1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.6
7 maint set|show per-command
8 maint set|show per-command space
9 maint set|show per-command time
10 maint set|show per-command symtab
11 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
13 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
14 buffer in Common Trace Format.
18 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
21 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
23 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
24 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
25 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
26 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
28 set|show record full insn-number-max
29 set|show record full stop-at-limit
30 set|show record full memory-query
32 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
33 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
34 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
35 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
36 This new recording method can be enabled using:
40 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
41 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
43 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
44 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
45 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
47 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
48 instruction granularity
50 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
53 * New native configurations
55 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
56 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
60 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
61 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
62 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
63 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
65 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
66 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
67 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
68 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
69 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
70 --data-directory command-line option.
72 * New command line options:
74 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
75 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
77 * Removed command line options
79 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
82 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
85 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
89 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
91 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
93 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
95 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
97 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
98 of architecture in the Python API.
100 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
101 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
103 * New Python-based convenience functions:
105 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
106 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
108 ** $_regex(str, regex)
110 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
113 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
114 default for GCC since November 2000.
116 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
118 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
119 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
121 * New configure options
123 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
124 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
125 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
126 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
127 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
128 options allow the user to override that default.
130 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
133 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
134 conditions to be attached.
137 List the BFDs known to GDB.
139 python-interactive [command]
141 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
142 and print the result of expressions.
145 "py" is a new alias for "python".
147 enable type-printer [name]...
148 disable type-printer [name]...
149 Enable or disable type printers.
151 set debug notification
152 show debug notification
153 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
155 set trace-buffer-size
156 show trace-buffer-size
157 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
161 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
162 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
167 set print type methods (on|off)
168 show print type methods
169 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
170 The default is to show them.
172 set print type typedefs (on|off)
173 show print type typedefs
174 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
175 The default is to show them.
177 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
178 show filename-display
179 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
180 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
184 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
185 "=cmd-param-changed".
186 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
187 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
188 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
189 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
190 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
191 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
192 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
193 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
195 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
196 containing the absolute file name when GDB can determine it and source
198 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
199 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
200 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
201 library load/unload events.
202 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
203 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
204 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
205 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
206 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
207 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
209 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
210 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
211 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
212 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
217 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
218 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
220 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
222 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
223 for more x32 ABI info.
225 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
227 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
229 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
230 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
231 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
232 "info os files" lists file descriptors
233 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
234 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
235 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
236 "info os msg" lists message queues
237 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
239 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
240 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
241 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
242 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
243 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
244 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
246 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
247 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
248 record/replay support.
250 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
254 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
257 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
259 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
260 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
262 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
264 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
265 the source at which the symbol was defined.
267 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
268 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
269 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
272 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
273 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
275 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
276 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
277 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
279 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
280 object associated with a PC value.
282 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
283 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
285 * Go language support.
286 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
289 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
290 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
292 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
293 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
295 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
296 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
297 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
298 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
299 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
302 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
303 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
304 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
307 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
308 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
310 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
313 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
314 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
315 command does. For instance:
317 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
319 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
320 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
321 created, using the "condition" command.
323 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
324 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
326 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
328 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
329 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
330 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
331 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
332 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
333 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
334 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
335 files with older .gdb_index sections.
337 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
338 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
339 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
340 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
341 the .gdb_index section.
343 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
345 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
350 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
352 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
356 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
357 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
358 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
360 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
361 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
363 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
366 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
367 C++ and Java objects.
369 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
370 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
371 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
372 configured with '--with-python'.
374 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
375 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
376 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
377 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
378 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
379 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
380 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
382 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
383 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
384 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
385 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
387 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
388 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
389 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
390 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
392 ** "set print symbol"
394 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
395 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
396 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
398 * Deprecated commands
400 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
401 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
405 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
406 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
408 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
409 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
410 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
411 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
417 show mips compression
418 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
419 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
422 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
424 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
425 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
426 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
427 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
429 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
433 Disable auto-loading globally.
436 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
438 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
439 show auto-load gdb-scripts
440 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
442 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
443 show auto-load python-scripts
444 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
446 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
447 show auto-load local-gdbinit
448 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
450 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
451 show auto-load libthread-db
452 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
454 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
455 show auto-load scripts-directory
456 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
457 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
458 of the directories listed by this option.
459 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
461 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
462 show auto-load safe-path
463 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
464 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
466 set debug auto-load on|off
468 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
470 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
472 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
473 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
474 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
475 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
477 set dprintf-function <expr>
478 show dprintf-function
479 set dprintf-channel <expr>
481 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
482 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
484 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
485 show disconnected-dprintf
486 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
487 after GDB disconnects.
489 * New configure options
492 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
493 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
494 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
495 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
496 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
498 --with-auto-load-safe-path
499 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
500 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
502 --without-auto-load-safe-path
503 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
508 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
510 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
511 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
512 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
513 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
517 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
518 program without GDB involvement.
520 * New command line options
522 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
523 before loading inferior.
524 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
525 execute it before loading inferior.
527 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
529 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
530 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
531 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
532 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
535 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
536 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
538 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
539 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
540 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
541 target hardware watchpoint.
543 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
544 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
545 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
546 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
550 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
551 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
554 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
555 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
556 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
557 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
558 now "message", which just prints the error message without
561 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
564 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
565 modules library. This module provides functionality for
566 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
567 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
570 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
571 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
572 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
575 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
576 static_block will return the global and static blocks
577 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
578 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
580 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
582 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
585 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
586 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
587 available in the CLI.
589 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
590 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
591 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
594 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
597 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
598 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
599 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
600 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
601 any anonymous fields.
605 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
608 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
609 "=breakpoint-modified".
611 ** New command -ada-task-info.
613 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
614 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
615 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
618 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
619 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
620 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
621 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
622 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
624 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
625 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
627 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
628 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
629 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
630 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
631 use this option to specify where to find it.
633 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
634 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
635 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
636 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
637 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
638 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
639 section in the user manual for more details.
641 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
642 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
643 become available after that.
645 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
647 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
648 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
654 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
655 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
659 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
660 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
661 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
663 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
664 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
665 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
667 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
668 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
669 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
670 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
671 name starts with a hyphen.
673 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
674 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
675 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
676 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
677 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
678 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
679 number of bytes that will be collected.
682 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
683 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
684 setting the variable trace-notes.
687 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
688 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
689 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
692 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
693 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
694 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
695 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
696 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
699 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
700 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
701 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
705 set debug dwarf2-read
706 show debug dwarf2-read
707 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
708 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
710 set debug symtab-create
711 show debug symtab-create
712 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
713 creation. The default is off.
717 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
718 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
719 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
720 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
723 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
724 show print entry-values
725 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
726 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
727 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
729 set debug entry-values
730 show debug entry-values
731 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
732 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
734 set basenames-may-differ
735 show basenames-may-differ
736 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
737 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
738 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
739 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
740 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
741 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
742 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
743 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
749 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
750 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
751 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
752 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
755 show trace-stop-notes
756 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
757 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
758 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
759 started by someone else.
765 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
769 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
773 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
777 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
781 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
784 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
785 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
789 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
793 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
795 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
797 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
799 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
801 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
802 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
803 matches the given regular expression.
805 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
807 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
808 dumping the instruction opcodes.
810 * New command line options
812 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
813 This is mostly for testing purposes.
815 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
816 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
818 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
819 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
820 source path list instead of augmenting it.
822 * GDB now understands thread names.
824 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
825 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
827 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
828 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
831 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
832 has been integrated into GDB.
836 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
837 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
838 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
840 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
841 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
842 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
843 and allows for more dynamic content.
845 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
846 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
847 have an is_valid method.
849 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
850 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
851 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
853 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
855 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
856 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
857 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
858 that function like so:
860 result = some_value (10,20)
862 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
863 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
864 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
866 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
867 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
868 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
869 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
870 New function: register_pretty_printer.
872 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
873 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
875 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
877 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
880 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
881 holds the thread's name.
883 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
884 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
885 occurring in the process being debugged.
886 The following events are currently supported:
887 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
888 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
889 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
893 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
894 instantiation. For example, if you have:
896 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
898 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
899 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
900 was added to GCC 4.5.
902 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
903 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
904 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
905 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
906 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
907 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
909 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
910 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
911 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
912 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
913 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
915 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
916 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
917 execution to a label.
919 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
920 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
921 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
922 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
924 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
925 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
926 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
929 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
931 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
932 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
933 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
934 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
935 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
936 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
939 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
941 While now you see this:
944 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
946 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
949 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
950 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
951 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
952 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
954 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
955 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
956 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
957 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
958 section in the user manual for more details.
960 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
962 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
963 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
965 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
967 * New native configurations
969 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
973 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
975 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
976 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
977 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
978 in the GDB user manual.
980 * Guile support was removed.
982 * New features in the GNU simulator
984 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
986 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
988 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
990 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
992 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
993 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
994 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
995 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
996 was always disabled for such configurations.
1000 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1002 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1003 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1013 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1014 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1015 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1017 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1019 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1020 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1021 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1022 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1024 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1025 mentioned flavors of operators.
1027 ** static const class members
1029 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1030 class definition has been fixed.
1032 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1034 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1035 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1036 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1037 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1038 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1039 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1041 * Static tracepoints
1043 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1044 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1045 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1046 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1047 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1048 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1049 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1050 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1051 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1052 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1053 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1054 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1055 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1056 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1057 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1058 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1059 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1060 the "New remote packets" section below.
1062 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1064 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1065 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1066 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1067 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1071 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1072 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1073 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1074 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1075 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1076 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1077 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1079 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1082 * New remote packets
1086 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1090 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1091 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1092 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1093 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1094 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1095 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1099 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1103 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1106 qXfer:statictrace:read
1108 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1109 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1110 to gdb's qSupported query.
1114 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1118 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1119 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1121 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1122 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1125 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1127 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1128 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1129 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1130 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1132 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1133 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1134 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1135 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1136 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1137 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1138 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1140 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1141 for static tracepoints support.
1143 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1145 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1146 it understands register description.
1148 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1150 * X86 general purpose registers
1152 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1153 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1154 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1155 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1156 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1158 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1159 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1160 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1161 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1162 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1163 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1165 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1166 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1167 in the specified file.
1169 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1170 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1171 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1172 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1173 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1174 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1175 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1176 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1177 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1178 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1182 eval template, expressions...
1183 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1184 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1186 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1187 show target-file-system-kind
1188 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1191 save breakpoints <filename>
1192 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1193 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1194 definitions, use the `source' command.
1196 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1199 info static-tracepoint-markers
1200 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1202 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1203 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1204 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1208 Enable and disable observer mode.
1210 set may-write-registers on|off
1211 set may-write-memory on|off
1212 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1213 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1214 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1215 set may-interrupt on|off
1216 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1217 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1218 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1219 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1220 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1221 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1222 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1224 set record memory-query on|off
1225 show record memory-query
1226 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1227 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1232 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1236 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1237 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1238 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1239 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1240 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1242 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
1243 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1244 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1245 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
1247 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
1248 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1250 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
1252 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
1254 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1256 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1257 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1258 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1260 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1261 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1262 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1263 regular breakpoints.
1267 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1269 * D language support.
1270 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1273 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1274 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1275 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1276 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1277 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1279 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1280 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1281 conditions of the form:
1283 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1285 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1286 interface mentioned above.
1288 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
1292 ** Namespace Support
1294 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1295 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1296 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1297 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1298 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1302 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1303 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1308 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1309 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1313 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
1318 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
1321 * Multi-program debugging.
1323 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1324 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1325 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1326 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1327 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1328 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1329 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1330 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1332 * New tracing features
1334 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1336 ** Trace state variables
1338 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1339 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1340 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1341 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1342 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1343 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1344 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1345 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1346 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1347 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
1351 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1352 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1353 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1354 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1355 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1356 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1357 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1358 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1359 the regular trace command.
1361 ** Disconnected tracing
1363 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1364 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1365 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1366 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1367 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1371 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1372 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1373 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1374 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1375 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1376 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1379 ** Circular trace buffer
1381 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1382 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1383 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1384 not be available for all target agents.
1389 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1390 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1393 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1394 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1397 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1398 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1401 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1402 "set script-extension" (see below).
1404 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1406 record save [<FILENAME>]
1407 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1408 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1410 record restore <FILENAME>
1411 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1412 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1414 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1417 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1418 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1419 inferior has loaded.
1424 maint info program-spaces
1425 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1427 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1428 show remote interrupt-sequence
1429 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1430 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1431 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1432 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1433 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1435 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1436 show remote interrupt-on-connect
1437 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1438 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1441 set remotebreak [on | off]
1443 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1445 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1446 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1449 List trace state variables and their values.
1451 delete tvariable $NAME ...
1452 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1455 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1456 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1458 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1459 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1461 * New expression syntax
1463 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1464 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1468 set follow-exec-mode new|same
1469 show follow-exec-mode
1470 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1471 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1472 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1474 set default-collect EXPR, ...
1475 show default-collect
1476 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1477 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1478 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1480 set disconnected-tracing
1481 show disconnected-tracing
1482 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1483 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1486 set circular-trace-buffer
1487 show circular-trace-buffer
1488 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1489 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1490 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1491 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1493 set script-extension off|soft|strict
1494 show script-extension
1495 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1496 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1497 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1498 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1500 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1502 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1503 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1504 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1505 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1506 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1507 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1508 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1511 * Python API Improvements
1513 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1514 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1515 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1517 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1518 `is_base_class' attribute.
1520 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1522 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1523 evaluate an expression.
1525 * New remote packets
1528 Define a trace state variable.
1531 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1534 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1537 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1540 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1544 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1546 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1547 much more reliable. In particular:
1548 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1549 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1550 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1551 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1552 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1553 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1554 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1555 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1556 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1557 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1558 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1559 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1560 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1561 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1562 non-threaded programs.
1564 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1565 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1566 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1569 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1571 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1572 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1573 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1574 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1575 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1577 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1578 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1579 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1580 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1581 for tracepoint actions.
1583 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1584 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1585 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1587 * Process record and replay
1589 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1590 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1591 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1594 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1595 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1596 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1599 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1600 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1603 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1604 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1605 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1606 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1607 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1608 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1609 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1610 the installation instructions for more information.
1612 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1613 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1614 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1615 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1617 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1618 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1620 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1621 now complete on file names.
1623 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1624 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1625 For instance, consider:
1627 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1628 # struct example variable;
1631 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1632 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1634 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1635 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1637 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1638 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1641 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1642 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1643 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1645 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1646 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1647 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1648 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1650 * New remote packets
1653 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1656 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1657 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1658 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1661 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1662 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1665 Obtains additional operating system information
1669 Read or write additional signal information.
1671 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1673 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1674 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1675 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1677 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1678 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1680 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1681 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1682 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1684 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1685 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1687 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1689 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1691 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1692 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1694 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1695 list of section offsets.
1697 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1698 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1699 have also been fixed.
1701 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1702 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1703 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1705 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1708 template<typename T> class C { };
1711 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1713 ptype C<char const *>
1714 ptype C<char const*>
1715 ptype C<const char *>
1716 ptype C<const char*>
1718 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1720 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1721 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1723 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1724 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1725 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1727 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1728 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1730 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1733 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1734 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1736 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1737 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1742 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1743 available is determined at configure time.
1745 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1747 * Ada tasking support
1749 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1753 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1755 Print detailed information about task number N.
1757 Print the task number of the current task.
1759 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1761 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1762 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1764 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1766 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1767 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1768 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1769 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1770 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1771 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1774 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1775 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1778 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1779 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1780 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1781 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1784 * Multi-architecture debugging.
1786 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1787 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1788 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1789 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1790 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1792 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1793 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1794 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1795 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1796 --enable-targets configure option.
1798 * Non-stop mode debugging.
1800 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1801 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1802 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1803 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1804 section in the user manual for more information.
1806 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1807 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1808 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1809 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1810 extensions on linux targets.
1812 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1814 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1815 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1816 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1817 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1818 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1819 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1820 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1821 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1822 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1824 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1826 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1828 maint set python print-stack
1829 maint show python print-stack
1830 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1833 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1838 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1842 Show operating system information about processes.
1845 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1848 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1851 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1854 Kill inferior number NUM.
1858 set spu stop-on-load
1859 show spu stop-on-load
1860 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1862 set spu auto-flush-cache
1863 show spu auto-flush-cache
1864 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1865 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1867 set sh calling-convention
1868 show sh calling-convention
1869 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1872 show debug timestamp
1873 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1875 set disassemble-next-line
1876 show disassemble-next-line
1877 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1880 set remote noack-packet
1881 show remote noack-packet
1882 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1883 under "New remote packets."
1885 set remote query-attached-packet
1886 show remote query-attached-packet
1887 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1889 set remote read-siginfo-object
1890 show remote read-siginfo-object
1891 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1894 set remote write-siginfo-object
1895 show remote write-siginfo-object
1896 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1899 set remote reverse-continue
1900 show remote reverse-continue
1901 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1903 set remote reverse-step
1904 show remote reverse-step
1905 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1907 set displaced-stepping
1908 show displaced-stepping
1909 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1910 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1911 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1914 show debug displaced
1915 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1917 maint set internal-error
1918 maint show internal-error
1919 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1921 maint set internal-warning
1922 maint show internal-warning
1923 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
1928 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1930 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1931 show multiple-symbols
1932 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1933 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1934 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1936 set breakpoint always-inserted
1937 show breakpoint always-inserted
1938 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1939 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1940 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1942 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1943 show arm fallback-mode
1944 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1946 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1947 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1948 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1949 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1951 set disable-randomization
1952 show disable-randomization
1953 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1954 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1955 multiple debugging sessions.
1959 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1964 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1965 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1966 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1967 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1969 set target-wide-charset
1970 show target-wide-charset
1971 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1972 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1974 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1976 set tcp connect-timeout
1977 show tcp connect-timeout
1978 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1979 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1980 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1982 set libthread-db-search-path
1983 show libthread-db-search-path
1984 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1987 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1988 show schedule-multiple
1989 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1990 the current process.
1994 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1995 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1996 affecting correctness.
1998 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1999 show interactive-mode
2000 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2001 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2002 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2003 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2004 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2009 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2010 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2011 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2015 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2016 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2017 alias for the `fork' command.
2020 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2021 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2022 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2025 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2026 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2027 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2031 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2032 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2033 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2036 * New native configurations
2038 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2040 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2044 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2045 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2046 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2049 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2050 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2056 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2058 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2060 * New native configurations
2062 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2063 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2067 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2068 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2070 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2072 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2073 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2074 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2075 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2077 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2078 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2080 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2083 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2084 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2085 and in inlined functions.
2087 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2088 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2089 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2091 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2093 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2094 registers on PowerPC targets.
2096 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2097 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2099 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2100 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2102 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2103 extended-remote mode.
2105 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2106 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2107 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2108 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2110 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2111 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2112 target architectures.
2114 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2115 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2116 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2117 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2119 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2122 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2123 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2125 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2126 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2127 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2128 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2130 - Improved command completion in Ada
2133 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2138 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2139 show print frame-arguments
2140 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2141 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2146 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2153 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2155 * New remote packets
2162 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2165 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2169 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2171 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2173 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2174 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2175 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2177 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2178 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2179 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2181 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2182 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2185 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2186 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2188 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2189 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
2191 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2193 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2194 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2195 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2197 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2198 automatically displayed as character or string data.
2200 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2201 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2204 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2205 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
2206 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
2208 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2211 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2212 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2213 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2215 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2217 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2219 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2220 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2221 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2223 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2224 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2226 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2227 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2228 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2229 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2230 Windows and SymbianOS).
2232 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2233 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
2235 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2236 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
2242 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2243 when debugging using remote targets.
2245 set mem inaccessible-by-default
2246 show mem inaccessible-by-default
2247 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2248 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2249 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2250 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2251 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2253 set breakpoint auto-hw
2254 show breakpoint auto-hw
2255 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2256 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2257 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2258 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2259 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2260 including "next" and "finish".
2263 catch exception unhandled
2264 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2267 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2271 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2272 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2273 an alias to "set sysroot".
2276 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2277 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2280 * New native configurations
2282 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2285 unset tdesc filename
2287 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2288 not query the target for its built-in description.
2292 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
2293 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
2294 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
2296 * New remote packets
2299 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2300 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2302 qXfer:features:read:
2303 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2308 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2309 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2311 qXfer:libraries:read:
2312 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2313 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2314 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2315 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2319 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2327 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2328 i[34567]86-*-netware*
2329 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2330 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2332 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2335 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2336 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2345 * Other removed features
2352 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2359 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2364 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2365 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2370 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2371 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2373 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2375 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2376 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2377 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2378 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2380 MIPS ".pdr" sections
2382 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2383 in debugging information.
2387 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2388 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2390 set mips stack-arg-size
2391 set mips saved-gpreg-size
2393 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2395 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
2400 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
2402 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2403 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2404 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2406 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2407 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2410 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2411 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2413 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2414 stub provides the required support.
2416 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2417 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2422 unset substitute-path
2423 show substitute-path
2424 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2425 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2426 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2427 between compilation and debugging.
2431 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2432 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2433 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2437 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2439 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2440 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2442 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2444 * New remote packets
2447 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2448 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2449 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2450 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2454 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2455 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2457 qXfer:memory-map:read:
2458 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2459 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2464 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2466 * Removed remote packets
2469 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2470 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2472 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
2476 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2478 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2482 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2483 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2485 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2487 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2489 restart <n> Return the program state to a
2490 previously saved state.
2492 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2494 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2496 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2497 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2499 info forks List forks of the user program that
2500 are available to be debugged.
2502 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2503 forks of the user program that are
2504 available to be debugged.
2506 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2507 that are available to be debugged (and
2508 kill the forked process).
2510 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2511 that are available to be debugged (and
2512 allow the process to continue).
2516 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2518 * Improved Windows host support
2520 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2521 native console support, and remote communications using either
2522 network sockets or serial ports.
2524 * Improved Modula-2 language support
2526 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2527 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2528 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2529 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2530 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2531 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2535 The ARM rdi-share module.
2537 The Netware NLM debug server.
2539 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2541 * New native configurations
2543 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2544 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2548 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2550 * New command line options
2552 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2553 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2554 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2555 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2556 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2557 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2558 with the --command (-x) option.
2560 * Deprecated commands removed
2562 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2566 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2567 othernames set arm disassembler
2568 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2569 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2570 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2573 * New BSD user-level threads support
2575 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2576 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2579 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2580 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2581 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2583 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2584 are not yet supported.
2586 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2587 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2589 * REMOVED configurations and files
2591 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2592 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2593 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2595 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2597 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2598 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2601 * VAX floating point support
2603 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2605 * User-defined command support
2607 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2608 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2609 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2611 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2613 * New command line option
2615 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2618 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2620 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2621 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2622 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2623 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2624 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2626 * Internationalization
2628 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2629 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2630 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2634 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2635 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2636 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2638 * New native configurations
2640 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2644 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2645 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2647 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2649 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2650 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2651 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2654 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2655 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2656 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2666 powerpc bdm protocol
2668 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2669 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2671 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2673 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2674 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2675 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2676 permanently REMOVED.
2685 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2687 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2689 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2690 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2693 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2695 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2696 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2697 IRIX long double values).
2701 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2702 command. This problem has been fixed.
2704 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2706 * Fix for ``many threads''
2708 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2709 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2712 ptrace: No such process.
2713 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2715 This problem has been fixed.
2717 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2719 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2722 * New ``start'' command.
2724 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2726 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2728 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2729 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2730 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2732 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2733 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2734 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2735 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2736 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2737 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2738 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2739 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2740 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2742 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2744 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2745 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2746 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2747 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2748 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2750 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2751 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2752 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2754 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2756 * New native configurations
2758 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2759 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2760 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2761 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2762 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2763 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2764 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2766 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2768 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2769 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2770 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2771 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2772 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2773 work, was also included.
2775 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2776 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2786 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2787 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2789 * REMOVED configurations and files
2791 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2792 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2793 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2794 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2795 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2796 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2797 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2798 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2799 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2800 sonymips mips-sony-*
2801 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2803 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2805 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2807 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2808 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2809 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2810 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2813 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2815 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2816 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2817 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2818 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2819 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2820 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2823 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2825 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
2827 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2828 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2829 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2831 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2833 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2834 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2836 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2838 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2839 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2840 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2842 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2844 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2845 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2847 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2849 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2850 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2851 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2853 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2855 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2856 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2857 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2859 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
2861 * Removed --with-mmalloc
2863 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2864 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2866 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
2868 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2869 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2870 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2871 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2873 * Revised SPARC target
2875 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2876 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
2877 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2878 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2879 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
2883 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2884 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2885 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2888 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2890 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2891 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2894 * C++ nested types and namespaces
2896 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2897 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2898 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2899 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2900 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2901 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2902 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2903 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2904 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2906 * New native configurations
2908 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
2909 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2910 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
2911 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2912 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
2914 * New debugging protocols
2916 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2918 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2920 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2921 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2922 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2924 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2926 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2927 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2928 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2929 permanently REMOVED.
2931 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2932 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2933 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2934 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2935 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2936 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2937 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2938 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2939 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2940 sonymips mips-sony-*
2941 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2943 * REMOVED configurations and files
2945 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2946 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2947 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2948 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2949 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2950 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2951 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2952 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2953 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2954 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
2955 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2956 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2957 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
2958 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2959 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
2960 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2961 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2963 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2967 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2968 integrated into GDB.
2970 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2972 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2973 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2974 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2977 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2978 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2979 DWARF 2 CFI support.
2983 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2984 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2985 remote protocol documentation for details.
2987 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
2989 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2990 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2991 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2994 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2996 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2997 per-thread variables.
2999 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3001 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3002 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3004 * Separate debug info.
3006 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3007 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3008 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3009 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3010 and optional debug files.
3012 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3014 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3015 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3018 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3019 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3023 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3024 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3025 considered "useable".
3027 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3029 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3030 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3033 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3035 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3036 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3038 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3040 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3041 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3044 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3046 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3047 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3051 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3052 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3053 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3054 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3055 data, for more informative profiling results.
3057 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3059 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3060 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3061 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3063 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3066 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3067 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3068 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3069 in a subsequent -var-update.
3071 * New native configurations.
3073 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3075 * Multi-arched targets.
3077 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3078 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3080 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3082 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3083 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3084 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3085 permanently REMOVED.
3087 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3088 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3089 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3090 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3091 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3092 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3093 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3094 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3095 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3096 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3097 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3098 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3100 * REMOVED configurations and files
3103 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3104 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3105 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3106 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3107 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3108 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3110 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3111 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3112 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3113 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3114 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3115 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3117 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3119 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3120 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3121 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3122 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3123 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3125 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3127 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3129 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3130 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3131 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3132 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3133 shared libs like mad''.
3135 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3137 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3138 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3139 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3140 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3142 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3144 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3145 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3148 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3149 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3151 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3152 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3154 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3155 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3156 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3157 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3159 * Multi-arched targets.
3161 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3162 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3164 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3165 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3166 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3170 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3173 * New native configurations
3175 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3176 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3177 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3178 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3180 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3182 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3183 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3184 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3185 permanently REMOVED.
3187 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3188 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3189 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3190 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3191 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3192 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3193 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3194 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3195 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3196 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3198 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3199 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3201 * OBSOLETE languages
3203 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3205 * REMOVED configurations and files
3207 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3208 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3209 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3210 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3211 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3213 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3215 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3217 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3218 commands. The default is 1024.
3220 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3222 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3224 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3226 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3227 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3228 from a file into memory (restore).
3230 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3232 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3233 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3234 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3236 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3244 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3245 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3246 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3248 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3249 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3250 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3252 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3253 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3254 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3256 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3257 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3258 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3260 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
3262 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3264 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3265 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3266 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3267 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3268 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3269 (notably embedded) targets.
3271 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3273 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3274 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3275 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3276 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
3278 * New command line option
3280 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3282 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3284 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3285 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3286 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3287 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3288 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3289 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3290 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3291 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3292 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3293 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3295 * Changes in ARM configurations.
3297 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3298 configuration is fully multi-arch.
3300 * New native configurations
3302 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
3303 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
3304 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
3305 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
3309 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3311 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3313 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3314 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3315 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3316 permanently REMOVED.
3318 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3319 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3320 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3321 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3322 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3324 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3326 * REMOVED configurations and files
3328 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3330 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3331 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3332 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3333 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3334 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3335 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3336 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3337 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3338 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3339 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3340 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
3342 * Changes to command line processing
3344 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3345 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3347 * Changes to key bindings
3349 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3351 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3353 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3355 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3358 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3360 Numerous documentation fixes.
3362 Numerous testsuite fixes.
3364 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
3366 * New native configurations
3368 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3369 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
3370 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
3371 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3372 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
3373 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
3377 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
3379 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
3381 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3383 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
3384 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3385 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3386 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3387 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3389 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3390 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3391 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3392 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3393 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3394 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3395 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3396 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
3398 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3399 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3401 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3402 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3403 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3404 permanently REMOVED.
3406 * REMOVED configurations and files
3408 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3409 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3411 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3415 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
3417 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
3418 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3423 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3425 * The MI enabled by default.
3427 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3428 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3429 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3430 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3431 which is now deprecated.
3433 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3435 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3436 main features are supported:
3438 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3440 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3443 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3445 - a Pascal expression parser.
3447 However, some important features are not yet supported.
3449 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3451 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3453 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3454 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3456 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3458 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3460 * Changes in completion.
3462 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3463 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3464 users expect at the shell prompt.
3466 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3467 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3468 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3469 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3470 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3471 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3472 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3474 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3476 * New platform-independent commands:
3478 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3479 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3480 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3482 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3484 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3485 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3486 many threads as your system allows you to have.
3488 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3490 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3491 multi-threaded programs though.
3493 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
3495 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3497 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3498 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3501 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3503 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3504 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3505 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3506 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3507 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3510 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3511 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3512 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3514 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3516 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3517 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3519 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3520 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3523 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3524 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3525 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3526 a given linear address.
3528 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3529 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3530 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3532 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3534 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3536 * Changes in documentation.
3538 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3539 Documentation License.
3541 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3544 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3546 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3549 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3550 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3551 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3553 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3555 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3556 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3557 contents of this file.
3561 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3563 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3565 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3567 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3568 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3569 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3570 greater level of detail.
3572 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3574 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3575 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3576 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3579 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3581 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3582 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3583 machines ``out of the box''.
3585 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3586 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3587 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3588 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3589 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3591 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3592 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3593 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3594 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3595 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3597 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3598 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3601 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3604 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3605 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3606 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3607 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3609 * New native configurations
3611 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3612 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3616 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3617 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3618 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3619 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3621 * OBSOLETE configurations
3623 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3624 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3626 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3629 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3630 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3631 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3632 be permanently REMOVED.
3634 * Gould support removed
3636 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3638 * New features for SVR4
3640 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3641 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3642 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3644 * Many C++ enhancements
3646 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3647 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3649 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3651 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3652 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3653 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3654 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3656 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3657 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3659 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3661 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3662 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3663 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3665 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3666 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3668 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3670 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3671 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3672 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3674 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3676 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3677 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3678 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3680 * ``apropos'' command added.
3682 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3683 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3684 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3688 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3689 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3690 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3691 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3692 enabled by configuring with:
3694 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3696 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3698 * New native configurations
3700 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3701 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3702 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3706 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3707 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3708 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3710 * OBSOLETE configurations
3712 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3714 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3715 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3716 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3717 be permanently REMOVED.
3721 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3722 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3723 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3724 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3725 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3726 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3727 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3732 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3734 * set extension-language
3736 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3737 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3738 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3739 set extension-language .c c++
3740 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3741 and their associated languages.
3743 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3745 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3746 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3747 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3751 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3752 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3754 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3755 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3757 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3758 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3759 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3760 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3761 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3762 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3763 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3764 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3766 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3767 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3768 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3769 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3773 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3774 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3775 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3776 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3777 for xdb and dbx commands.
3781 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3782 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3783 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3785 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3786 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3787 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3789 * Debugging across forks
3791 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3796 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3797 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3798 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3800 * GDB remote protocol additions
3802 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3803 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3804 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3805 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3807 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3808 full 64-bit address. The command
3810 set remoteaddresssize 32
3812 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3813 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3816 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3817 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3819 maint packet heythere
3821 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3822 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3825 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3826 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3827 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3829 * Tracing can collect general expressions
3831 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3832 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3833 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3835 * mask-address variable for Mips
3837 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3838 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3839 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3841 * Higher serial baud rates
3843 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3844 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3845 to achieve all of these rates.)
3849 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3850 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3853 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3855 * New native configurations
3857 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3858 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3859 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3860 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3861 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3862 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3863 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3867 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3868 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3869 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3870 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3871 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3872 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3873 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3874 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3875 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3876 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3877 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3879 * New debugging protocols
3881 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3882 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3883 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3884 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3885 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3886 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3890 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3891 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3896 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3897 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3899 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3901 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3902 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3903 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3905 * Live range splitting
3907 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3908 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3909 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3913 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3914 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3918 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3919 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3920 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3925 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3930 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3931 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3932 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3933 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3934 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3935 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3939 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3940 the symbol at the specified address.
3944 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3945 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3946 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3947 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3948 file tracepoint.c for more details.
3952 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3953 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3954 of most MIPS variants.
3958 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3959 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3960 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3964 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3965 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3966 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3967 the possible architectures.
3969 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3971 * New native configurations
3973 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3974 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3975 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3976 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3977 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3978 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3982 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3983 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3984 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3985 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3986 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3988 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3992 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3993 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3994 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3995 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3996 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4000 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4002 * Windows 95/NT native
4004 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4005 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4006 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4007 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4008 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4010 * dont-repeat command
4012 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4013 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4014 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4015 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4017 * Send break instead of ^C
4019 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4020 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4021 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4023 * Remote protocol timeout
4025 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4026 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4027 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4029 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4031 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4032 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4033 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4034 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4035 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4037 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4038 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4039 automatically on hpux10.
4041 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4043 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4045 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4047 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4048 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4049 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4050 every character. The default value is 1050.
4052 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4054 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4055 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4056 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4057 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4058 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4059 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4061 * Speedups for remote debugging
4063 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4064 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4065 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4067 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4069 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4070 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4072 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4074 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4076 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4077 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4079 * Remote targets use caching
4081 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4082 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4083 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4084 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4085 off' turns the the data cache off.
4087 * Remote targets may have threads
4089 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4090 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4091 gdb/remote.c for details.
4095 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4096 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4097 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4098 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4099 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4100 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4101 sequence is something like
4103 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4105 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4109 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4110 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4111 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4112 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4113 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4114 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4115 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4116 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4120 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4121 but does simplify configuration and building.
4125 GDB now supports hpux10.
4127 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4129 * New native configurations
4131 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4132 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4133 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4134 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4138 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4139 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4140 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4141 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4144 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4146 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4147 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4148 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4149 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4150 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4152 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4154 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4155 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4158 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4160 To execute the command use:
4163 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4164 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4165 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4167 * New `if' and `while' commands
4169 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4170 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4171 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4172 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4173 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4174 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4175 if the expression is zero.
4177 * Fortran source language mode
4179 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4180 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4181 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4182 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4185 * Better HPUX support
4187 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4188 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4189 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4190 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4191 that behavior do the following before running the program:
4197 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4198 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4204 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4205 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4208 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4209 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4211 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4213 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4214 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4215 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4216 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4217 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4218 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4220 * New DOS host serial code
4222 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4223 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4226 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4228 * New "complete" command
4230 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4231 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4233 * Trailing space optional in prompt
4235 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4236 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4238 * Breakpoint hit counts
4240 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4241 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4242 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4243 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4244 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4247 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4249 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4250 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4251 arrays actually contain only short strings.
4253 * Shared library breakpoints
4255 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4256 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4258 * Hardware watchpoints
4260 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4261 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4263 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
4267 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4268 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4270 * Improved Irix 5 support
4272 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4274 * Improved HPPA support
4276 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4278 * New native configurations
4280 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4281 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4282 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4283 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4287 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4288 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4291 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4293 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4294 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4298 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4299 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4301 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4303 * Irix 5 is now supported
4307 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4308 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4309 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4310 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4311 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4314 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4316 * User visible changes:
4320 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4321 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4322 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4323 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4324 debugging info for the mips target).
4326 * DEC Alpha native support
4328 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4329 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4330 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4331 Alpha-specific notes.
4333 * Preliminary thread implementation
4335 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4337 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
4339 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4340 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4343 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4345 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4346 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4347 call methods, ...etc.
4349 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4351 * User visible changes:
4353 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4354 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4355 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4356 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4358 Filename completion now works.
4360 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4361 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4362 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4364 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4365 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4366 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4367 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4368 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4372 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4373 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4376 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4380 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4381 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4382 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4386 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4387 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4388 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4389 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4390 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4394 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4395 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4396 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4398 * New targets supported
4400 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4401 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4402 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4403 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4404 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4406 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4407 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4408 GO32 memory extender.
4410 * New remote protocols
4412 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4414 * New source languages supported
4416 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4417 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4418 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4421 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4423 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4425 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4426 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4427 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4428 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4429 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4430 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4432 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4434 * Faster and better demangling
4436 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4437 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4438 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4439 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4440 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4441 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4444 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4445 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4446 compiler does not actually implement.
4448 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4450 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4451 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4452 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4453 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4454 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4455 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4458 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4459 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4461 * Improved configure script
4463 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4464 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4465 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4466 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4468 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4469 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4470 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4471 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4472 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4473 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4475 * Documentation improvements
4477 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4478 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4479 before submitting changes.
4481 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4482 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4483 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4484 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4485 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4487 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4488 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4489 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4490 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4491 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4492 around this problem.
4496 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4497 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4498 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4501 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4502 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4504 * New native hosts supported
4506 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4507 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4509 * New targets supported
4511 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4513 * New file formats supported
4515 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4516 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4520 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4522 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4523 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4525 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4526 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4527 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4529 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4530 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4532 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4533 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4534 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4537 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4538 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4539 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4540 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4541 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4543 * Internal improvements
4545 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4546 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4548 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4549 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4550 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4551 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4552 shared code that handles any of them.
4554 * New command line options
4556 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4560 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4561 General Public License.
4563 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4565 * Host/native/target split
4567 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4568 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4569 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4570 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4571 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4573 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4574 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4575 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4576 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4577 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4578 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4579 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4581 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4582 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4583 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4585 * New hosts supported
4587 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4588 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4589 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4591 * New targets supported
4593 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4594 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4596 * New native hosts supported
4598 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4599 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4600 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4602 * New file formats supported
4604 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4605 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4606 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4610 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4611 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4612 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4614 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4616 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4617 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4618 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4619 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4623 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4624 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4625 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4627 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4631 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4632 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4635 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4636 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4638 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4639 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4640 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4641 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4642 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4643 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4645 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4646 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4647 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4648 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4652 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4653 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4654 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4655 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4656 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4658 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4659 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4660 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4661 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4665 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4666 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4667 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4668 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4669 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4670 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4671 each instruction being stepped through.
4673 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4674 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4676 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4677 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4678 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4679 processor with a serial port.
4683 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4684 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4685 supported, and what files each one uses.
4689 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4690 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4691 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4692 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4694 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4695 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4696 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4697 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4701 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4702 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4703 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4704 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4705 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4706 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4708 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4711 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4713 * Better support for C++ function names
4715 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4716 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4717 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4718 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4719 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4721 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4722 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4723 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4724 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4725 for the list of formats.
4727 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4729 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4730 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4731 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4732 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4733 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4734 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4737 * New 'maintenance' command
4739 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4740 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4741 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4743 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4744 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4745 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4746 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4747 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4748 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4750 The following commands are new:
4752 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4753 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4754 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4756 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4758 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4759 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4760 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4761 read after argv processing.
4763 * New hosts supported
4765 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4767 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4769 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4770 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4771 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4772 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4773 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4776 * New targets supported
4778 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4780 * More smarts about finding #include files
4782 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4783 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4784 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4785 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4786 the one that contains your sources.
4788 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4789 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4790 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4792 * Interesting infernals change
4794 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4795 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4796 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4797 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4799 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4801 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4802 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4803 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4805 See the ChangeLog for details.
4807 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4809 * New machines supported (host and target)
4811 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4813 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4815 * New malloc package
4817 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4818 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4819 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4820 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4821 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4822 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4826 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4827 'help info proc' for details.
4829 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4831 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4832 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4835 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4837 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4838 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4839 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4840 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4841 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4842 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4844 * Cross byte order fixes
4846 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4847 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4849 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4851 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4852 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4853 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4854 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4855 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4856 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4857 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4858 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4859 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4860 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4862 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4863 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4864 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4865 slower, but makes future operations faster.
4867 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4868 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4869 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4872 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4874 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4875 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4876 shared across multiple host platforms.
4878 * longjmp() handling
4880 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4881 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4882 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4883 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4887 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4888 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4893 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4894 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4895 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4897 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4899 * New machines supported (host and target)
4901 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4903 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4904 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4906 * New machines supported (target)
4908 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4912 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4913 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4914 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4916 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4917 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4918 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4919 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4920 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4923 * New features for SVR4
4925 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4926 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4927 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4929 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4930 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4931 it prints the address mappings of the process.
4933 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4934 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4936 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4938 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4939 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4940 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4941 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4942 same code linked statically.
4946 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4947 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4948 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4949 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4950 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4951 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4955 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4956 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4957 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4960 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4962 * New machines supported (host and target)
4964 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4965 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4966 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4968 * Almost SCO Unix support
4970 We had hoped to support:
4971 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4972 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4973 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4974 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4976 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4978 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4979 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4980 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4981 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4986 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4987 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4988 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4992 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4993 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4994 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4996 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4998 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4999 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5000 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5002 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5003 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5004 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5005 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5008 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5009 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5010 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5011 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5014 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5015 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5018 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5019 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5020 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5023 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5025 * Improved configuration
5027 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5028 Porting BFD is simpler.
5032 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5033 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5034 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5035 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5039 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5041 * New host supported (not target)
5043 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5046 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5048 * Multiple source language support
5050 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5051 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5052 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5053 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5054 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5055 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5059 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5060 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5061 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5062 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5064 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5065 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5066 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5068 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5069 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5073 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5074 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5075 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5076 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5079 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5081 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5082 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5083 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5084 examining core files.
5088 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5091 * New machines supported (host and target)
5093 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5094 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5095 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5097 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5099 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5101 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5103 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5104 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5105 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5107 * New remote interfaces
5113 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5117 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5119 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5120 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5121 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5122 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5123 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5124 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5125 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5126 stub on the target system.
5128 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5130 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5131 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5132 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5134 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5135 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5138 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5140 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5141 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5143 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5144 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5145 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5147 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5148 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5149 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5150 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5152 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5153 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5154 it is already running. Default is ON.
5156 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5157 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5158 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5159 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5162 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5163 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5164 or the value of the environment variable
5167 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5168 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5171 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5172 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5173 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5175 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5176 history expansion will be performed on
5177 command line input. The default is OFF.
5179 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5180 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5181 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5183 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5184 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5185 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5188 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5189 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5190 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5193 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5194 ``set width'' instead.
5196 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5197 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5198 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5199 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5201 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5204 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5207 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5210 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5213 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5215 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5216 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5217 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5221 * Support for Shared Libraries
5223 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5224 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5225 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5226 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5227 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5228 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5229 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5230 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5232 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5233 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5234 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5236 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5241 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5242 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5243 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5244 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5245 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5246 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5248 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5250 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5252 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5253 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5254 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5257 * C++ multiple inheritance
5259 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5262 * C++ exception handling
5264 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5265 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5266 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5269 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5270 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5271 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5273 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5274 current stack frame.
5277 * Minor command changes
5279 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5280 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5281 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5283 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5284 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5285 frames without printing.
5287 * New directory command
5289 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5290 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5291 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5292 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5293 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5295 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5297 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5300 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5301 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5302 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5303 where the program that you are debugging will run.