1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.3.1
8 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
9 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
10 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
11 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
14 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
15 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
17 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
18 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
19 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
20 target hardware watchpoint.
22 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
23 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
24 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
25 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
29 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
30 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
33 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
34 deprecated, and a new command: "set python print-stack on|off" has
35 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is now
38 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
41 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
42 modules library. This module provides functionality for
43 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
44 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
47 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
48 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
49 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
52 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
53 static_block will return the global and static blocks
54 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
55 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
57 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
59 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
62 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
63 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
64 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
67 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
70 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
71 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
72 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
73 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
78 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
81 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
82 "=breakpoint-modified".
84 ** New command -ada-task-info.
86 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
87 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
88 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
91 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
92 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
93 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
94 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
95 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
97 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
98 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
100 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
101 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
102 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
103 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
104 use this option to specify where to find it.
106 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
107 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
108 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
109 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
110 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
111 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
112 section in the user manual for more details.
114 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
115 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
116 become available after that.
118 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
120 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
121 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
127 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
128 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
132 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
133 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
134 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
136 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
137 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
138 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
140 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
141 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
142 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
143 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
144 name starts with a hyphen.
146 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
147 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
148 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
149 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
150 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
151 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
152 number of bytes that will be collected.
155 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
156 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
157 setting the variable trace-notes.
160 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
161 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
162 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
165 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
166 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
167 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
168 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
169 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
172 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
173 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
174 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
180 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
181 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
182 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
183 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
186 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
187 show print entry-values
188 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
189 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
190 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
192 set debug entry-values
193 show debug entry-values
194 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
195 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
197 set basenames-may-differ
198 show basenames-may-differ
199 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
200 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
201 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
202 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
203 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
204 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
205 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
206 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
212 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
213 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
214 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
215 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
218 show trace-stop-notes
219 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
220 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
221 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
222 started by someone else.
228 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
232 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
236 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
240 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
244 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
247 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
248 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
252 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
256 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
258 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
260 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
262 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
264 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
265 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
266 matches the given regular expression.
268 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
270 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
271 dumping the instruction opcodes.
273 * New command line options
275 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
276 This is mostly for testing purposes.
278 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
279 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
281 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
282 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
283 source path list instead of augmenting it.
285 * GDB now understands thread names.
287 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
288 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
290 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
291 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
294 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
295 has been integrated into GDB.
299 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
300 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
301 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
303 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
304 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
305 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
306 and allows for more dynamic content.
308 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
309 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
310 have an is_valid method.
312 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
313 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
314 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
316 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
318 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
319 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
320 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
321 that function like so:
323 result = some_value (10,20)
325 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
326 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
327 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
329 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
330 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
331 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
332 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
333 New function: register_pretty_printer.
335 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
336 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
338 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
340 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
343 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
344 holds the thread's name.
346 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
347 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
348 occurring in the process being debugged.
349 The following events are currently supported:
350 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
351 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
352 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
356 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
357 instantiation. For example, if you have:
359 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
361 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
362 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
363 was added to GCC 4.5.
365 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
366 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
367 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
368 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
369 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
370 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
372 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
373 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
374 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
375 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
376 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
378 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
379 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
380 execution to a label.
382 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
383 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
384 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
385 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
387 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
388 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
389 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
392 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
394 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
395 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
396 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
397 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
398 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
399 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
402 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
404 While now you see this:
407 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
409 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
412 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
413 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
414 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
415 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
417 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
418 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
419 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
420 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
421 section in the user manual for more details.
423 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
425 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
426 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
428 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
430 * New native configurations
432 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
436 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
438 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
439 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
440 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
441 in the GDB user manual.
443 * Guile support was removed.
445 * New features in the GNU simulator
447 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
449 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
451 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
453 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
455 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
456 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
457 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
458 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
459 was always disabled for such configurations.
463 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
465 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
466 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
476 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
477 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
478 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
480 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
482 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
483 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
484 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
485 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
487 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
488 mentioned flavors of operators.
490 ** static const class members
492 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
493 class definition has been fixed.
495 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
497 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
498 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
499 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
500 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
501 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
502 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
506 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
507 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
508 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
509 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
510 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
511 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
512 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
513 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
514 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
515 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
516 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
517 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
518 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
519 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
520 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
521 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
522 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
523 the "New remote packets" section below.
525 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
527 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
528 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
529 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
530 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
534 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
535 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
536 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
537 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
538 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
539 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
540 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
542 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
549 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
553 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
554 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
555 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
556 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
557 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
558 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
562 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
566 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
569 qXfer:statictrace:read
571 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
572 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
573 to gdb's qSupported query.
577 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
581 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
582 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
584 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
585 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
588 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
590 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
591 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
592 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
593 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
595 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
596 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
597 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
598 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
599 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
600 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
601 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
603 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
604 for static tracepoints support.
606 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
608 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
609 it understands register description.
611 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
613 * X86 general purpose registers
615 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
616 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
617 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
618 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
619 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
621 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
622 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
623 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
624 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
625 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
626 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
628 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
629 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
630 in the specified file.
632 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
633 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
634 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
635 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
636 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
637 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
638 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
639 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
640 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
641 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
645 eval template, expressions...
646 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
647 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
649 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
650 show target-file-system-kind
651 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
654 save breakpoints <filename>
655 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
656 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
657 definitions, use the `source' command.
659 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
662 info static-tracepoint-markers
663 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
665 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
666 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
667 function, line, address, or marker ID.
671 Enable and disable observer mode.
673 set may-write-registers on|off
674 set may-write-memory on|off
675 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
676 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
677 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
678 set may-interrupt on|off
679 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
680 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
681 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
682 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
683 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
684 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
685 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
687 set record memory-query on|off
688 show record memory-query
689 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
690 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
695 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
699 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
700 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
701 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
702 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
703 GDB using Python' in the manual.
705 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
706 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
707 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
708 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
710 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
711 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
713 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
715 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
717 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
719 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
720 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
721 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
723 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
724 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
725 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
730 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
732 * D language support.
733 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
736 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
737 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
738 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
739 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
740 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
742 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
743 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
744 conditions of the form:
746 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
748 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
749 interface mentioned above.
751 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
757 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
758 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
759 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
760 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
761 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
765 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
766 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
771 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
772 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
776 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
781 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
784 * Multi-program debugging.
786 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
787 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
788 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
789 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
790 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
791 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
792 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
793 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
795 * New tracing features
797 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
799 ** Trace state variables
801 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
802 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
803 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
804 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
805 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
806 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
807 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
808 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
809 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
810 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
814 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
815 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
816 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
817 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
818 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
819 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
820 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
821 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
822 the regular trace command.
824 ** Disconnected tracing
826 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
827 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
828 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
829 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
830 connection is lost unexpectedly.
834 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
835 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
836 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
837 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
838 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
839 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
842 ** Circular trace buffer
844 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
845 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
846 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
847 not be available for all target agents.
852 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
853 the arguments to be comma-separated.
856 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
857 which only declare a variable are not shown.
860 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
861 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
864 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
865 "set script-extension" (see below).
867 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
869 record save [<FILENAME>]
870 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
871 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
873 record restore <FILENAME>
874 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
875 earlier time, for replay debugging.
877 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
880 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
881 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
887 maint info program-spaces
888 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
890 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
891 show remote interrupt-sequence
892 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
893 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
894 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
895 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
896 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
898 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
899 show remote interrupt-on-connect
900 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
901 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
904 set remotebreak [on | off]
906 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
908 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
909 Create or modify a trace state variable.
912 List trace state variables and their values.
914 delete tvariable $NAME ...
915 Delete one or more trace state variables.
918 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
919 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
921 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
922 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
924 * New expression syntax
926 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
927 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
931 set follow-exec-mode new|same
932 show follow-exec-mode
933 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
934 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
935 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
937 set default-collect EXPR, ...
939 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
940 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
941 such as registers or a critical global variable.
943 set disconnected-tracing
944 show disconnected-tracing
945 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
946 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
949 set circular-trace-buffer
950 show circular-trace-buffer
951 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
952 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
953 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
954 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
956 set script-extension off|soft|strict
957 show script-extension
958 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
959 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
960 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
961 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
963 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
965 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
966 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
967 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
968 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
969 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
970 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
971 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
974 * Python API Improvements
976 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
977 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
978 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
980 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
981 `is_base_class' attribute.
983 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
985 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
986 evaluate an expression.
991 Define a trace state variable.
994 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
997 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1000 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1003 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1007 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1009 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1010 much more reliable. In particular:
1011 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1012 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1013 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1014 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1015 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1016 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1017 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1018 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1019 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1020 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1021 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1022 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1023 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1024 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1025 non-threaded programs.
1027 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1028 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1029 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1032 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1034 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1035 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1036 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1037 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1038 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1040 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1041 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1042 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1043 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1044 for tracepoint actions.
1046 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1047 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1048 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1050 * Process record and replay
1052 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1053 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1054 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1057 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1058 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1059 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1062 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1063 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1066 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1067 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1068 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1069 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1070 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1071 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1072 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1073 the installation instructions for more information.
1075 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1076 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1077 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1078 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1080 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1081 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1083 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1084 now complete on file names.
1086 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1087 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1088 For instance, consider:
1090 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1091 # struct example variable;
1094 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1095 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1097 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1098 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1100 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1101 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1104 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1105 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1106 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1108 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1109 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1110 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1111 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1113 * New remote packets
1116 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1119 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1120 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1121 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1124 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1125 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1128 Obtains additional operating system information
1132 Read or write additional signal information.
1134 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1136 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1137 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1138 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1140 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1141 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1143 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1144 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1145 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1147 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1148 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1150 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1152 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1154 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1155 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1157 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1158 list of section offsets.
1160 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1161 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1162 have also been fixed.
1164 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1165 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1166 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1168 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1171 template<typename T> class C { };
1174 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1176 ptype C<char const *>
1177 ptype C<char const*>
1178 ptype C<const char *>
1179 ptype C<const char*>
1181 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1183 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1184 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1186 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1187 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1188 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1190 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1191 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1193 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1196 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1197 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1199 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1200 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1205 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1206 available is determined at configure time.
1208 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1210 * Ada tasking support
1212 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1216 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1218 Print detailed information about task number N.
1220 Print the task number of the current task.
1222 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1224 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1225 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1227 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1229 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1230 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1231 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1232 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1233 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1234 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1237 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1238 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1241 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1242 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1243 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1244 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1247 * Multi-architecture debugging.
1249 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1250 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1251 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1252 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1253 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1255 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1256 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1257 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1258 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1259 --enable-targets configure option.
1261 * Non-stop mode debugging.
1263 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1264 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1265 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1266 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1267 section in the user manual for more information.
1269 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1270 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1271 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1272 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1273 extensions on linux targets.
1275 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1277 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1278 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1279 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1280 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1281 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1282 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1283 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1284 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1285 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1287 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1289 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1291 maint set python print-stack
1292 maint show python print-stack
1293 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1296 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1301 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1305 Show operating system information about processes.
1308 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1311 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1314 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1317 Kill inferior number NUM.
1321 set spu stop-on-load
1322 show spu stop-on-load
1323 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1325 set spu auto-flush-cache
1326 show spu auto-flush-cache
1327 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1328 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1330 set sh calling-convention
1331 show sh calling-convention
1332 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1335 show debug timestamp
1336 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1338 set disassemble-next-line
1339 show disassemble-next-line
1340 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1343 set remote noack-packet
1344 show remote noack-packet
1345 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1346 under "New remote packets."
1348 set remote query-attached-packet
1349 show remote query-attached-packet
1350 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1352 set remote read-siginfo-object
1353 show remote read-siginfo-object
1354 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1357 set remote write-siginfo-object
1358 show remote write-siginfo-object
1359 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1362 set remote reverse-continue
1363 show remote reverse-continue
1364 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1366 set remote reverse-step
1367 show remote reverse-step
1368 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1370 set displaced-stepping
1371 show displaced-stepping
1372 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1373 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1374 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1377 show debug displaced
1378 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1380 maint set internal-error
1381 maint show internal-error
1382 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1384 maint set internal-warning
1385 maint show internal-warning
1386 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
1391 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1393 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1394 show multiple-symbols
1395 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1396 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1397 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1399 set breakpoint always-inserted
1400 show breakpoint always-inserted
1401 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1402 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1403 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1405 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1406 show arm fallback-mode
1407 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1409 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1410 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1411 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1412 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1414 set disable-randomization
1415 show disable-randomization
1416 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1417 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1418 multiple debugging sessions.
1422 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1427 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1428 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1429 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1430 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1432 set target-wide-charset
1433 show target-wide-charset
1434 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1435 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1437 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1439 set tcp connect-timeout
1440 show tcp connect-timeout
1441 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1442 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1443 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1445 set libthread-db-search-path
1446 show libthread-db-search-path
1447 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1450 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1451 show schedule-multiple
1452 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1453 the current process.
1457 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1458 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1459 affecting correctness.
1461 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1462 show interactive-mode
1463 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1464 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1465 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1466 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1467 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1472 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1473 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1474 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1478 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1479 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1480 alias for the `fork' command.
1483 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1484 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1485 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1488 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1489 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1490 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1494 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1495 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1496 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1499 * New native configurations
1501 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1503 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1507 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
1508 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
1509 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
1512 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1513 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1519 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1521 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
1523 * New native configurations
1525 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
1526 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
1530 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
1531 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
1533 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1535 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1536 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1537 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1538 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1540 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1541 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1543 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
1546 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
1547 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1548 and in inlined functions.
1550 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1551 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1552 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1554 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1556 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1557 registers on PowerPC targets.
1559 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1560 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1562 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1563 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1565 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1566 extended-remote mode.
1568 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
1569 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1570 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1571 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
1573 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1574 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1575 target architectures.
1577 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1578 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1579 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1580 stored in two consecutive float registers.
1582 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1585 * Improved support for debugging Ada
1586 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1588 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1589 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1590 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1591 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1593 - Improved command completion in Ada
1596 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1601 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1602 show print frame-arguments
1603 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1604 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1609 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1616 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1618 * New remote packets
1625 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
1628 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1632 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1634 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
1636 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1637 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1638 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1640 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1641 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1642 -Bsymbolic linker option.
1644 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1645 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1648 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1649 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1651 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1652 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
1654 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1656 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1657 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1658 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1660 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1661 automatically displayed as character or string data.
1663 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1664 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1667 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1668 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
1669 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
1671 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1674 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1675 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1676 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1678 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1680 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1682 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1683 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1684 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1686 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1687 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1689 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1690 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1691 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1692 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1693 Windows and SymbianOS).
1695 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1696 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
1698 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1699 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
1705 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1706 when debugging using remote targets.
1708 set mem inaccessible-by-default
1709 show mem inaccessible-by-default
1710 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1711 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1712 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1713 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1714 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1716 set breakpoint auto-hw
1717 show breakpoint auto-hw
1718 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1719 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1720 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1721 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1722 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1723 including "next" and "finish".
1726 catch exception unhandled
1727 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1730 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1734 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1735 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1736 an alias to "set sysroot".
1739 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1740 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1743 * New native configurations
1745 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1748 unset tdesc filename
1750 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1751 not query the target for its built-in description.
1755 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
1756 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
1757 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
1759 * New remote packets
1762 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1763 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1765 qXfer:features:read:
1766 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1771 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1772 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1774 qXfer:libraries:read:
1775 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1776 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1777 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1778 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1782 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1790 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1791 i[34567]86-*-netware*
1792 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1793 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1795 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1798 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1799 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1808 * Other removed features
1815 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1822 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1827 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1828 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1833 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1834 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1836 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1838 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1839 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1840 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1841 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1843 MIPS ".pdr" sections
1845 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1846 in debugging information.
1850 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1851 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1853 set mips stack-arg-size
1854 set mips saved-gpreg-size
1856 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1858 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
1863 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
1865 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1866 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1867 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1869 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1870 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1873 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1874 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1876 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1877 stub provides the required support.
1879 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1880 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1885 unset substitute-path
1886 show substitute-path
1887 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1888 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1889 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1890 between compilation and debugging.
1894 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1895 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1896 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1900 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1902 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1903 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1905 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1907 * New remote packets
1910 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1911 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1912 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1913 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1917 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1918 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1920 qXfer:memory-map:read:
1921 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1922 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1927 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1929 * Removed remote packets
1932 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1933 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1935 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
1939 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1941 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1945 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1946 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1948 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1950 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1952 restart <n> Return the program state to a
1953 previously saved state.
1955 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1957 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1959 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1960 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1962 info forks List forks of the user program that
1963 are available to be debugged.
1965 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1966 forks of the user program that are
1967 available to be debugged.
1969 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1970 that are available to be debugged (and
1971 kill the forked process).
1973 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1974 that are available to be debugged (and
1975 allow the process to continue).
1979 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1981 * Improved Windows host support
1983 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1984 native console support, and remote communications using either
1985 network sockets or serial ports.
1987 * Improved Modula-2 language support
1989 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1990 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1991 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1992 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1993 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1994 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1998 The ARM rdi-share module.
2000 The Netware NLM debug server.
2002 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2004 * New native configurations
2006 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2007 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2011 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2013 * New command line options
2015 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2016 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2017 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2018 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2019 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2020 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2021 with the --command (-x) option.
2023 * Deprecated commands removed
2025 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2029 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2030 othernames set arm disassembler
2031 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2032 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2033 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2036 * New BSD user-level threads support
2038 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2039 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2042 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2043 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2044 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2046 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2047 are not yet supported.
2049 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2050 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2052 * REMOVED configurations and files
2054 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2055 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2056 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2058 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2060 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2061 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2064 * VAX floating point support
2066 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2068 * User-defined command support
2070 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2071 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2072 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2074 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2076 * New command line option
2078 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2081 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2083 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2084 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2085 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2086 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2087 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2089 * Internationalization
2091 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2092 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2093 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2097 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2098 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2099 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2101 * New native configurations
2103 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2107 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2108 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2110 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2112 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2113 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2114 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2117 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2118 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2119 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2129 powerpc bdm protocol
2131 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2132 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2134 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2136 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2137 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2138 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2139 permanently REMOVED.
2148 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2150 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2152 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2153 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2156 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2158 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2159 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2160 IRIX long double values).
2164 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2165 command. This problem has been fixed.
2167 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2169 * Fix for ``many threads''
2171 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2172 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2175 ptrace: No such process.
2176 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2178 This problem has been fixed.
2180 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2182 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2185 * New ``start'' command.
2187 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2189 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2191 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2192 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2193 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2195 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2196 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2197 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2198 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2199 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2200 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2201 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2202 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2203 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2205 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2207 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2208 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2209 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2210 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2211 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2213 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2214 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2215 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2217 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2219 * New native configurations
2221 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2222 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2223 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2224 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2225 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2226 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2227 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2229 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2231 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2232 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2233 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2234 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2235 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2236 work, was also included.
2238 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2239 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2249 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2250 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2252 * REMOVED configurations and files
2254 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2255 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2256 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2257 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2258 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2259 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2260 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2261 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2262 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2263 sonymips mips-sony-*
2264 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2266 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2268 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2270 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2271 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2272 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2273 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2276 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2278 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2279 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2280 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2281 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2282 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2283 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2286 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2288 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
2290 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2291 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2292 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2294 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2296 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2297 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2299 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2301 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2302 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2303 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2305 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2307 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2308 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2310 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2312 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2313 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2314 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2316 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2318 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2319 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2320 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2322 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
2324 * Removed --with-mmalloc
2326 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2327 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2329 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
2331 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2332 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2333 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2334 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2336 * Revised SPARC target
2338 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2339 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
2340 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2341 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2342 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
2346 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2347 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2348 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2351 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2353 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2354 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2357 * C++ nested types and namespaces
2359 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2360 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2361 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2362 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2363 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2364 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2365 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2366 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2367 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2369 * New native configurations
2371 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
2372 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2373 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
2374 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2375 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
2377 * New debugging protocols
2379 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2381 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2383 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2384 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2385 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2387 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2389 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2390 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2391 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2392 permanently REMOVED.
2394 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2395 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2396 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2397 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2398 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2399 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2400 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2401 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2402 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2403 sonymips mips-sony-*
2404 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2406 * REMOVED configurations and files
2408 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2409 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2410 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2411 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2412 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2413 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2414 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2415 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2416 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2417 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
2418 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2419 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2420 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2421 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2422 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
2423 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2424 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2426 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2430 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2431 integrated into GDB.
2433 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2435 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2436 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2437 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2440 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2441 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2442 DWARF 2 CFI support.
2446 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2447 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2448 remote protocol documentation for details.
2450 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
2452 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2453 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2454 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2457 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2459 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2460 per-thread variables.
2462 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2464 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2465 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2467 * Separate debug info.
2469 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2470 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2471 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2472 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2473 and optional debug files.
2475 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2477 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2478 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2481 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2482 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2486 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2487 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2488 considered "useable".
2490 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2492 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2493 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2496 * GDB supports logging output to a file
2498 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2499 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
2501 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2503 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2504 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2507 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
2509 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2510 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2514 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2515 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2516 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2517 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2518 data, for more informative profiling results.
2520 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2522 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2523 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
2524 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
2526 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2529 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2530 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2531 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2532 in a subsequent -var-update.
2534 * New native configurations.
2536 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2538 * Multi-arched targets.
2540 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
2541 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2543 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2545 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2546 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2547 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2548 permanently REMOVED.
2550 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2551 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2552 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2553 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2554 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2555 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2556 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2557 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2558 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2559 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2560 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2561 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2563 * REMOVED configurations and files
2566 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2567 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2568 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2569 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2570 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2571 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2573 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2574 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2575 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2576 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2577 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2578 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2580 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
2582 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2583 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2584 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2585 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2586 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2588 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
2590 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2592 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2593 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2594 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2595 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2596 shared libs like mad''.
2598 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
2600 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2601 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2602 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2603 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
2605 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2607 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2608 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2611 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2612 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2614 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2615 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2617 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2618 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2619 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2620 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2622 * Multi-arched targets.
2624 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2625 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2627 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
2628 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2629 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2633 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2636 * New native configurations
2638 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
2639 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
2640 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
2641 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
2643 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2645 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2646 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2647 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2648 permanently REMOVED.
2650 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2651 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2652 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2653 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2654 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2655 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2656 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2657 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2658 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2659 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2661 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2662 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2664 * OBSOLETE languages
2666 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2668 * REMOVED configurations and files
2670 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2671 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2672 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2673 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2674 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2676 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2678 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2680 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2681 commands. The default is 1024.
2683 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2685 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2687 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2689 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2690 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2691 from a file into memory (restore).
2693 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2695 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2696 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2697 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2699 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2707 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2708 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2709 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2711 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2712 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2713 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2715 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2716 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2717 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2719 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2720 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2721 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2723 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
2725 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2727 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2728 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2729 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2730 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2731 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2732 (notably embedded) targets.
2734 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2736 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2737 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2738 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2739 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
2741 * New command line option
2743 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2745 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2747 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2748 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2749 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2750 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2751 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2752 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2753 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2754 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2755 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2756 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2758 * Changes in ARM configurations.
2760 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2761 configuration is fully multi-arch.
2763 * New native configurations
2765 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
2766 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
2767 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
2768 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
2772 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2774 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2776 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2777 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2778 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2779 permanently REMOVED.
2781 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2782 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2783 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2784 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2785 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2787 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2789 * REMOVED configurations and files
2791 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2793 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2794 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2795 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2796 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2797 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2798 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2799 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2800 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2801 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2802 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2803 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
2805 * Changes to command line processing
2807 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2808 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2810 * Changes to key bindings
2812 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2814 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2816 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2818 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2821 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2823 Numerous documentation fixes.
2825 Numerous testsuite fixes.
2827 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
2829 * New native configurations
2831 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2832 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2833 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
2834 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2835 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
2836 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
2840 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
2842 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
2844 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2846 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
2847 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
2848 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2849 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
2850 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2852 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
2853 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2854 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2855 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
2856 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
2857 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2858 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
2859 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
2861 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2862 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2864 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2865 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2866 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2867 permanently REMOVED.
2869 * REMOVED configurations and files
2871 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2872 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2874 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2878 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
2880 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
2881 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2886 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2888 * The MI enabled by default.
2890 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2891 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2892 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2893 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2894 which is now deprecated.
2896 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2898 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2899 main features are supported:
2901 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2903 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2906 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2908 - a Pascal expression parser.
2910 However, some important features are not yet supported.
2912 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2914 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2916 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2917 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2919 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2921 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2923 * Changes in completion.
2925 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2926 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2927 users expect at the shell prompt.
2929 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2930 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2931 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2932 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2933 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2934 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2935 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2937 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2939 * New platform-independent commands:
2941 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2942 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2943 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2945 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2947 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2948 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2949 many threads as your system allows you to have.
2951 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2953 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2954 multi-threaded programs though.
2956 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
2958 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2960 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2961 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2964 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2966 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2967 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2968 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2969 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2970 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2973 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2974 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2975 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2977 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2979 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2980 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2982 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2983 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2986 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2987 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2988 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2989 a given linear address.
2991 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2992 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2993 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2995 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2997 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2999 * Changes in documentation.
3001 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3002 Documentation License.
3004 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3007 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3009 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3012 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3013 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3014 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3016 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3018 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3019 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3020 contents of this file.
3024 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3026 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3028 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3030 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3031 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3032 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3033 greater level of detail.
3035 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3037 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3038 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3039 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3042 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3044 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3045 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3046 machines ``out of the box''.
3048 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3049 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3050 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3051 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3052 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3054 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3055 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3056 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3057 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3058 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3060 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3061 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3064 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3067 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3068 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3069 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3070 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3072 * New native configurations
3074 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3075 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3079 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3080 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3081 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3082 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3084 * OBSOLETE configurations
3086 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3087 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3089 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3092 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3093 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3094 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3095 be permanently REMOVED.
3097 * Gould support removed
3099 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3101 * New features for SVR4
3103 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3104 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3105 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3107 * Many C++ enhancements
3109 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3110 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3112 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3114 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3115 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3116 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3117 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3119 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3120 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3122 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3124 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3125 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3126 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3128 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3129 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3131 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3133 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3134 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3135 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3137 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3139 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3140 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3141 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3143 * ``apropos'' command added.
3145 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3146 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3147 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3151 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3152 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3153 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3154 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3155 enabled by configuring with:
3157 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3159 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3161 * New native configurations
3163 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3164 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3165 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3169 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3170 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3171 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3173 * OBSOLETE configurations
3175 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3177 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3178 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3179 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3180 be permanently REMOVED.
3184 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3185 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3186 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3187 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3188 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3189 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3190 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3195 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3197 * set extension-language
3199 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3200 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3201 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3202 set extension-language .c c++
3203 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3204 and their associated languages.
3206 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3208 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3209 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3210 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3214 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3215 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3217 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3218 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3220 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3221 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3222 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3223 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3224 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3225 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3226 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3227 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3229 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3230 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3231 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3232 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3236 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3237 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3238 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3239 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3240 for xdb and dbx commands.
3244 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3245 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3246 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3248 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3249 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3250 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3252 * Debugging across forks
3254 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3259 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3260 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3261 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3263 * GDB remote protocol additions
3265 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3266 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3267 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3268 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3270 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3271 full 64-bit address. The command
3273 set remoteaddresssize 32
3275 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3276 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3279 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3280 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3282 maint packet heythere
3284 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3285 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3288 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3289 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3290 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3292 * Tracing can collect general expressions
3294 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3295 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3296 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3298 * mask-address variable for Mips
3300 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3301 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3302 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3304 * Higher serial baud rates
3306 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3307 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3308 to achieve all of these rates.)
3312 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3313 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3316 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3318 * New native configurations
3320 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3321 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3322 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3323 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3324 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3325 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3326 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3330 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3331 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3332 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3333 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3334 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3335 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3336 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3337 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3338 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3339 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3340 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3342 * New debugging protocols
3344 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3345 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3346 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3347 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3348 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3349 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3353 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3354 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3359 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3360 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3362 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3364 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3365 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3366 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3368 * Live range splitting
3370 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3371 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3372 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3376 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3377 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3381 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3382 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3383 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3388 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3393 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3394 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3395 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3396 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3397 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3398 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3402 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3403 the symbol at the specified address.
3407 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3408 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3409 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3410 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3411 file tracepoint.c for more details.
3415 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3416 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3417 of most MIPS variants.
3421 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3422 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3423 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3427 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3428 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3429 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3430 the possible architectures.
3432 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3434 * New native configurations
3436 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3437 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3438 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3439 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3440 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3441 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3445 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3446 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3447 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3448 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3449 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3451 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3455 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3456 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3457 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3458 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3459 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3463 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3465 * Windows 95/NT native
3467 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3468 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3469 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3470 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3471 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3473 * dont-repeat command
3475 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3476 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3477 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3478 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3480 * Send break instead of ^C
3482 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3483 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3484 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3486 * Remote protocol timeout
3488 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3489 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3490 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3492 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3494 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3495 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3496 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3497 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3498 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3500 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3501 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3502 automatically on hpux10.
3504 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3506 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3508 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3510 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3511 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3512 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3513 every character. The default value is 1050.
3515 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3517 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3518 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3519 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3520 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3521 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3522 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3524 * Speedups for remote debugging
3526 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3527 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3528 and more efficient S-record downloading.
3530 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3532 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3533 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3535 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3537 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
3539 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3540 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3542 * Remote targets use caching
3544 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3545 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3546 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3547 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3548 off' turns the the data cache off.
3550 * Remote targets may have threads
3552 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3553 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3554 gdb/remote.c for details.
3558 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3559 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3560 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3561 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3562 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3563 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3564 sequence is something like
3566 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3568 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3572 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3573 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3574 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3575 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3576 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3577 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3578 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3579 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3583 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3584 but does simplify configuration and building.
3588 GDB now supports hpux10.
3590 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3592 * New native configurations
3594 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3595 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3596 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3597 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3601 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3602 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3603 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3604 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3607 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3609 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3610 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3611 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3612 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3613 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3615 * Arguments to user-defined commands
3617 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3618 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3621 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3623 To execute the command use:
3626 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3627 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3628 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3630 * New `if' and `while' commands
3632 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3633 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3634 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3635 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3636 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3637 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3638 if the expression is zero.
3640 * Fortran source language mode
3642 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3643 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3644 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3645 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3648 * Better HPUX support
3650 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3651 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3652 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3653 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3654 that behavior do the following before running the program:
3660 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3661 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3667 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3668 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3671 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3672 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3674 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3676 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3677 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3678 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3679 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3680 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3681 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3683 * New DOS host serial code
3685 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3686 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3689 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3691 * New "complete" command
3693 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3694 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3696 * Trailing space optional in prompt
3698 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3699 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3701 * Breakpoint hit counts
3703 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3704 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3705 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3706 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3707 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3710 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3712 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3713 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3714 arrays actually contain only short strings.
3716 * Shared library breakpoints
3718 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3719 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3721 * Hardware watchpoints
3723 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3724 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3726 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
3730 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3731 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3733 * Improved Irix 5 support
3735 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3737 * Improved HPPA support
3739 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3741 * New native configurations
3743 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3744 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3745 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3746 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3750 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3751 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3754 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3756 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3757 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3761 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3762 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3764 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3766 * Irix 5 is now supported
3770 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3771 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3772 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3773 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3774 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3777 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3779 * User visible changes:
3783 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3784 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3785 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3786 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3787 debugging info for the mips target).
3789 * DEC Alpha native support
3791 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3792 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3793 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3794 Alpha-specific notes.
3796 * Preliminary thread implementation
3798 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3800 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
3802 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3803 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3806 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3808 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3809 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3810 call methods, ...etc.
3812 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3814 * User visible changes:
3816 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3817 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3818 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3819 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3821 Filename completion now works.
3823 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3824 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3825 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3827 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3828 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3829 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3830 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3831 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3835 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3836 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3839 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3843 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3844 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3845 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3849 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3850 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3851 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3852 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3853 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3857 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3858 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3859 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3861 * New targets supported
3863 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3864 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3865 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3866 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3867 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3869 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3870 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3871 GO32 memory extender.
3873 * New remote protocols
3875 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3877 * New source languages supported
3879 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3880 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3881 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3884 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3886 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3888 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3889 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3890 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3891 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3892 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3893 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3895 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3897 * Faster and better demangling
3899 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3900 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3901 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3902 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3903 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3904 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3907 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3908 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3909 compiler does not actually implement.
3911 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3913 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3914 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3915 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3916 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3917 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3918 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3921 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3922 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3924 * Improved configure script
3926 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3927 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3928 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3929 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3931 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3932 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3933 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3934 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3935 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3936 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3938 * Documentation improvements
3940 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3941 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3942 before submitting changes.
3944 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3945 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3946 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3947 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3948 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3950 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3951 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3952 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3953 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3954 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3955 around this problem.
3959 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3960 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3961 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3964 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3965 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3967 * New native hosts supported
3969 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3970 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3972 * New targets supported
3974 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3976 * New file formats supported
3978 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3979 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3983 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3985 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3986 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3988 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3989 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3990 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3992 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3993 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3995 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3996 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3997 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4000 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4001 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4002 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4003 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4004 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4006 * Internal improvements
4008 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4009 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4011 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4012 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4013 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4014 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4015 shared code that handles any of them.
4017 * New command line options
4019 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4023 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4024 General Public License.
4026 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4028 * Host/native/target split
4030 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4031 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4032 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4033 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4034 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4036 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4037 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4038 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4039 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4040 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4041 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4042 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4044 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4045 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4046 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4048 * New hosts supported
4050 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4051 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4052 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4054 * New targets supported
4056 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4057 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4059 * New native hosts supported
4061 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4062 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4063 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4065 * New file formats supported
4067 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4068 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4069 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4073 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4074 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4075 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4077 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4079 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4080 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4081 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4082 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4086 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4087 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4088 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4090 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4094 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4095 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4098 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4099 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4101 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4102 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4103 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4104 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4105 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4106 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4108 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4109 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4110 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4111 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4115 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4116 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4117 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4118 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4119 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4121 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4122 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4123 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4124 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4128 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4129 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4130 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4131 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4132 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4133 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4134 each instruction being stepped through.
4136 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4137 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4139 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4140 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4141 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4142 processor with a serial port.
4146 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4147 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4148 supported, and what files each one uses.
4152 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4153 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4154 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4155 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4157 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4158 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4159 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4160 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4164 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4165 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4166 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4167 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4168 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4169 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4171 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4174 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4176 * Better support for C++ function names
4178 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4179 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4180 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4181 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4182 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4184 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4185 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4186 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4187 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4188 for the list of formats.
4190 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4192 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4193 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4194 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4195 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4196 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4197 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4200 * New 'maintenance' command
4202 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4203 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4204 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4206 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4207 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4208 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4209 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4210 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4211 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4213 The following commands are new:
4215 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4216 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4217 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4219 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4221 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4222 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4223 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4224 read after argv processing.
4226 * New hosts supported
4228 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4230 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4232 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4233 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4234 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4235 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4236 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4239 * New targets supported
4241 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4243 * More smarts about finding #include files
4245 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4246 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4247 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4248 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4249 the one that contains your sources.
4251 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4252 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4253 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4255 * Interesting infernals change
4257 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4258 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4259 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4260 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4262 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4264 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4265 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4266 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4268 See the ChangeLog for details.
4270 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4272 * New machines supported (host and target)
4274 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4276 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4278 * New malloc package
4280 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4281 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4282 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4283 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4284 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4285 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4289 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4290 'help info proc' for details.
4292 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4294 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4295 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4298 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4300 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4301 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4302 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4303 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4304 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4305 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4307 * Cross byte order fixes
4309 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4310 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4312 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4314 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4315 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4316 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4317 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4318 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4319 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4320 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4321 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4322 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4323 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4325 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4326 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4327 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4328 slower, but makes future operations faster.
4330 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4331 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4332 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4335 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4337 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4338 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4339 shared across multiple host platforms.
4341 * longjmp() handling
4343 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4344 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4345 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4346 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4350 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4351 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4356 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4357 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4358 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4360 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4362 * New machines supported (host and target)
4364 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4366 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4367 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4369 * New machines supported (target)
4371 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4375 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4376 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4377 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4379 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4380 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4381 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4382 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4383 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4386 * New features for SVR4
4388 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4389 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4390 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4392 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4393 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4394 it prints the address mappings of the process.
4396 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4397 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4399 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4401 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4402 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4403 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4404 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4405 same code linked statically.
4409 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4410 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4411 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4412 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4413 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4414 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4418 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4419 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4420 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4423 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4425 * New machines supported (host and target)
4427 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4428 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4429 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4431 * Almost SCO Unix support
4433 We had hoped to support:
4434 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4435 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4436 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4437 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4439 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4441 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4442 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4443 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4444 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4449 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4450 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4451 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4455 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4456 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4457 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4459 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4461 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4462 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4463 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4465 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4466 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4467 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4468 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4471 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4472 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4473 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4474 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4477 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4478 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4481 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4482 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4483 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4486 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4488 * Improved configuration
4490 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4491 Porting BFD is simpler.
4495 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4496 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4497 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4498 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4502 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4504 * New host supported (not target)
4506 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4509 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4511 * Multiple source language support
4513 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4514 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4515 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4516 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4517 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4518 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4522 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4523 currently under development at the State University of New York at
4524 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4525 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4527 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4528 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4529 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4531 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4532 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4536 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4537 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4538 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4539 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4542 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4544 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4545 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4546 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4547 examining core files.
4551 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4554 * New machines supported (host and target)
4556 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4557 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4558 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4560 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4562 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4564 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4566 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4567 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4568 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4570 * New remote interfaces
4576 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4580 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4582 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4583 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4584 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4585 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4586 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4587 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4588 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4589 stub on the target system.
4591 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4593 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4594 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4595 object file types such as a.out and coff.
4597 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4598 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4601 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4603 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4604 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4606 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4607 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4608 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4610 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4611 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4612 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4613 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4615 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4616 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4617 it is already running. Default is ON.
4619 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4620 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4621 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4622 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4625 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4626 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4627 or the value of the environment variable
4630 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4631 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4634 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4635 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4636 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4638 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4639 history expansion will be performed on
4640 command line input. The default is OFF.
4642 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4643 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4644 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4646 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4647 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4648 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4651 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4652 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4653 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4656 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4657 ``set width'' instead.
4659 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4660 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4661 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4662 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4664 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4667 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4670 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4673 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4676 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4678 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4679 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4680 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4684 * Support for Shared Libraries
4686 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4687 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4688 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4689 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4690 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4691 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4692 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4693 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4695 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4696 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4697 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4699 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4704 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4705 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4706 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4707 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4708 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4709 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4711 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4713 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4715 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4716 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4717 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4720 * C++ multiple inheritance
4722 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4725 * C++ exception handling
4727 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4728 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4729 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4732 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4733 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4734 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4736 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4737 current stack frame.
4740 * Minor command changes
4742 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4743 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4744 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4746 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4747 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4748 frames without printing.
4750 * New directory command
4752 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4753 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4754 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4755 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4756 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4758 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4760 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4763 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4764 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4765 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4766 where the program that you are debugging will run.