1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.1:
6 * New native configurations
8 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
11 * REMOVED configurations and files
13 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
14 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
15 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
16 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
17 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
18 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
19 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
20 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
21 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
23 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
25 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
27 * Removed --with-mmalloc
29 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
30 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
32 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
34 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
35 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
36 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
37 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
39 * Revised SPARC target
41 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
42 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
43 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
44 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
45 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
49 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
50 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
51 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
54 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
56 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
57 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
60 * C++ nested types and namespaces
62 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
63 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
64 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
65 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
66 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
67 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
68 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
69 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
70 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
72 * New native configurations
74 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
75 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
76 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
77 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
78 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
80 * New debugging protocols
82 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
84 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
86 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
87 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
88 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
90 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
92 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
93 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
94 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
97 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
98 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
99 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
100 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
101 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
102 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
103 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
104 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
105 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
107 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
109 * REMOVED configurations and files
111 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
112 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
113 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
114 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
115 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
116 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
117 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
118 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
119 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
120 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
121 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
122 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
123 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
124 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
125 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
126 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
127 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
129 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
133 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
136 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
138 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
139 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
140 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
143 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
144 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
149 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
150 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
151 remote protocol documentation for details.
153 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
155 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
156 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
157 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
160 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
162 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
163 per-thread variables.
165 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
167 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
168 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
170 * Separate debug info.
172 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
173 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
174 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
175 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
176 and optional debug files.
178 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
180 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
181 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
184 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
185 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
189 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
190 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
191 considered "useable".
193 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
195 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
196 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
199 * GDB supports logging output to a file
201 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
202 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
204 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
206 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
207 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
210 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
212 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
213 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
217 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
218 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
219 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
220 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
221 data, for more informative profiling results.
223 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
225 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
226 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
227 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
229 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
232 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
233 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
234 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
235 in a subsequent -var-update.
237 * New native configurations.
239 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
241 * Multi-arched targets.
243 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
244 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
246 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
248 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
249 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
250 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
253 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
254 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
255 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
256 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
257 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
258 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
259 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
260 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
261 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
262 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
263 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
264 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
266 * REMOVED configurations and files
269 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
270 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
271 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
272 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
273 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
274 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
276 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
277 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
278 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
279 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
280 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
281 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
283 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
285 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
286 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
287 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
288 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
289 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
291 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
293 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
295 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
296 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
297 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
298 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
299 shared libs like mad''.
301 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
303 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
304 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
305 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
306 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
308 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
310 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
311 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
314 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
315 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
317 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
318 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
320 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
321 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
322 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
323 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
325 * Multi-arched targets.
327 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
328 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
330 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
331 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
332 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
336 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
339 * New native configurations
341 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
342 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
343 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
344 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
346 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
348 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
349 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
350 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
353 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
354 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
355 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
356 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
357 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
358 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
359 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
360 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
361 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
362 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
364 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
365 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
369 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
371 * REMOVED configurations and files
373 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
374 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
375 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
376 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
377 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
379 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
381 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
383 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
384 commands. The default is 1024.
386 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
388 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
390 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
392 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
393 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
394 from a file into memory (restore).
396 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
398 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
399 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
400 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
402 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
410 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
411 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
412 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
414 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
415 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
416 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
418 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
419 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
420 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
422 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
423 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
424 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
426 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
428 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
430 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
431 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
432 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
433 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
434 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
435 (notably embedded) targets.
437 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
439 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
440 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
441 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
442 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
444 * New command line option
446 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
448 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
450 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
451 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
452 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
453 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
454 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
455 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
456 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
457 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
458 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
459 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
461 * Changes in ARM configurations.
463 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
464 configuration is fully multi-arch.
466 * New native configurations
468 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
469 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
470 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
471 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
475 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
477 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
479 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
480 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
481 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
484 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
485 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
486 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
487 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
488 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
490 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
492 * REMOVED configurations and files
494 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
496 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
497 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
498 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
499 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
500 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
501 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
502 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
503 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
504 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
505 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
506 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
508 * Changes to command line processing
510 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
511 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
513 * Changes to key bindings
515 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
517 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
519 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
521 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
524 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
526 Numerous documentation fixes.
528 Numerous testsuite fixes.
530 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
532 * New native configurations
534 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
535 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
536 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
537 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
539 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
543 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
545 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
547 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
549 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
550 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
551 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
552 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
553 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
555 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
556 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
557 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
558 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
559 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
560 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
561 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
562 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
564 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
565 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
567 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
568 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
569 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
572 * REMOVED configurations and files
574 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
575 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
577 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
581 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
583 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
584 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
589 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
591 * The MI enabled by default.
593 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
594 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
595 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
596 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
597 which is now deprecated.
599 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
601 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
602 main features are supported:
604 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
606 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
609 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
611 - a Pascal expression parser.
613 However, some important features are not yet supported.
615 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
617 - there are some problems with boolean types;
619 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
620 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
622 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
624 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
626 * Changes in completion.
628 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
629 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
630 users expect at the shell prompt.
632 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
633 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
634 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
635 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
636 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
637 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
638 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
640 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
642 * New platform-independent commands:
644 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
645 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
646 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
648 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
650 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
651 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
652 many threads as your system allows you to have.
654 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
656 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
657 multi-threaded programs though.
659 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
661 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
663 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
664 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
667 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
669 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
670 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
671 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
672 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
673 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
676 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
677 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
678 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
680 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
682 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
683 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
685 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
686 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
689 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
690 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
691 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
692 a given linear address.
694 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
695 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
696 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
698 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
700 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
702 * Changes in documentation.
704 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
705 Documentation License.
707 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
710 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
712 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
715 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
716 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
717 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
719 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
721 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
722 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
723 contents of this file.
727 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
729 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
731 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
733 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
734 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
735 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
736 greater level of detail.
738 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
740 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
741 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
742 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
745 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
747 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
748 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
749 machines ``out of the box''.
751 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
752 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
753 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
754 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
755 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
757 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
758 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
759 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
760 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
761 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
763 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
764 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
767 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
770 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
771 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
772 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
773 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
775 * New native configurations
777 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
778 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
782 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
783 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
784 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
785 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
787 * OBSOLETE configurations
789 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
790 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
792 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
795 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
796 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
797 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
798 be permanently REMOVED.
800 * Gould support removed
802 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
804 * New features for SVR4
806 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
807 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
808 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
810 * Many C++ enhancements
812 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
813 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
815 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
817 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
818 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
819 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
820 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
822 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
823 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
825 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
827 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
828 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
829 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
831 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
832 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
834 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
836 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
837 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
838 include ``set remote P-packet''.
840 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
842 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
843 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
844 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
846 * ``apropos'' command added.
848 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
849 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
850 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
854 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
855 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
856 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
857 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
858 enabled by configuring with:
860 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
862 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
864 * New native configurations
866 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
867 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
868 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
872 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
873 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
874 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
876 * OBSOLETE configurations
878 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
880 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
881 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
882 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
883 be permanently REMOVED.
887 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
888 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
889 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
890 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
891 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
892 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
893 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
898 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
900 * set extension-language
902 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
903 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
904 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
905 set extension-language .c c++
906 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
907 and their associated languages.
909 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
911 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
912 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
913 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
917 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
918 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
920 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
921 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
923 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
924 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
925 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
926 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
927 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
928 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
929 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
930 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
932 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
933 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
934 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
935 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
939 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
940 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
941 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
942 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
943 for xdb and dbx commands.
947 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
948 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
949 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
951 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
952 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
953 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
955 * Debugging across forks
957 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
962 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
963 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
964 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
966 * GDB remote protocol additions
968 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
969 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
970 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
971 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
973 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
974 full 64-bit address. The command
976 set remoteaddresssize 32
978 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
979 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
982 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
983 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
985 maint packet heythere
987 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
988 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
991 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
992 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
993 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
995 * Tracing can collect general expressions
997 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
998 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
999 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1001 * mask-address variable for Mips
1003 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1004 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1005 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1007 * Higher serial baud rates
1009 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1010 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1011 to achieve all of these rates.)
1015 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1016 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1019 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1021 * New native configurations
1023 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1024 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1025 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1026 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1027 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1028 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1029 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1033 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1034 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1035 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1036 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1037 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1038 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1039 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1040 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1041 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1042 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1043 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1045 * New debugging protocols
1047 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1048 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1049 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1050 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1051 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1052 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1056 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1057 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1062 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1063 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1065 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1067 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1068 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1069 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1071 * Live range splitting
1073 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1074 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1075 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1079 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1080 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1084 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1085 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1086 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1091 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1096 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1097 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1098 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1099 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1100 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1101 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1105 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1106 the symbol at the specified address.
1110 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1111 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1112 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1113 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1114 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1118 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1119 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1120 of most MIPS variants.
1124 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1125 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1126 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1130 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1131 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1132 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1133 the possible architectures.
1135 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1137 * New native configurations
1139 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1140 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1141 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1142 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1143 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1144 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1148 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1149 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1150 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1151 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1152 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1154 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1158 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1159 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1160 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1161 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1162 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1166 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1168 * Windows 95/NT native
1170 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1171 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1172 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1173 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1174 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1176 * dont-repeat command
1178 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1179 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1180 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1181 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1183 * Send break instead of ^C
1185 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1186 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1187 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1189 * Remote protocol timeout
1191 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1192 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1193 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1195 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1197 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1198 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1199 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1200 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1201 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1203 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1204 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1205 automatically on hpux10.
1207 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1209 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1211 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1213 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1214 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1215 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1216 every character. The default value is 1050.
1218 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1220 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1221 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1222 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1223 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1224 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1225 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1227 * Speedups for remote debugging
1229 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1230 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1231 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1233 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1235 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1236 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1238 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1240 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1242 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1243 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1245 * Remote targets use caching
1247 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1248 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1249 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1250 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1251 off' turns the the data cache off.
1253 * Remote targets may have threads
1255 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1256 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1257 gdb/remote.c for details.
1261 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1262 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1263 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1264 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1265 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1266 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1267 sequence is something like
1269 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1271 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1275 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1276 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1277 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1278 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1279 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1280 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1281 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1282 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1286 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1287 but does simplify configuration and building.
1291 GDB now supports hpux10.
1293 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1295 * New native configurations
1297 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1298 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1299 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1300 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1304 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1305 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1306 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1307 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1310 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1312 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1313 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1314 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1315 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1316 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1318 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1320 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1321 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1324 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1326 To execute the command use:
1329 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1330 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1331 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1333 * New `if' and `while' commands
1335 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1336 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1337 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1338 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1339 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1340 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1341 if the expression is zero.
1343 * Fortran source language mode
1345 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1346 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1347 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1348 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1351 * Better HPUX support
1353 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1354 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1355 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1356 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1357 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1363 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1364 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1370 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1371 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1374 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1375 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1377 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1379 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1380 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1381 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1382 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1383 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1384 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1386 * New DOS host serial code
1388 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1389 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1392 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1394 * New "complete" command
1396 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1397 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1399 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1401 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1402 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1404 * Breakpoint hit counts
1406 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1407 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1408 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1409 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1410 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1413 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1415 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1416 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1417 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1419 * Shared library breakpoints
1421 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1422 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1424 * Hardware watchpoints
1426 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1427 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1429 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1433 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1434 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1436 * Improved Irix 5 support
1438 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1440 * Improved HPPA support
1442 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1444 * New native configurations
1446 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1447 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1448 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1449 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1453 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1454 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1457 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1459 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1460 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1464 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1465 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1467 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1469 * Irix 5 is now supported
1473 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1474 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1475 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1476 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1477 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1480 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1482 * User visible changes:
1486 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1487 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1488 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1489 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1490 debugging info for the mips target).
1492 * DEC Alpha native support
1494 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1495 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1496 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1497 Alpha-specific notes.
1499 * Preliminary thread implementation
1501 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1503 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1505 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1506 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1509 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1511 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1512 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1513 call methods, ...etc.
1515 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1517 * User visible changes:
1519 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1520 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1521 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1522 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1524 Filename completion now works.
1526 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1527 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1528 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1530 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1531 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1532 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1533 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1534 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1538 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1539 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1542 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1546 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1547 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1548 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1552 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1553 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1554 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1555 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1556 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1560 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1561 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1562 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1564 * New targets supported
1566 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1567 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1568 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1569 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1570 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1572 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1573 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1574 GO32 memory extender.
1576 * New remote protocols
1578 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1580 * New source languages supported
1582 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1583 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1584 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1587 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1589 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1591 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1592 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1593 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1594 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1595 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1596 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1598 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1600 * Faster and better demangling
1602 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1603 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1604 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1605 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1606 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1607 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1610 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1611 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1612 compiler does not actually implement.
1614 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1616 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1617 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1618 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1619 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1620 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1621 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1624 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1625 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1627 * Improved configure script
1629 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1630 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1631 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1632 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1634 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1635 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1636 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1637 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1638 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1639 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1641 * Documentation improvements
1643 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1644 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1645 before submitting changes.
1647 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1648 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1649 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1650 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1651 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1653 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1654 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1655 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1656 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1657 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1658 around this problem.
1662 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1663 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1664 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1667 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1668 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1670 * New native hosts supported
1672 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1673 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1675 * New targets supported
1677 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1679 * New file formats supported
1681 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1682 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1686 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1688 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1689 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1691 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1692 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1693 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1695 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1696 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1698 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1699 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1700 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1703 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1704 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1705 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1706 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1707 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1709 * Internal improvements
1711 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1712 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1714 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1715 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1716 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1717 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1718 shared code that handles any of them.
1720 * New command line options
1722 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1726 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1727 General Public License.
1729 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1731 * Host/native/target split
1733 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1734 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1735 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1736 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1737 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1739 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1740 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1741 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1742 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1743 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1744 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1745 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1747 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1748 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1749 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1751 * New hosts supported
1753 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1754 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1755 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1757 * New targets supported
1759 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1760 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1762 * New native hosts supported
1764 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1765 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1766 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1768 * New file formats supported
1770 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1771 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1772 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1776 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1777 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1778 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1780 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1782 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1783 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1784 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1785 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1789 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1790 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1791 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1793 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1797 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1798 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1801 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1802 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1804 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1805 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1806 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1807 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1808 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1809 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1811 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1812 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1813 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1814 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1818 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1819 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1820 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1821 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1822 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1824 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1825 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1826 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1827 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1831 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1832 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1833 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1834 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1835 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1836 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1837 each instruction being stepped through.
1839 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1840 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1842 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1843 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1844 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1845 processor with a serial port.
1849 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1850 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1851 supported, and what files each one uses.
1855 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1856 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1857 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1858 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1860 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1861 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1862 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1863 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1867 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1868 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1869 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1870 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1871 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1872 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1874 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1877 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1879 * Better support for C++ function names
1881 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1882 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1883 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1884 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1885 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1887 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1888 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1889 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1890 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1891 for the list of formats.
1893 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1895 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1896 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1897 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1898 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1899 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1900 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1903 * New 'maintenance' command
1905 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1906 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1907 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1909 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1910 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1911 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1912 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1913 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1914 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1916 The following commands are new:
1918 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1919 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1920 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1922 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1924 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1925 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1926 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1927 read after argv processing.
1929 * New hosts supported
1931 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1933 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1935 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1936 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1937 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1938 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1939 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1942 * New targets supported
1944 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1946 * More smarts about finding #include files
1948 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1949 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1950 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1951 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1952 the one that contains your sources.
1954 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1955 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1956 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1958 * Interesting infernals change
1960 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1961 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1962 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1963 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1965 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1967 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1968 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1969 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1971 See the ChangeLog for details.
1973 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1975 * New machines supported (host and target)
1977 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1979 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1981 * New malloc package
1983 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1984 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1985 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1986 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1987 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1988 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1992 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1993 'help info proc' for details.
1995 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1997 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1998 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2001 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2003 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2004 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2005 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2006 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2007 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2008 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2010 * Cross byte order fixes
2012 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2013 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2015 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2017 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2018 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2019 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2020 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2021 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2022 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2023 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2024 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2025 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2026 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2028 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2029 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2030 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2031 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2033 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2034 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2035 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2038 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2040 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2041 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2042 shared across multiple host platforms.
2044 * longjmp() handling
2046 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2047 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2048 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2049 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2053 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2054 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2059 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2060 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2061 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2063 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2065 * New machines supported (host and target)
2067 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2069 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2070 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2072 * New machines supported (target)
2074 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2078 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2079 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2080 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2082 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2083 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2084 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2085 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2086 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2089 * New features for SVR4
2091 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2092 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2093 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2095 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2096 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2097 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2099 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2100 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2102 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2104 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2105 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2106 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2107 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2108 same code linked statically.
2112 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2113 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2114 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2115 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2116 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2117 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2121 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2122 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2123 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2126 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2128 * New machines supported (host and target)
2130 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2131 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2132 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2134 * Almost SCO Unix support
2136 We had hoped to support:
2137 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2138 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2139 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2140 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2142 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2144 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2145 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2146 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2147 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2152 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2153 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2154 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2158 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2159 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2160 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2162 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2164 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2165 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2166 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2168 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2169 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2170 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2171 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2174 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2175 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2176 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2177 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2180 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2181 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2184 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2185 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2186 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2189 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2191 * Improved configuration
2193 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2194 Porting BFD is simpler.
2198 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2199 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2200 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2201 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2205 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2207 * New host supported (not target)
2209 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2212 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2214 * Multiple source language support
2216 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2217 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2218 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2219 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2220 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2221 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2225 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2226 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2227 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2228 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2230 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2231 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2232 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2234 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2235 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2239 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2240 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2241 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2242 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2245 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2247 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2248 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2249 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2250 examining core files.
2254 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2257 * New machines supported (host and target)
2259 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2260 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2261 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2263 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2265 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2267 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2269 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2270 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2271 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2273 * New remote interfaces
2279 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2283 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2285 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2286 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2287 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2288 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2289 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2290 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2291 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2292 stub on the target system.
2294 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2296 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2297 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2298 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2300 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2301 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2304 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2306 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2307 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2309 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2310 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2311 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2313 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2314 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2315 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2316 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2318 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2319 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2320 it is already running. Default is ON.
2322 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2323 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2324 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2325 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2328 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2329 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2330 or the value of the environment variable
2333 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2334 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2337 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2338 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2339 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2341 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2342 history expansion will be performed on
2343 command line input. The default is OFF.
2345 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2346 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2347 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2349 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2350 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2351 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2354 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2355 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2356 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2359 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2360 ``set width'' instead.
2362 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2363 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2364 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2365 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2367 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2370 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2373 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2376 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2379 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2381 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2382 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2383 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2387 * Support for Shared Libraries
2389 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2390 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2391 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2392 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2393 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2394 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2395 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2396 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2398 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2399 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2400 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2402 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2407 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2408 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2409 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2410 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2411 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2412 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2414 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2416 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2418 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2419 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2420 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2423 * C++ multiple inheritance
2425 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2428 * C++ exception handling
2430 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2431 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2432 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2435 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2436 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2437 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2439 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2440 current stack frame.
2443 * Minor command changes
2445 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2446 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2447 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2449 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2450 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2451 frames without printing.
2453 * New directory command
2455 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2456 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2457 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2458 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2459 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2461 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2463 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2466 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2467 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2468 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2469 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / external / binutils.git / blob