041 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2044 * New ``start'' command.
2046 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2048 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2050 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2051 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2052 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2054 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2055 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2056 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2057 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2058 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2059 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2060 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2061 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2062 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2064 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2066 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2067 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2068 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2069 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2070 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2072 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2073 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2074 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2076 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2078 * New native configurations
2080 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2081 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2082 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2083 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2084 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2085 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2086 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2088 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2090 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2091 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2092 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2093 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2094 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2095 work, was also included.
2097 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2098 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2108 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2109 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2111 * REMOVED configurations and files
2113 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2114 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2115 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2116 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2117 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2118 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2119 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2120 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2121 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2122 sonymips mips-sony-*
2123 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2125 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2127 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2129 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2130 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2131 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2132 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2135 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2137 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2138 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2139 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2140 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2141 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2142 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2145 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2147 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
2149 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2150 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2151 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2153 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2155 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2156 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2158 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2160 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2161 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2162 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2164 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2166 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2167 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2169 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2171 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2172 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2173 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2175 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2177 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2178 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2179 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2181 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
2183 * Removed --with-mmalloc
2185 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2186 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2188 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
2190 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2191 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2192 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2193 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2195 * Revised SPARC target
2197 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2198 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
2199 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2200 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2201 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
2205 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2206 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2207 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2210 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2212 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2213 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2216 * C++ nested types and namespaces
2218 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2219 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2220 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2221 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2222 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2223 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2224 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2225 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2226 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2228 * New native configurations
2230 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
2231 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2232 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
2233 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2234 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
2236 * New debugging protocols
2238 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2240 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2242 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2243 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2244 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2246 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2248 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2249 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2250 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2251 permanently REMOVED.
2253 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2254 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2255 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2256 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2257 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2258 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2259 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2260 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2261 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2262 sonymips mips-sony-*
2263 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2265 * REMOVED configurations and files
2267 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2268 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2269 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2270 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2271 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2272 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2273 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2274 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2275 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2276 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
2277 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2278 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2279 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2280 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2281 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
2282 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2283 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2285 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2289 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2290 integrated into GDB.
2292 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2294 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2295 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2296 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2299 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2300 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2301 DWARF 2 CFI support.
2305 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2306 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2307 remote protocol documentation for details.
2309 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
2311 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2312 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2313 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2316 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2318 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2319 per-thread variables.
2321 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2323 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2324 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2326 * Separate debug info.
2328 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2329 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2330 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2331 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2332 and optional debug files.
2334 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2336 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2337 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2340 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2341 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2345 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2346 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2347 considered "useable".
2349 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2351 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2352 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2355 * GDB supports logging output to a file
2357 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2358 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
2360 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2362 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2363 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2366 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
2368 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2369 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2373 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2374 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2375 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2376 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2377 data, for more informative profiling results.
2379 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2381 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2382 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
2383 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
2385 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2388 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2389 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2390 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2391 in a subsequent -var-update.
2393 * New native configurations.
2395 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2397 * Multi-arched targets.
2399 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
2400 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2402 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2404 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2405 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2406 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2407 permanently REMOVED.
2409 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2410 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2411 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2412 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2413 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2414 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2415 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2416 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2417 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2418 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2419 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2420 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2422 * REMOVED configurations and files
2425 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2426 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2427 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2428 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2429 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2430 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2432 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2433 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2434 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2435 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2436 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2437 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2439 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
2441 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2442 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2443 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2444 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2445 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2447 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
2449 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2451 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2452 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2453 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2454 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2455 shared libs like mad''.
2457 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
2459 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2460 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2461 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2462 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
2464 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2466 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2467 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2470 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2471 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2473 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2474 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2476 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2477 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2478 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2479 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2481 * Multi-arched targets.
2483 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2484 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2486 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
2487 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2488 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2492 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2495 * New native configurations
2497 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
2498 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
2499 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
2500 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
2502 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2504 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2505 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2506 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2507 permanently REMOVED.
2509 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2510 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2511 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2512 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2513 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2514 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2515 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2516 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2517 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2518 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2520 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2521 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2523 * OBSOLETE languages
2525 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2527 * REMOVED configurations and files
2529 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2530 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2531 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2532 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2533 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2535 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2537 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2539 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2540 commands. The default is 1024.
2542 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2544 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2546 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2548 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2549 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2550 from a file into memory (restore).
2552 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2554 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2555 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2556 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2558 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2566 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2567 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2568 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2570 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2571 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2572 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2574 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2575 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2576 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2578 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2579 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2580 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2582 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
2584 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2586 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2587 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2588 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2589 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2590 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2591 (notably embedded) targets.
2593 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2595 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2596 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2597 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2598 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
2600 * New command line option
2602 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2604 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2606 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2607 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2608 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2609 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2610 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2611 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2612 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2613 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2614 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2615 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2617 * Changes in ARM configurations.
2619 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2620 configuration is fully multi-arch.
2622 * New native configurations
2624 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
2625 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
2626 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
2627 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
2631 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2633 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2635 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2636 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2637 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2638 permanently REMOVED.
2640 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2641 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2642 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2643 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2644 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2646 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2648 * REMOVED configurations and files
2650 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2652 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2653 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2654 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2655 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2656 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2657 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2658 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2659 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2660 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2661 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2662 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
2664 * Changes to command line processing
2666 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2667 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2669 * Changes to key bindings
2671 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2673 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2675 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2677 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2680 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2682 Numerous documentation fixes.
2684 Numerous testsuite fixes.
2686 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
2688 * New native configurations
2690 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2691 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2692 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
2693 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2694 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
2695 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
2699 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
2701 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
2703 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2705 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
2706 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2707 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2708 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2709 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2711 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2712 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2713 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2714 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2715 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2716 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2717 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2718 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
2720 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2721 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2723 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2724 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2725 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2726 permanently REMOVED.
2728 * REMOVED configurations and files
2730 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2731 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2733 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2737 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
2739 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
2740 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2745 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2747 * The MI enabled by default.
2749 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2750 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2751 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2752 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2753 which is now deprecated.
2755 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2757 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2758 main features are supported:
2760 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2762 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2765 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2767 - a Pascal expression parser.
2769 However, some important features are not yet supported.
2771 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2773 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2775 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2776 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2778 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2780 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2782 * Changes in completion.
2784 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2785 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2786 users expect at the shell prompt.
2788 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2789 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2790 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2791 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2792 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2793 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2794 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2796 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2798 * New platform-independent commands:
2800 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2801 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2802 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2804 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2806 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2807 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2808 many threads as your system allows you to have.
2810 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2812 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2813 multi-threaded programs though.
2815 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
2817 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2819 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2820 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2823 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2825 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2826 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2827 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2828 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2829 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2832 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2833 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2834 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2836 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2838 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2839 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2841 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2842 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2845 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2846 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2847 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2848 a given linear address.
2850 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2851 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2852 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2854 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2856 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2858 * Changes in documentation.
2860 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2861 Documentation License.
2863 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2866 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2868 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2871 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2872 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2873 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2875 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2877 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2878 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2879 contents of this file.
2883 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
2885 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
2887 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2889 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2890 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2891 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2892 greater level of detail.
2894 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2896 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2897 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2898 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2901 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2903 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2904 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2905 machines ``out of the box''.
2907 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2908 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2909 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2910 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2911 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2913 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2914 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2915 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2916 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2917 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2919 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2920 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2923 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2926 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2927 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2928 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2929 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2931 * New native configurations
2933 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
2934 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2938 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
2939 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2940 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
2941 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2943 * OBSOLETE configurations
2945 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2946 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2948 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2951 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2952 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2953 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2954 be permanently REMOVED.
2956 * Gould support removed
2958 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2960 * New features for SVR4
2962 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2963 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2964 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2966 * Many C++ enhancements
2968 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2969 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2971 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2973 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2974 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2975 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2976 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2978 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2979 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2981 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
2983 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2984 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2985 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2987 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2988 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2990 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2992 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2993 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2994 include ``set remote P-packet''.
2996 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2998 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2999 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3000 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3002 * ``apropos'' command added.
3004 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3005 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3006 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3010 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3011 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3012 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3013 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3014 enabled by configuring with:
3016 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3018 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3020 * New native configurations
3022 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3023 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3024 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3028 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3029 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3030 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3032 * OBSOLETE configurations
3034 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3036 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3037 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3038 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3039 be permanently REMOVED.
3043 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3044 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3045 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3046 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3047 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3048 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3049 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3054 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3056 * set extension-language
3058 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3059 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3060 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3061 set extension-language .c c++
3062 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3063 and their associated languages.
3065 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3067 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3068 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3069 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3073 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3074 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3076 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3077 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3079 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3080 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3081 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3082 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3083 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3084 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3085 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3086 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3088 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3089 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3090 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3091 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3095 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3096 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3097 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3098 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3099 for xdb and dbx commands.
3103 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3104 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3105 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3107 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3108 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3109 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3111 * Debugging across forks
3113 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3118 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3119 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3120 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3122 * GDB remote protocol additions
3124 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3125 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3126 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3127 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3129 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3130 full 64-bit address. The command
3132 set remoteaddresssize 32
3134 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3135 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3138 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3139 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3141 maint packet heythere
3143 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3144 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3147 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3148 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3149 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3151 * Tracing can collect general expressions
3153 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3154 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3155 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3157 * mask-address variable for Mips
3159 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3160 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3161 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3163 * Higher serial baud rates
3165 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3166 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3167 to achieve all of these rates.)
3171 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3172 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3175 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3177 * New native configurations
3179 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3180 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3181 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3182 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3183 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3184 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3185 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3189 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3190 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3191 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3192 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3193 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3194 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3195 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3196 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3197 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3198 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3199 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3201 * New debugging protocols
3203 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3204 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3205 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3206 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3207 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3208 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3212 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3213 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3218 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3219 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3221 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3223 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3224 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3225 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3227 * Live range splitting
3229 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3230 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3231 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3235 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3236 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3240 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3241 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3242 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3247 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3252 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3253 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3254 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3255 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3256 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3257 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3261 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3262 the symbol at the specified address.
3266 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3267 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3268 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3269 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3270 file tracepoint.c for more details.
3274 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3275 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3276 of most MIPS variants.
3280 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3281 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3282 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3286 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3287 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3288 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3289 the possible architectures.
3291 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3293 * New native configurations
3295 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3296 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3297 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3298 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3299 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3300 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3304 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3305 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3306 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3307 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3308 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3310 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3314 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3315 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3316 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3317 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3318 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3322 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3324 * Windows 95/NT native
3326 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3327 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3328 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3329 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3330 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3332 * dont-repeat command
3334 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3335 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3336 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3337 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3339 * Send break instead of ^C
3341 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3342 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3343 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3345 * Remote protocol timeout
3347 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3348 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3349 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3351 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3353 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3354 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3355 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3356 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3357 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3359 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3360 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3361 automatically on hpux10.
3363 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3365 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3367 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3369 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3370 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3371 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3372 every character. The default value is 1050.
3374 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3376 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3377 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3378 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3379 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3380 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3381 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3383 * Speedups for remote debugging
3385 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3386 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3387 and more efficient S-record downloading.
3389 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3391 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3392 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3394 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3396 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
3398 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3399 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3401 * Remote targets use caching
3403 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3404 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3405 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3406 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3407 off' turns the the data cache off.
3409 * Remote targets may have threads
3411 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3412 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3413 gdb/remote.c for details.
3417 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3418 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3419 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3420 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3421 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3422 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3423 sequence is something like
3425 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3427 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3431 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3432 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3433 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3434 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3435 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3436 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3437 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3438 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3442 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3443 but does simplify configuration and building.
3447 GDB now supports hpux10.
3449 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3451 * New native configurations
3453 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3454 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3455 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3456 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3460 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3461 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3462 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3463 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3466 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3468 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3469 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3470 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3471 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3472 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3474 * Arguments to user-defined commands
3476 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3477 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3480 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3482 To execute the command use:
3485 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3486 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3487 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3489 * New `if' and `while' commands
3491 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3492 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3493 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3494 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3495 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3496 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3497 if the expression is zero.
3499 * Fortran source language mode
3501 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3502 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3503 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3504 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3507 * Better HPUX support
3509 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3510 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3511 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3512 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3513 that behavior do the following before running the program:
3519 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3520 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3526 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3527 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3530 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3531 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3533 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3535 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3536 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3537 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3538 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3539 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3540 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3542 * New DOS host serial code
3544 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3545 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3548 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3550 * New "complete" command
3552 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3553 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3555 * Trailing space optional in prompt
3557 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3558 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3560 * Breakpoint hit counts
3562 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3563 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3564 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3565 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3566 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3569 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3571 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3572 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3573 arrays actually contain only short strings.
3575 * Shared library breakpoints
3577 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3578 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3580 * Hardware watchpoints
3582 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3583 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3585 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
3589 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3590 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3592 * Improved Irix 5 support
3594 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3596 * Improved HPPA support
3598 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3600 * New native configurations
3602 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3603 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3604 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3605 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3609 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3610 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3613 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3615 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3616 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3620 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3621 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3623 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3625 * Irix 5 is now supported
3629 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3630 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3631 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3632 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3633 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3636 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3638 * User visible changes:
3642 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3643 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3644 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3645 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3646 debugging info for the mips target).
3648 * DEC Alpha native support
3650 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3651 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3652 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3653 Alpha-specific notes.
3655 * Preliminary thread implementation
3657 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3659 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
3661 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3662 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3665 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3667 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3668 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3669 call methods, ...etc.
3671 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3673 * User visible changes:
3675 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3676 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3677 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3678 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3680 Filename completion now works.
3682 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3683 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3684 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3686 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3687 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3688 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3689 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3690 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3694 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3695 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3698 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3702 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3703 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3704 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3708 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3709 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3710 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3711 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3712 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3716 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3717 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3718 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3720 * New targets supported
3722 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3723 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3724 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3725 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3726 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3728 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3729 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3730 GO32 memory extender.
3732 * New remote protocols
3734 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3736 * New source languages supported
3738 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3739 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3740 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3743 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3745 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3747 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3748 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3749 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3750 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3751 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3752 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3754 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3756 * Faster and better demangling
3758 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3759 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3760 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3761 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3762 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3763 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3766 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3767 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3768 compiler does not actually implement.
3770 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3772 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3773 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3774 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3775 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3776 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3777 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3780 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3781 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3783 * Improved configure script
3785 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3786 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3787 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3788 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3790 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3791 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3792 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3793 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3794 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3795 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3797 * Documentation improvements
3799 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3800 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3801 before submitting changes.
3803 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3804 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3805 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3806 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3807 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3809 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3810 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3811 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3812 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3813 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3814 around this problem.
3818 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3819 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3820 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3823 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3824 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3826 * New native hosts supported
3828 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3829 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3831 * New targets supported
3833 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3835 * New file formats supported
3837 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3838 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3842 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3844 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3845 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3847 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3848 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3849 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3851 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3852 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3854 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3855 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3856 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3859 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3860 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3861 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3862 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3863 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3865 * Internal improvements
3867 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3868 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3870 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3871 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3872 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3873 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3874 shared code that handles any of them.
3876 * New command line options
3878 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3882 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3883 General Public License.
3885 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3887 * Host/native/target split
3889 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3890 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3891 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3892 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3893 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3895 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3896 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3897 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3898 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3899 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3900 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3901 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3903 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3904 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3905 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3907 * New hosts supported
3909 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3910 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3911 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3913 * New targets supported
3915 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3916 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3918 * New native hosts supported
3920 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3921 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3922 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3924 * New file formats supported
3926 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3927 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3928 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3932 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3933 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3934 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3936 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3938 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3939 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3940 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3941 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3945 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3946 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3947 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3949 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3953 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3954 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3957 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3958 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3960 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3961 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3962 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3963 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3964 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3965 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3967 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3968 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3969 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3970 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3974 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3975 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3976 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3977 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3978 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3980 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3981 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3982 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3983 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3987 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3988 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3989 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3990 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3991 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3992 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3993 each instruction being stepped through.
3995 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3996 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3998 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3999 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4000 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4001 processor with a serial port.
4005 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4006 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4007 supported, and what files each one uses.
4011 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4012 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4013 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4014 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4016 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4017 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4018 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4019 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4023 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4024 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4025 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4026 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4027 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4028 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4030 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4033 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4035 * Better support for C++ function names
4037 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4038 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4039 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4040 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4041 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4043 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4044 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4045 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4046 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4047 for the list of formats.
4049 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4051 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4052 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4053 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4054 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4055 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4056 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4059 * New 'maintenance' command
4061 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4062 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4063 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4065 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4066 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4067 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4068 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4069 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4070 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4072 The following commands are new:
4074 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4075 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4076 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4078 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4080 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4081 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4082 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4083 read after argv processing.
4085 * New hosts supported
4087 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4089 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4091 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4092 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4093 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4094 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4095 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4098 * New targets supported
4100 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4102 * More smarts about finding #include files
4104 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4105 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4106 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4107 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4108 the one that contains your sources.
4110 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4111 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4112 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4114 * Interesting infernals change
4116 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4117 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4118 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4119 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4121 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4123 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4124 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4125 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4127 See the ChangeLog for details.
4129 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4131 * New machines supported (host and target)
4133 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4135 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4137 * New malloc package
4139 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4140 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4141 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4142 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4143 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4144 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4148 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4149 'help info proc' for details.
4151 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4153 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4154 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4157 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4159 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4160 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4161 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4162 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4163 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4164 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4166 * Cross byte order fixes
4168 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4169 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4171 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4173 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4174 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4175 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4176 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4177 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4178 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4179 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4180 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4181 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4182 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4184 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4185 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4186 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4187 slower, but makes future operations faster.
4189 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4190 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4191 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4194 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4196 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4197 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4198 shared across multiple host platforms.
4200 * longjmp() handling
4202 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4203 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4204 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4205 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4209 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4210 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4215 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4216 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4217 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4219 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4221 * New machines supported (host and target)
4223 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4225 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4226 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4228 * New machines supported (target)
4230 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4234 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4235 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4236 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4238 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4239 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4240 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4241 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4242 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4245 * New features for SVR4
4247 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4248 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4249 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4251 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4252 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4253 it prints the address mappings of the process.
4255 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4256 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4258 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4260 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4261 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4262 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4263 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4264 same code linked statically.
4268 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4269 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4270 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4271 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4272 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4273 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4277 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4278 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4279 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4282 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4284 * New machines supported (host and target)
4286 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4287 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4288 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4290 * Almost SCO Unix support
4292 We had hoped to support:
4293 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4294 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4295 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4296 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4298 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4300 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4301 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4302 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4303 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4308 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4309 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4310 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4314 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4315 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4316 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4318 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4320 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4321 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4322 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4324 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4325 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4326 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4327 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4330 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4331 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4332 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4333 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4336 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4337 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4340 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4341 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4342 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4345 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4347 * Improved configuration
4349 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4350 Porting BFD is simpler.
4354 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4355 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4356 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4357 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4361 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4363 * New host supported (not target)
4365 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4368 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4370 * Multiple source language support
4372 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4373 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4374 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4375 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4376 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4377 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4381 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4382 currently under development at the State University of New York at
4383 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4384 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4386 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4387 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4388 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4390 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4391 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4395 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4396 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4397 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4398 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4401 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4403 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4404 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4405 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4406 examining core files.
4410 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4413 * New machines supported (host and target)
4415 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4416 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4417 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4419 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4421 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4423 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4425 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4426 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4427 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4429 * New remote interfaces
4435 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4439 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4441 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4442 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4443 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4444 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4445 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4446 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4447 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4448 stub on the target system.
4450 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4452 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4453 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4454 object file types such as a.out and coff.
4456 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4457 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4460 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4462 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4463 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4465 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4466 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4467 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4469 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4470 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4471 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4472 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4474 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4475 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4476 it is already running. Default is ON.
4478 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4479 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4480 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4481 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4484 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4485 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4486 or the value of the environment variable
4489 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4490 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4493 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4494 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4495 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4497 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4498 history expansion will be performed on
4499 command line input. The default is OFF.
4501 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4502 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4503 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4505 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4506 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4507 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4510 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4511 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4512 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4515 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4516 ``set width'' instead.
4518 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4519 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4520 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4521 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4523 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4526 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4529 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4532 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4535 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4537 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4538 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4539 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4543 * Support for Shared Libraries
4545 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4546 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4547 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4548 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4549 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4550 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4551 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4552 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4554 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4555 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4556 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4558 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4563 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4564 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4565 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4566 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4567 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4568 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4570 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4572 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4574 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4575 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4576 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4579 * C++ multiple inheritance
4581 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4584 * C++ exception handling
4586 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4587 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4588 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4591 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4592 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4593 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4595 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4596 current stack frame.
4599 * Minor command changes
4601 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4602 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4603 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4605 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4606 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4607 frames without printing.
4609 * New directory command
4611 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4612 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4613 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4614 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4615 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4617 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4619 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4622 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4623 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4624 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4625 where the program that you are debugging will run.