1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.12
6 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
7 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
8 available in future Intel CPUs.
10 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
14 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
15 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
17 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
20 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
22 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
24 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
25 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
28 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
30 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
31 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
33 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
35 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
36 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
37 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
38 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
41 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
43 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
44 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
47 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
49 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
50 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
52 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
54 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
59 eval "print $arg%d", $i
64 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
66 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
67 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
69 * New native configurations
71 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
76 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
77 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
82 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
87 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
88 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
90 -file-list-shared-libraries
91 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
92 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
96 set disassembler-options
97 show disassembler-options
98 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
99 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
100 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
101 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
102 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
104 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
106 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
108 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
109 default. One must now explicitly configure with
110 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
111 option will be removed in a future release.
113 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
116 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
117 memory backward from the given address. For example:
120 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
121 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
122 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
123 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
124 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
125 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
126 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
127 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
128 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
130 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
131 arrays of dynamic types.
133 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
134 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
135 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
136 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
137 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
138 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
140 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
143 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
144 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
145 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
147 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
149 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
150 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
151 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
152 signal received and code location.
156 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
157 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
158 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
159 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
161 * Rust language support.
162 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
163 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
166 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
168 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
169 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
170 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
171 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
172 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
173 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
174 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
175 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
176 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
177 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
180 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
182 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
183 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
188 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
189 skip -function function
190 skip -rfunction regular-expression
191 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
192 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
193 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
195 maint info line-table REGEXP
196 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
199 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
202 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
203 using the TTY file for input/output.
207 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
208 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
209 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
210 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
211 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
214 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
215 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
216 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
217 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
220 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
221 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
222 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
224 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
227 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
228 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
229 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
230 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
231 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
232 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
234 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
235 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
236 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
237 bytecode into native code.
239 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
240 recording. For example:
242 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
244 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
246 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
250 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
252 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
254 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
256 * Per-inferior thread numbers
258 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
259 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
260 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
264 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
265 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
266 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
267 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
269 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
270 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
271 are no longer unique between inferiors.
273 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
274 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
275 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
277 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
280 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
281 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
284 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
287 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
288 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
289 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
290 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
293 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
296 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
299 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
302 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
303 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
306 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
307 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
309 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
311 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
313 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
314 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
316 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
317 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
320 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
321 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
324 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
325 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
328 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
330 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
331 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
332 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
334 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
335 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
339 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
340 maint show target-non-stop
341 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
342 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
343 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
345 maint set bfd-sharing
346 maint show bfd-sharing
347 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
351 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
355 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
357 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
358 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
359 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
361 set remote thread-events
362 show remote thread-events
363 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
365 set ada print-signatures on|off
366 show ada print-signatures"
367 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
368 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
372 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
373 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
374 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
376 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
377 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
378 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
379 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
380 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
381 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
383 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
384 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
386 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
387 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
389 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
391 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
392 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
393 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
394 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
395 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
396 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
398 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
399 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
404 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
406 exec-events feature in qSupported
407 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
408 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
409 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
410 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
413 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
416 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
417 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
419 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
420 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
423 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
424 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
425 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
426 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
427 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
428 stop for that same thread.
431 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
432 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
433 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
436 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
437 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
439 syscall_entry stop reason
440 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
442 syscall_return stop reason
443 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
445 * Extended-remote exec events
447 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
448 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
449 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
451 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
452 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
453 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
455 * Thread names in remote protocol
457 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
460 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
462 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
463 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
464 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
465 fork and exec catchpoints.
467 * Remote syscall events
469 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
470 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
472 set remote catch-syscall-packet
473 show remote catch-syscall-packet
474 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
478 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
479 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
484 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
485 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
486 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
487 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
488 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
489 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
491 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
493 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
494 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
495 including advance SIMD instructions.
497 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
499 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
500 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
501 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
502 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
503 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
504 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
505 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
507 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
509 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
511 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
512 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
515 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
516 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
517 and may include things like its command line arguments.
519 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
520 is now available on all platforms.
522 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
523 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
524 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
525 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
526 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
527 backward compatibility.
529 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
530 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
531 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
532 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
534 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
535 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
536 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
537 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
540 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
542 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
544 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
545 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
546 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
547 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
548 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
549 See "New remote packets" below.
551 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
552 available register groups, including target specific groups.
554 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
555 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
556 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
557 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
562 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
566 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
567 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
568 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
569 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
570 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
571 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
572 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
573 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
574 "const" version of the value respectively.
578 maint print symbol-cache
579 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
581 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
582 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
584 maint flush-symbol-cache
585 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
589 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
592 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
596 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
599 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
600 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
604 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
607 Print information about branch tracing internals.
609 maint btrace packet-history
610 Print the raw branch tracing data.
612 maint btrace clear-packet-history
613 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
616 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
617 anew by the next "record" command.
622 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
624 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
627 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
628 show debug dwarf-read
629 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
631 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
632 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
633 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
634 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
636 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
637 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
638 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
639 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
642 show debug dwarf-line
643 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
647 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
648 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
649 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
650 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
652 set history remove-duplicates
653 show history remove-duplicates
654 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
656 maint set symbol-cache-size
657 maint show symbol-cache-size
658 Control the size of the symbol cache.
660 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
661 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
663 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
664 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
666 set debug linux-namespaces
667 show debug linux-namespaces
668 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
670 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
671 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
672 Intel Processor Trace format.
673 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
674 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
676 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
677 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
680 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
681 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
683 * Python/Guile scripting
685 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
686 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
690 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
691 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
693 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
694 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
697 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
698 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
702 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
706 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
707 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
708 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
712 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
713 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
716 Return information about files on the remote system.
719 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
720 create a process running on the remote system.
723 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
724 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
725 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
726 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
729 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
732 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
734 vforkdone stop reason
735 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
736 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
738 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
739 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
740 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
741 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
742 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
743 whether these features are enabled.
745 * Extended-remote fork events
747 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
748 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
749 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
750 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
752 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
753 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
754 the btrace record target.
755 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
757 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
758 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
760 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
763 * Removed command line options
765 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
767 * Removed targets and native configurations
769 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
770 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
772 * New configure options
775 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
776 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
778 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
779 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
780 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
781 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
783 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
787 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
789 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
791 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
795 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
796 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
797 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
798 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
799 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
800 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
801 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
802 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
803 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
804 selecting a new file to debug.
805 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
806 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
808 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
811 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
812 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
813 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
814 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
816 * New Python-based convenience functions:
818 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
819 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
820 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
821 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
823 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
824 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
825 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
826 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
827 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
828 interface with this new feature are:
830 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
831 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
835 demangle [-l language] [--] name
836 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
837 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
838 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
839 as "maint demangler-warning".
841 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
842 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
844 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
845 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
848 maint print user-registers
849 List all currently available "user" registers.
851 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
852 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
853 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
855 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
856 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
857 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
860 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
861 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
862 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
863 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
866 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
867 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
868 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
869 switched threads meanwhile.
871 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
873 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
874 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
875 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
876 is now the default mode.
880 set debug symbol-lookup
881 show debug symbol-lookup
882 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
886 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
887 inferiors that have exited.
891 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
895 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
897 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
898 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
899 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
900 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
901 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
903 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
904 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
905 its alias "share", instead.
907 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
909 * New command line options
912 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
914 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
915 as specified in ISO C99.
917 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
918 with or without disassembly.
922 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
923 available is determined at configure time.
924 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
925 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
927 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
931 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
935 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
937 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
938 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
940 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
941 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
945 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
946 show print symbol-loading
947 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
948 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
949 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
952 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
953 show guile print-stack
954 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
956 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
957 show auto-load guile-scripts
958 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
960 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
961 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
962 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
963 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
964 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
965 usage of this option.
967 set auto-connect-native-target
969 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
970 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
971 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
973 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
974 show record btrace replay-memory-access
975 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
977 maint set target-async (on|off)
978 maint show target-async
979 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
980 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
981 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
982 occurring only in synchronous mode.
984 set mi-async (on|off)
986 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
987 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
989 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
990 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
992 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
993 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
994 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
995 "set target-async on" command.
997 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
999 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1000 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1001 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1002 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1003 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1005 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1006 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1007 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1009 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1010 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1011 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1012 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1013 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1014 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1015 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1017 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1018 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1020 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1021 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1022 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1024 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1025 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1026 memory or registers.
1028 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1030 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1031 remote. It now works with all targets.
1033 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1034 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1035 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1036 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1037 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1038 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1039 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1040 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1041 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1044 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1045 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1046 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1048 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1050 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1051 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1052 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1054 * New remote packets
1056 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1057 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1058 branch trace incrementally.
1062 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1063 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1065 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1066 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1067 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1068 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1069 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1072 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1074 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1075 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1076 its alias "share", instead.
1078 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1079 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1084 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1085 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1086 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1087 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1088 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1089 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1090 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1091 commands and CLI execution commands.
1093 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1095 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1096 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1097 recording has been added.
1099 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1101 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1102 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1104 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1105 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1106 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1107 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1108 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1109 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1112 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1114 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1116 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1117 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1118 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1119 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1124 (gdb) info registers rax
1127 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1128 "*value not available*".
1130 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1135 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1136 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1137 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1138 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1139 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1140 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1144 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1145 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1146 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1148 * Removed native configurations
1150 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1151 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1153 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1154 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1155 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1156 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1157 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1158 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1159 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1163 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1164 maint check-psymtabs
1165 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1167 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1168 maint expand-symtabs
1169 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1172 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1174 maint set|show per-command
1175 maint set|show per-command space
1176 maint set|show per-command time
1177 maint set|show per-command symtab
1178 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1180 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1181 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1182 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1183 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1184 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1187 info exceptions REGEXP
1188 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1189 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1194 set debug symfile off|on
1196 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1197 symbol tables within those files
1199 set print raw frame-arguments
1200 show print raw frame-arguments
1201 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1202 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1204 set remote trace-status-packet
1205 show remote trace-status-packet
1206 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1210 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1214 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1216 set startup-with-shell
1217 show startup-with-shell
1218 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1223 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1224 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1226 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1227 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1228 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1229 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1232 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1233 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1234 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1236 * New command-line options
1238 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1240 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1241 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1243 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1246 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1248 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1249 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1251 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1252 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1254 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1255 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1256 due to an uncaught signal.
1260 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1261 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1262 command, which should contain "language-option".
1264 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1265 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1267 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1268 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1269 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1270 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1271 "undefined-command-error-code".
1273 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1276 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1278 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1279 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1282 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1283 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1285 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1286 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1287 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1289 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1290 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1291 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1292 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1293 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1294 "exec-run-start-option".
1296 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1297 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1299 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1300 the new "info exceptions" command.
1302 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1303 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1304 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1308 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1309 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1310 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1313 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1314 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1316 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1317 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1318 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1320 * New remote packets
1324 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1325 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1326 involvemement at each single-step.
1328 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1329 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1330 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1331 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1332 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1333 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1336 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1338 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1339 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1341 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1342 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1343 trace state variables.
1345 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1348 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1349 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1351 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1353 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1354 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1355 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1356 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1358 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
1360 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1361 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1362 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1363 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1365 set|show record full insn-number-max
1366 set|show record full stop-at-limit
1367 set|show record full memory-query
1369 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1370 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1371 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1372 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1373 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1377 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1378 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1380 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1381 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1382 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1384 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1385 instruction granularity
1387 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1388 function granularity
1390 * New native configurations
1392 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1393 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1394 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1395 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1399 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1400 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1401 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1402 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1403 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1405 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1406 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1407 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1408 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1409 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1410 --data-directory command-line option.
1412 * New command line options:
1414 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1415 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1417 * Removed command line options
1419 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1422 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1425 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1429 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1431 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1433 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1435 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1437 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1438 of architecture in the Python API.
1440 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1441 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1443 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1445 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1446 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1448 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1450 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1453 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1454 default for GCC since November 2000.
1456 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1458 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1459 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1461 * New configure options
1463 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1464 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1465 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1466 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1467 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1468 options allow the user to override that default.
1469 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1470 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1471 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1473 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1476 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1477 conditions to be attached.
1480 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1482 python-interactive [command]
1484 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1485 and print the result of expressions.
1488 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1490 enable type-printer [name]...
1491 disable type-printer [name]...
1492 Enable or disable type printers.
1496 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1497 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1502 set print type methods (on|off)
1503 show print type methods
1504 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1505 The default is to show them.
1507 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1508 show print type typedefs
1509 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1510 The default is to show them.
1512 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1513 show filename-display
1514 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1515 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1517 set trace-buffer-size
1518 show trace-buffer-size
1519 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1521 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1522 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1523 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1527 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1530 set debug coff-pe-read
1531 show debug coff-pe-read
1532 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1537 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1540 set debug notification
1541 show debug notification
1542 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1546 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1547 "=cmd-param-changed".
1548 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1549 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1550 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1551 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1552 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1553 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1554 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1555 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1557 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1558 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1559 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1560 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1561 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1562 library load/unload events.
1563 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1564 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1565 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1566 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1567 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1568 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1569 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1570 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1572 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1573 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1574 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1575 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1577 * New remote packets
1580 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1581 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1584 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1585 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1589 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1590 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1593 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1594 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1596 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1598 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1599 for more x32 ABI info.
1601 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1603 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1605 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1606 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1607 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1608 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1609 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1610 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1611 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1612 "info os msg" lists message queues
1613 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1615 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1616 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1617 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1618 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1619 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1620 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1622 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1623 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1624 record/replay support.
1626 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1630 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1633 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1635 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1636 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1638 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1640 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1641 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1643 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1644 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1645 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1648 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1649 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1651 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1652 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1653 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1655 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1656 object associated with a PC value.
1658 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1659 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1661 * Go language support.
1662 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1665 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1666 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1668 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1669 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1671 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1672 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1673 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1674 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1675 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1678 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1679 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1680 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1681 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1683 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1684 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1686 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1687 since December 2007.
1689 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1690 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1691 command does. For instance:
1693 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1695 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1696 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1697 created, using the "condition" command.
1699 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1700 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1702 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1704 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1705 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1706 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1707 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1708 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1709 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1710 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1711 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1713 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1714 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1715 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1716 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1717 the .gdb_index section.
1719 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1721 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1726 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1728 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1732 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1733 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1734 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1736 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1737 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1739 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1742 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1743 C++ and Java objects.
1745 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1746 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1747 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1748 configured with '--with-python'.
1750 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1751 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1752 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1753 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1754 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1755 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1756 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1758 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1759 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1760 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1761 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1763 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1764 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1765 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1766 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1768 ** "set print symbol"
1770 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1771 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1772 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1774 * Deprecated commands
1776 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1777 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1781 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1782 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1784 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1785 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1786 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1787 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1792 set mips compression
1793 show mips compression
1794 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1795 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1798 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1800 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1801 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1802 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1803 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1805 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1809 Disable auto-loading globally.
1812 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1814 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1815 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1816 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1818 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1819 show auto-load python-scripts
1820 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1822 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1823 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1824 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1826 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1827 show auto-load libthread-db
1828 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1830 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1831 show auto-load scripts-directory
1832 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1833 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1834 of the directories listed by this option.
1835 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1837 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1838 show auto-load safe-path
1839 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1840 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1842 set debug auto-load on|off
1843 show debug auto-load
1844 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1846 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1848 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1849 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1850 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1851 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1853 set dprintf-function <expr>
1854 show dprintf-function
1855 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1856 show dprintf-channel
1857 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1858 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1860 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1861 show disconnected-dprintf
1862 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1863 after GDB disconnects.
1865 * New configure options
1867 --with-auto-load-dir
1868 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1869 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1870 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1871 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1872 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1874 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1875 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1876 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1878 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1879 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1882 * New remote packets
1884 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1886 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1887 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1888 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1889 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1893 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1894 program without GDB involvement.
1896 * New command line options
1898 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1899 before loading inferior.
1900 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1901 execute it before loading inferior.
1903 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1905 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1906 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1907 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1908 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1911 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1912 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1914 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1915 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1916 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1917 target hardware watchpoint.
1919 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1920 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1921 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1922 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1926 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1927 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1930 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1931 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1932 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1933 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1934 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1937 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1940 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1941 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1942 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1943 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1944 corresponding value.
1946 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1947 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1948 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1951 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1952 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1953 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1954 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1956 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1958 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1961 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1962 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1963 available in the CLI.
1965 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1966 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1967 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1968 "some_type.items()".
1970 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1973 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1974 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1975 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1976 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1977 any anonymous fields.
1981 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1984 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1985 "=breakpoint-modified".
1987 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1989 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1990 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1991 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1994 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1995 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1996 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1997 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1998 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2000 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2001 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2003 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2004 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2005 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2006 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2007 use this option to specify where to find it.
2009 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2010 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2011 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2012 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2013 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2014 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2015 section in the user manual for more details.
2017 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2018 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2019 become available after that.
2021 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2023 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2024 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2030 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2031 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2035 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2036 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2037 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2039 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2040 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2041 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2043 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2044 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2045 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2046 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2047 name starts with a hyphen.
2049 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2050 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2051 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2052 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2053 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2054 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2055 number of bytes that will be collected.
2058 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2059 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2060 setting the variable trace-notes.
2063 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2064 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2065 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2068 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2069 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2070 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2071 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2072 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2075 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2076 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2077 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2081 set debug dwarf2-read
2082 show debug dwarf2-read
2083 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2084 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2086 set debug symtab-create
2087 show debug symtab-create
2088 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2089 creation. The default is off.
2092 show extended-prompt
2093 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2094 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2095 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2096 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2097 prompt is displayed.
2099 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2100 show print entry-values
2101 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2102 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2103 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2105 set debug entry-values
2106 show debug entry-values
2107 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2108 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2110 set basenames-may-differ
2111 show basenames-may-differ
2112 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2113 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2114 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2115 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2116 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2117 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2118 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2119 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2125 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2126 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2127 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2128 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2130 set trace-stop-notes
2131 show trace-stop-notes
2132 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2133 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2134 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2135 started by someone else.
2137 * New remote packets
2141 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2145 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2149 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2153 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2157 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2160 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2161 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2165 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2169 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2171 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2173 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2175 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2177 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2178 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2179 matches the given regular expression.
2181 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2183 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2184 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2186 * New command line options
2188 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2189 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2191 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2192 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2194 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2195 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2196 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2198 * GDB now understands thread names.
2200 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2201 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2203 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2204 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2207 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2208 has been integrated into GDB.
2212 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2213 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2214 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2216 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2217 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2218 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2219 and allows for more dynamic content.
2221 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2222 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2223 have an is_valid method.
2225 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2226 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2227 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2229 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2231 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2232 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2233 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2234 that function like so:
2236 result = some_value (10,20)
2238 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2239 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2240 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2242 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2243 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2244 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2245 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2246 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2248 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2249 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2251 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2253 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2256 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2257 holds the thread's name.
2259 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2260 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2261 occurring in the process being debugged.
2262 The following events are currently supported:
2263 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2264 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2265 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2269 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2270 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2272 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2274 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2275 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2276 was added to GCC 4.5.
2278 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2279 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2280 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2281 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2282 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2283 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2285 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2286 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2287 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2288 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2289 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2291 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2292 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2293 execution to a label.
2295 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2296 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2297 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2298 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2300 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2301 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2302 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2305 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2307 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2308 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2309 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2310 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2311 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2312 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2315 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2317 While now you see this:
2320 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2322 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2325 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2326 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2327 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2328 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2330 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2331 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2332 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2333 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2334 section in the user manual for more details.
2336 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2338 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2339 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2341 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2343 * New native configurations
2345 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2349 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2351 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2352 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2353 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2354 in the GDB user manual.
2356 * Guile support was removed.
2358 * New features in the GNU simulator
2360 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2362 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2364 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
2366 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
2368 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2369 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2370 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2371 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2372 was always disabled for such configurations.
2376 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2378 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2379 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2389 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2390 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2391 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2393 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2395 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2396 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2397 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2398 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2400 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2401 mentioned flavors of operators.
2403 ** static const class members
2405 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2406 class definition has been fixed.
2408 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
2410 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2411 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2412 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2413 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2414 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2415 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2417 * Static tracepoints
2419 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2420 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2421 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2422 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2423 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2424 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2425 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2426 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2427 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2428 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2429 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2430 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2431 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2432 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2433 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2434 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2435 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2436 the "New remote packets" section below.
2438 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2440 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2441 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2442 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2443 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2447 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2448 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2449 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2450 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2451 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2452 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2453 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2455 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2458 * New remote packets
2462 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2466 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2467 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2468 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2469 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2470 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2471 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2475 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2479 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2482 qXfer:statictrace:read
2484 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2485 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2486 to gdb's qSupported query.
2490 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2494 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2495 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2497 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2498 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2501 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2503 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2504 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2505 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2506 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2508 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2509 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2510 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2511 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2512 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2513 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2514 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2516 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2517 for static tracepoints support.
2519 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2521 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2522 it understands register description.
2524 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2526 * X86 general purpose registers
2528 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2529 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2530 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2531 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2532 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2534 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2535 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2536 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2537 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2538 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2539 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2541 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2542 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2543 in the specified file.
2545 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2546 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2547 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2548 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2549 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2550 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2551 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2552 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2553 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2554 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2558 eval template, expressions...
2559 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2560 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2562 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2563 show target-file-system-kind
2564 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2567 save breakpoints <filename>
2568 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2569 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2570 definitions, use the `source' command.
2572 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2575 info static-tracepoint-markers
2576 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2578 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2579 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2580 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2584 Enable and disable observer mode.
2586 set may-write-registers on|off
2587 set may-write-memory on|off
2588 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2589 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2590 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2591 set may-interrupt on|off
2592 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2593 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2594 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2595 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2596 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2597 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2598 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2600 set record memory-query on|off
2601 show record memory-query
2602 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2603 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2608 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2612 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2613 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2614 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2615 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2616 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2618 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2619 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2620 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2621 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2623 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2624 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2626 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2628 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2630 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2632 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2633 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2634 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2636 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2637 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2638 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2639 regular breakpoints.
2643 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2645 * D language support.
2646 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2649 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2650 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2651 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2652 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2653 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2655 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2656 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2657 conditions of the form:
2659 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2661 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2662 interface mentioned above.
2664 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2668 ** Namespace Support
2670 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2671 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2672 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2673 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2674 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2678 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2679 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2684 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2685 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2689 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2694 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2697 * Multi-program debugging.
2699 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2700 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2701 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2702 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2703 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2704 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2705 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2706 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2708 * New tracing features
2710 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2712 ** Trace state variables
2714 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2715 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2716 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2717 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2718 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2719 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2720 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2721 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2722 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2723 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2727 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2728 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2729 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2730 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2731 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2732 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2733 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2734 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2735 the regular trace command.
2737 ** Disconnected tracing
2739 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2740 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2741 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2742 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2743 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2747 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2748 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2749 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2750 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2751 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2752 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2755 ** Circular trace buffer
2757 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2758 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2759 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2760 not be available for all target agents.
2765 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2766 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2769 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2770 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2773 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2774 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2777 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2778 "set script-extension" (see below).
2780 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2782 record save [<FILENAME>]
2783 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2784 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2786 record restore <FILENAME>
2787 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2788 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2790 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2793 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2794 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2795 inferior has loaded.
2800 maint info program-spaces
2801 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2803 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2804 show remote interrupt-sequence
2805 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2806 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2807 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2808 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2809 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2811 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2812 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2813 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2814 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2817 set remotebreak [on | off]
2819 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2821 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2822 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2825 List trace state variables and their values.
2827 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2828 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2831 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2832 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2834 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2835 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2837 * New expression syntax
2839 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2840 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2844 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2845 show follow-exec-mode
2846 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2847 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2848 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2850 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2851 show default-collect
2852 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2853 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2854 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2856 set disconnected-tracing
2857 show disconnected-tracing
2858 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2859 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2862 set circular-trace-buffer
2863 show circular-trace-buffer
2864 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2865 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2866 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2867 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2869 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2870 show script-extension
2871 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2872 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2873 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2874 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2876 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2878 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2879 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2880 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2881 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2882 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2883 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2884 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2887 * Python API Improvements
2889 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2890 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2891 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2893 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2894 `is_base_class' attribute.
2896 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2898 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2899 evaluate an expression.
2901 * New remote packets
2904 Define a trace state variable.
2907 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2910 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2913 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2916 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2920 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2922 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2923 much more reliable. In particular:
2924 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2925 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2926 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2927 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2928 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2929 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2930 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2931 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2932 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2933 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2934 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2935 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2936 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2937 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2938 non-threaded programs.
2940 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2941 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2942 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2945 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2947 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2948 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2949 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2950 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2951 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2953 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2954 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2955 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2956 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2957 for tracepoint actions.
2959 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2960 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2961 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2963 * Process record and replay
2965 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2966 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2967 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2970 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2971 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2972 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2975 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2976 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2979 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2980 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2981 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2982 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2983 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2984 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2985 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2986 the installation instructions for more information.
2988 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2989 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2990 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2991 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2993 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2994 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2996 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2997 now complete on file names.
2999 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3000 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3001 For instance, consider:
3003 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3004 # struct example variable;
3007 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3008 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3010 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3011 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3013 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3014 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3017 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3018 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3019 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3021 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3022 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3023 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3024 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3026 * New remote packets
3029 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3032 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3033 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3034 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3037 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3038 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3041 Obtains additional operating system information
3045 Read or write additional signal information.
3047 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3049 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3050 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3051 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3053 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3054 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3056 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3057 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3058 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3060 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3061 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3063 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3065 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3067 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3068 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3070 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3071 list of section offsets.
3073 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3074 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3075 have also been fixed.
3077 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3078 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3079 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3081 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3084 template<typename T> class C { };
3087 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3089 ptype C<char const *>
3090 ptype C<char const*>
3091 ptype C<const char *>
3092 ptype C<const char*>
3094 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3096 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3097 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3099 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3100 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3101 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3103 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3104 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3106 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3109 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3110 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3112 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3113 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3118 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3119 available is determined at configure time.
3121 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3123 * Ada tasking support
3125 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3129 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3131 Print detailed information about task number N.
3133 Print the task number of the current task.
3135 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3137 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3138 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3140 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3142 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3143 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3144 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3145 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3146 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3147 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3150 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3151 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3154 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3155 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3156 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3157 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3160 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3162 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3163 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3164 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3165 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3166 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3168 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3169 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3170 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3171 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3172 --enable-targets configure option.
3174 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3176 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3177 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3178 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3179 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3180 section in the user manual for more information.
3182 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3183 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3184 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3185 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3186 extensions on linux targets.
3188 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3190 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3191 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3192 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3193 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3194 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3195 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3196 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3197 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3198 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3200 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3202 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3204 maint set python print-stack
3205 maint show python print-stack
3206 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3209 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3214 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3218 Show operating system information about processes.
3221 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3224 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3227 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3230 Kill inferior number NUM.
3234 set spu stop-on-load
3235 show spu stop-on-load
3236 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3238 set spu auto-flush-cache
3239 show spu auto-flush-cache
3240 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3241 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3243 set sh calling-convention
3244 show sh calling-convention
3245 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3248 show debug timestamp
3249 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3251 set disassemble-next-line
3252 show disassemble-next-line
3253 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3256 set remote noack-packet
3257 show remote noack-packet
3258 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3259 under "New remote packets."
3261 set remote query-attached-packet
3262 show remote query-attached-packet
3263 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3265 set remote read-siginfo-object
3266 show remote read-siginfo-object
3267 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3270 set remote write-siginfo-object
3271 show remote write-siginfo-object
3272 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3275 set remote reverse-continue
3276 show remote reverse-continue
3277 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3279 set remote reverse-step
3280 show remote reverse-step
3281 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3283 set displaced-stepping
3284 show displaced-stepping
3285 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3286 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3287 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3290 show debug displaced
3291 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3293 maint set internal-error
3294 maint show internal-error
3295 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3297 maint set internal-warning
3298 maint show internal-warning
3299 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3304 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3306 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3307 show multiple-symbols
3308 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3309 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3310 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3312 set breakpoint always-inserted
3313 show breakpoint always-inserted
3314 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3315 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3316 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3318 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3319 show arm fallback-mode
3320 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3322 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3323 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3324 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3325 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3327 set disable-randomization
3328 show disable-randomization
3329 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3330 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3331 multiple debugging sessions.
3335 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3340 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3341 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3342 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3343 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3345 set target-wide-charset
3346 show target-wide-charset
3347 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3348 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3350 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3352 set tcp connect-timeout
3353 show tcp connect-timeout
3354 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3355 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3356 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3358 set libthread-db-search-path
3359 show libthread-db-search-path
3360 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3363 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3364 show schedule-multiple
3365 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3366 the current process.
3370 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3371 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3372 affecting correctness.
3374 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3375 show interactive-mode
3376 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3377 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3378 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3379 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3380 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3385 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3386 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3387 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3391 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3392 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3393 alias for the `fork' command.
3396 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3397 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3398 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3401 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3402 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3403 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3407 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3408 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3409 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3412 * New native configurations
3414 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3416 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3420 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3421 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3422 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3425 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3426 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3432 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3434 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
3436 * New native configurations
3438 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3439 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3443 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3444 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3446 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3448 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3449 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3450 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3451 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3453 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3454 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3456 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3459 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3460 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3461 and in inlined functions.
3463 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3464 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3465 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3467 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3469 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3470 registers on PowerPC targets.
3472 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3473 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3475 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3476 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3478 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3479 extended-remote mode.
3481 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3482 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3483 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3484 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3486 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3487 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3488 target architectures.
3490 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3491 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3492 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3493 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3495 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3498 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3499 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3501 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3502 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3503 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3504 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3506 - Improved command completion in Ada
3509 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3514 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3515 show print frame-arguments
3516 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3517 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3522 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3529 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3531 * New remote packets
3538 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3541 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3545 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3547 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3549 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3550 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3551 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3553 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3554 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3555 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3557 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3558 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3561 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3562 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3564 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3565 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3567 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3569 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3570 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3571 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3573 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3574 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3576 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3577 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3580 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3581 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3582 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3584 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3587 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3588 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3589 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3591 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3593 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3595 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3596 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3597 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3599 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3600 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3602 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3603 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3604 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3605 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3606 Windows and SymbianOS).
3608 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3609 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3611 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3612 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3618 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3619 when debugging using remote targets.
3621 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3622 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3623 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3624 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3625 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3626 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3627 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3629 set breakpoint auto-hw
3630 show breakpoint auto-hw
3631 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3632 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3633 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3634 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3635 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3636 including "next" and "finish".
3639 catch exception unhandled
3640 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3643 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3647 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3648 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3649 an alias to "set sysroot".
3652 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3653 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3656 * New native configurations
3658 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3661 unset tdesc filename
3663 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3664 not query the target for its built-in description.
3668 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3669 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3670 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3672 * New remote packets
3675 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3676 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3678 qXfer:features:read:
3679 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3684 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3685 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3687 qXfer:libraries:read:
3688 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3689 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3690 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3691 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3695 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3703 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3704 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3705 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3706 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3708 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3711 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3712 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3721 * Other removed features
3728 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3735 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3740 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3741 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3746 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3747 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3749 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3751 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3752 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3753 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3754 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3756 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3758 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3759 in debugging information.
3763 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3764 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3766 set mips stack-arg-size
3767 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3769 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3771 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3776 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3778 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3779 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3780 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3782 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3783 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3786 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3787 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3789 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3790 stub provides the required support.
3792 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3793 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3798 unset substitute-path
3799 show substitute-path
3800 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3801 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3802 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3803 between compilation and debugging.
3807 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3808 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3809 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3813 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3815 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3816 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3818 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3820 * New remote packets
3823 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3824 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3825 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3826 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3830 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3831 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3833 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3834 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3835 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3840 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3842 * Removed remote packets
3845 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3846 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3848 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3852 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3854 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3858 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3859 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3861 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3863 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3865 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3866 previously saved state.
3868 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3870 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3872 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3873 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3875 info forks List forks of the user program that
3876 are available to be debugged.
3878 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3879 forks of the user program that are
3880 available to be debugged.
3882 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3883 that are available to be debugged (and
3884 kill the forked process).
3886 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3887 that are available to be debugged (and
3888 allow the process to continue).
3892 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3894 * Improved Windows host support
3896 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3897 native console support, and remote communications using either
3898 network sockets or serial ports.
3900 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3902 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3903 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3904 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3905 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3906 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3907 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3911 The ARM rdi-share module.
3913 The Netware NLM debug server.
3915 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3917 * New native configurations
3919 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3920 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3924 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3926 * New command line options
3928 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3929 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3930 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3931 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3932 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3933 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3934 with the --command (-x) option.
3936 * Deprecated commands removed
3938 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3942 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3943 othernames set arm disassembler
3944 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3945 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3946 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3949 * New BSD user-level threads support
3951 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3952 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3955 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3956 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3957 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3959 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3960 are not yet supported.
3962 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3963 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3965 * REMOVED configurations and files
3967 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3968 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3969 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3971 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3973 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3974 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3977 * VAX floating point support
3979 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3981 * User-defined command support
3983 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3984 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3985 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3987 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3989 * New command line option
3991 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3994 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3996 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3997 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3998 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3999 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4000 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4002 * Internationalization
4004 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4005 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4006 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4010 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4011 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4012 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4014 * New native configurations
4016 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4020 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4021 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4023 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4025 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4026 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4027 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4030 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4031 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4032 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4042 powerpc bdm protocol
4044 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4045 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4047 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4049 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4050 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4051 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4052 permanently REMOVED.
4061 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4063 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4065 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4066 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4069 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4071 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4072 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4073 IRIX long double values).
4077 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4078 command. This problem has been fixed.
4080 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4082 * Fix for ``many threads''
4084 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4085 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4088 ptrace: No such process.
4089 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4091 This problem has been fixed.
4093 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4095 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4098 * New ``start'' command.
4100 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4102 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4104 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4105 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4106 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4108 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4109 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4110 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4111 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4112 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4113 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4114 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4115 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4116 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4118 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4120 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4121 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4122 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4123 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4124 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4126 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4127 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4128 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4130 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4132 * New native configurations
4134 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4135 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4136 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4137 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4138 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4139 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4140 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4142 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4144 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4145 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4146 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4147 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4148 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4149 work, was also included.
4151 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4152 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4162 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4163 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4165 * REMOVED configurations and files
4167 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4168 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4169 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4170 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4171 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4172 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4173 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4174 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4175 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4176 sonymips mips-sony-*
4177 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4179 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4181 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4183 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4184 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4185 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4186 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4189 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4191 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4192 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4193 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4194 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4195 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4196 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4199 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4201 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4203 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4204 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4205 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4207 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4209 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4210 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4212 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4214 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4215 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4216 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4218 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4220 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4221 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4223 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4225 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4226 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4227 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4229 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4231 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4232 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4233 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4235 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4237 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4239 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4240 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4242 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4244 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4245 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4246 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4247 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4249 * Revised SPARC target
4251 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4252 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4253 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4254 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4255 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4259 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4260 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4261 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4264 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4266 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4267 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4270 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4272 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4273 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4274 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4275 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4276 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4277 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4278 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4279 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4280 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4282 * New native configurations
4284 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4285 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4286 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4287 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4288 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4290 * New debugging protocols
4292 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4294 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4296 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4297 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4298 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4300 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4302 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4303 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4304 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4305 permanently REMOVED.
4307 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4308 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4309 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4310 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4311 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4312 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4313 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4314 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4315 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4316 sonymips mips-sony-*
4317 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4319 * REMOVED configurations and files
4321 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4322 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4323 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4324 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4325 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4326 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4327 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4328 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4329 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4330 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4331 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4332 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4333 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4334 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4335 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4336 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4337 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4339 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4343 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4344 integrated into GDB.
4346 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4348 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4349 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4350 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4353 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4354 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4355 DWARF 2 CFI support.
4359 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4360 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4361 remote protocol documentation for details.
4363 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
4365 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4366 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4367 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4370 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4372 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4373 per-thread variables.
4375 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4377 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4378 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4380 * Separate debug info.
4382 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4383 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4384 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4385 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4386 and optional debug files.
4388 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4390 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4391 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4394 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4395 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4399 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4400 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4401 considered "useable".
4403 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4405 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4406 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4409 * GDB supports logging output to a file
4411 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4412 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4414 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4416 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4417 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4420 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4422 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4423 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4427 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4428 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4429 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4430 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4431 data, for more informative profiling results.
4433 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4435 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4436 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4437 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4439 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4442 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4443 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4444 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4445 in a subsequent -var-update.
4447 * New native configurations.
4449 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4451 * Multi-arched targets.
4453 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4454 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4456 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4458 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4459 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4460 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4461 permanently REMOVED.
4463 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4464 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4465 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4466 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4467 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4468 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4469 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4470 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4471 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4472 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4473 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4474 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4476 * REMOVED configurations and files
4479 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4480 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4481 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4482 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4483 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4484 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4486 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4487 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4488 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4489 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4490 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4491 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4493 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4495 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4496 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4497 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4498 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4499 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4501 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4503 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4505 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4506 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4507 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4508 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4509 shared libs like mad''.
4511 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4513 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4514 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4515 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4516 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4518 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4520 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4521 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4524 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4525 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4527 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4528 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4530 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4531 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4532 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4533 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4535 * Multi-arched targets.
4537 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4538 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4540 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4541 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4542 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4546 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4549 * New native configurations
4551 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4552 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4553 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4554 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4556 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4558 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4559 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4560 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4561 permanently REMOVED.
4563 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4564 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4565 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4566 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4567 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4568 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4569 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4570 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4571 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4572 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4574 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4575 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4577 * OBSOLETE languages
4579 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4581 * REMOVED configurations and files
4583 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4584 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4585 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4586 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4587 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4589 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4591 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4593 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4594 commands. The default is 1024.
4596 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4598 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4600 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4602 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4603 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4604 from a file into memory (restore).
4606 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4608 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4609 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4610 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4612 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4620 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4621 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4622 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4624 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4625 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4626 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4628 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4629 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4630 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4632 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4633 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4634 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4636 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4638 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4640 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4641 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4642 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4643 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4644 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4645 (notably embedded) targets.
4647 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4649 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4650 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4651 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4652 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4654 * New command line option
4656 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4658 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4660 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4661 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4662 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4663 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4664 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4665 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4666 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4667 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4668 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4669 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4671 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4673 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4674 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4676 * New native configurations
4678 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4679 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4680 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4681 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4685 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4687 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4689 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4690 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4691 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4692 permanently REMOVED.
4694 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4695 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4696 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4697 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4698 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4700 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4702 * REMOVED configurations and files
4704 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4706 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4707 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4708 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4709 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4710 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4711 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4712 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4713 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4714 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4715 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4716 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4718 * Changes to command line processing
4720 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4721 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4723 * Changes to key bindings
4725 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4727 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4729 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4731 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4734 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4736 Numerous documentation fixes.
4738 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4740 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4742 * New native configurations
4744 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4745 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4746 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4747 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4748 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4749 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4753 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4755 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4757 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4759 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4760 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4761 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4762 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4763 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4765 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4766 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4767 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4768 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4769 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4770 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4771 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4772 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4774 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4775 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4777 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4778 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4779 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4780 permanently REMOVED.
4782 * REMOVED configurations and files
4784 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4785 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4787 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4791 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4793 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4794 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4799 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4801 * The MI enabled by default.
4803 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4804 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4805 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4806 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4807 which is now deprecated.
4809 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4811 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4812 main features are supported:
4814 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4816 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4819 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4821 - a Pascal expression parser.
4823 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4825 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4827 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4829 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4830 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4832 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4834 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4836 * Changes in completion.
4838 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4839 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4840 users expect at the shell prompt.
4842 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4843 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4844 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4845 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4846 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4847 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4848 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4850 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4852 * New platform-independent commands:
4854 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4855 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4856 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4858 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4860 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4861 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4862 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4864 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4866 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4867 multi-threaded programs though.
4869 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4871 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4873 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4874 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4877 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4879 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4880 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4881 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4882 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4883 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4886 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4887 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4888 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4890 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4892 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4893 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4895 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4896 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4899 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4900 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4901 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4902 a given linear address.
4904 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4905 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4906 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4908 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4910 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4912 * Changes in documentation.
4914 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4915 Documentation License.
4917 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4920 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4922 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4925 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4926 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4927 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4929 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4931 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4932 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4933 contents of this file.
4937 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4939 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4941 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4943 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4944 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4945 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4946 greater level of detail.
4948 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4950 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4951 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4952 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4955 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4957 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4958 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4959 machines ``out of the box''.
4961 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4962 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4963 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4964 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4965 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4967 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4968 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4969 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4970 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4971 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4973 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4974 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4977 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4980 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4981 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4982 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4983 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4985 * New native configurations
4987 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4988 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4992 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4993 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4994 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4995 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4997 * OBSOLETE configurations
4999 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5000 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5002 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5005 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5006 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5007 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5008 be permanently REMOVED.
5010 * Gould support removed
5012 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5014 * New features for SVR4
5016 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5017 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5018 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5020 * Many C++ enhancements
5022 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5023 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5025 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5027 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5028 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5029 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5030 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5032 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5033 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5035 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5037 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5038 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5039 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5041 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5042 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5044 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5046 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5047 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5048 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5050 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5052 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5053 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5054 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5056 * ``apropos'' command added.
5058 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5059 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5060 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5064 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5065 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5066 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5067 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5068 enabled by configuring with:
5070 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5072 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5074 * New native configurations
5076 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5077 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5078 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5082 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5083 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5084 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5086 * OBSOLETE configurations
5088 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5090 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5091 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5092 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5093 be permanently REMOVED.
5097 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5098 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5099 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5100 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5101 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5102 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5103 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5108 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5110 * set extension-language
5112 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5113 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5114 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5115 set extension-language .c c++
5116 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5117 and their associated languages.
5119 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5121 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5122 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5123 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5127 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5128 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5130 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5131 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5133 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5134 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5135 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5136 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5137 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5138 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5139 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5140 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5142 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5143 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5144 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5145 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5149 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5150 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5151 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5152 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5153 for xdb and dbx commands.
5157 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5158 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5159 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5161 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5162 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5163 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5165 * Debugging across forks
5167 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5172 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5173 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5174 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5176 * GDB remote protocol additions
5178 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5179 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5180 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5181 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5183 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5184 full 64-bit address. The command
5186 set remoteaddresssize 32
5188 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5189 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5192 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5193 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5195 maint packet heythere
5197 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5198 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5201 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5202 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5203 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5205 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5207 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5208 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5209 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5211 * mask-address variable for Mips
5213 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5214 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5215 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5217 * Higher serial baud rates
5219 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5220 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5221 to achieve all of these rates.)
5225 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5226 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5229 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5231 * New native configurations
5233 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5234 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5235 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5236 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5237 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5238 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5239 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5243 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5244 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5245 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5246 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5247 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5248 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5249 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5250 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5251 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5252 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5253 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5255 * New debugging protocols
5257 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5258 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5259 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5260 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5261 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5262 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5266 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5267 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5272 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5273 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5275 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5277 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5278 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5279 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5281 * Live range splitting
5283 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5284 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5285 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5289 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5290 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5294 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5295 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5296 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5301 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5306 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5307 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5308 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5309 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5310 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5311 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5315 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5316 the symbol at the specified address.
5320 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5321 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5322 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5323 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5324 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5328 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5329 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5330 of most MIPS variants.
5334 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5335 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5336 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5340 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5341 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5342 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5343 the possible architectures.
5345 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5347 * New native configurations
5349 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5350 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5351 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5352 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5353 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5354 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5358 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5359 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5360 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5361 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5362 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5364 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5368 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5369 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5370 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5371 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5372 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5376 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5378 * Windows 95/NT native
5380 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5381 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5382 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5383 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5384 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5386 * dont-repeat command
5388 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5389 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5390 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5391 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5393 * Send break instead of ^C
5395 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5396 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5397 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5399 * Remote protocol timeout
5401 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5402 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5403 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5405 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5407 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5408 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5409 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5410 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5411 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5413 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5414 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5415 automatically on hpux10.
5417 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5419 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5421 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5423 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5424 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5425 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5426 every character. The default value is 1050.
5428 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5430 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5431 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5432 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5433 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5434 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5435 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5437 * Speedups for remote debugging
5439 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5440 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5441 and more efficient S-record downloading.
5443 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5445 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5446 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5448 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5450 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
5452 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5453 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5455 * Remote targets use caching
5457 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5458 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5459 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5460 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5461 off' turns the the data cache off.
5463 * Remote targets may have threads
5465 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5466 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5467 gdb/remote.c for details.
5471 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5472 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5473 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5474 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5475 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5476 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5477 sequence is something like
5479 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5481 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5485 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5486 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5487 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5488 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5489 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5490 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5491 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5492 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5496 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5497 but does simplify configuration and building.
5501 GDB now supports hpux10.
5503 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5505 * New native configurations
5507 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5508 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5509 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5510 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5514 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5515 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5516 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5517 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5520 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5522 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5523 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5524 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5525 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5526 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5528 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5530 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5531 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5534 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5536 To execute the command use:
5539 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5540 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5541 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5543 * New `if' and `while' commands
5545 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5546 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5547 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5548 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5549 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5550 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5551 if the expression is zero.
5553 * Fortran source language mode
5555 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5556 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5557 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5558 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5561 * Better HPUX support
5563 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5564 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5565 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5566 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5567 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5573 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5574 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5580 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5581 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5584 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5585 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5587 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5589 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5590 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5591 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5592 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5593 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5594 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5596 * New DOS host serial code
5598 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5599 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5602 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5604 * New "complete" command
5606 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5607 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5609 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5611 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5612 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5614 * Breakpoint hit counts
5616 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5617 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5618 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5619 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5620 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5623 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5625 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5626 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5627 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5629 * Shared library breakpoints
5631 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5632 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5634 * Hardware watchpoints
5636 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5637 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5639 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5643 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5644 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5646 * Improved Irix 5 support
5648 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5650 * Improved HPPA support
5652 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5654 * New native configurations
5656 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5657 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5658 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5659 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5663 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5664 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5667 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5669 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5670 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5674 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5675 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5677 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5679 * Irix 5 is now supported
5683 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5684 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5685 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5686 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5687 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5690 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5692 * User visible changes:
5696 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5697 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5698 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5699 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5700 debugging info for the mips target).
5702 * DEC Alpha native support
5704 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5705 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5706 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5707 Alpha-specific notes.
5709 * Preliminary thread implementation
5711 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5713 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5715 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5716 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5719 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5721 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5722 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5723 call methods, ...etc.
5725 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5727 * User visible changes:
5729 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5730 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5731 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5732 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5734 Filename completion now works.
5736 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5737 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5738 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5740 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5741 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5742 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5743 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5744 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5748 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5749 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5752 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5756 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5757 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5758 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5762 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5763 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5764 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5765 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5766 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5770 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5771 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5772 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5774 * New targets supported
5776 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5777 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5778 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5779 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5780 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5782 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5783 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5784 GO32 memory extender.
5786 * New remote protocols
5788 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5790 * New source languages supported
5792 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5793 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5794 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5797 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5799 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5801 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5802 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5803 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5804 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5805 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5806 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5808 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5810 * Faster and better demangling
5812 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5813 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5814 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5815 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5816 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5817 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5820 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5821 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5822 compiler does not actually implement.
5824 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5826 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5827 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5828 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5829 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5830 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5831 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5834 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5835 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5837 * Improved configure script
5839 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5840 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5841 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5842 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5844 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5845 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5846 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5847 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5848 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5849 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5851 * Documentation improvements
5853 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5854 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5855 before submitting changes.
5857 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5858 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5859 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5860 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5861 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5863 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5864 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5865 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5866 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5867 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5868 around this problem.
5872 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5873 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5874 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5877 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5878 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5880 * New native hosts supported
5882 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5883 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5885 * New targets supported
5887 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5889 * New file formats supported
5891 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5892 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5896 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5898 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5899 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5901 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5902 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5903 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5905 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5906 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5908 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5909 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5910 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5913 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5914 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5915 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5916 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5917 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5919 * Internal improvements
5921 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5922 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5924 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5925 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5926 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5927 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5928 shared code that handles any of them.
5930 * New command line options
5932 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5936 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5937 General Public License.
5939 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5941 * Host/native/target split
5943 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5944 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5945 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5946 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5947 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5949 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5950 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5951 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5952 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5953 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5954 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5955 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5957 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5958 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5959 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5961 * New hosts supported
5963 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5964 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5965 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5967 * New targets supported
5969 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5970 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5972 * New native hosts supported
5974 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5975 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5976 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5978 * New file formats supported
5980 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5981 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5982 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5986 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5987 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5988 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5990 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5992 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5993 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5994 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5995 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5999 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6000 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6001 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6003 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6007 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6008 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6011 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6012 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6014 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6015 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6016 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6017 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6018 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6019 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6021 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6022 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6023 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6024 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6028 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6029 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6030 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6031 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6032 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6034 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6035 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6036 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6037 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6041 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6042 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6043 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6044 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6045 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6046 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6047 each instruction being stepped through.
6049 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6050 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6052 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6053 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6054 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6055 processor with a serial port.
6059 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6060 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6061 supported, and what files each one uses.
6065 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6066 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6067 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6068 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6070 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6071 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6072 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6073 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6077 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6078 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6079 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6080 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6081 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6082 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6084 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6087 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6089 * Better support for C++ function names
6091 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6092 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6093 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6094 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6095 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6097 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6098 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6099 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6100 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6101 for the list of formats.
6103 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6105 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6106 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6107 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6108 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6109 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6110 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6113 * New 'maintenance' command
6115 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6116 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6117 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6119 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6120 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6121 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6122 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6123 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6124 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6126 The following commands are new:
6128 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6129 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6130 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6132 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6134 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6135 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6136 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6137 read after argv processing.
6139 * New hosts supported
6141 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6143 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6145 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6146 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6147 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6148 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6149 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6152 * New targets supported
6154 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6156 * More smarts about finding #include files
6158 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6159 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6160 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6161 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6162 the one that contains your sources.
6164 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6165 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6166 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6168 * Interesting infernals change
6170 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6171 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6172 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6173 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6175 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6177 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6178 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6179 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6181 See the ChangeLog for details.
6183 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6185 * New machines supported (host and target)
6187 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6189 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6191 * New malloc package
6193 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6194 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6195 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6196 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6197 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6198 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6202 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6203 'help info proc' for details.
6205 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6207 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6208 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6211 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6213 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6214 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6215 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6216 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6217 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6218 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6220 * Cross byte order fixes
6222 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6223 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6225 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6227 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6228 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6229 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6230 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6231 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6232 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6233 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6234 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6235 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6236 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6238 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6239 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6240 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6241 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6243 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6244 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6245 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6248 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6250 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6251 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6252 shared across multiple host platforms.
6254 * longjmp() handling
6256 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6257 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6258 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6259 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6263 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6264 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6269 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6270 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6271 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6273 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6275 * New machines supported (host and target)
6277 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6279 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6280 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6282 * New machines supported (target)
6284 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6288 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6289 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6290 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6292 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6293 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6294 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6295 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6296 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6299 * New features for SVR4
6301 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6302 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6303 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6305 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6306 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6307 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6309 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6310 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6312 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6314 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6315 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6316 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6317 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6318 same code linked statically.
6322 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6323 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6324 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6325 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6326 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6327 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6331 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6332 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6333 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6336 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6338 * New machines supported (host and target)
6340 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6341 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6342 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6344 * Almost SCO Unix support
6346 We had hoped to support:
6347 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6348 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6349 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6350 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6352 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6354 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6355 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6356 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6357 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6362 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6363 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6364 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6368 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6369 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6370 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6372 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6374 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6375 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6376 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6378 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6379 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6380 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6381 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6384 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6385 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6386 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6387 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6390 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6391 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6394 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6395 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6396 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6399 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6401 * Improved configuration
6403 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6404 Porting BFD is simpler.
6408 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6409 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6410 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6411 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6415 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6417 * New host supported (not target)
6419 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6422 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6424 * Multiple source language support
6426 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6427 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6428 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6429 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6430 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6431 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6435 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6436 currently under development at the State University of New York at
6437 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6438 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6440 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6441 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6442 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6444 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6445 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6449 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6450 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6451 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6452 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6455 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6457 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6458 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6459 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6460 examining core files.
6464 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6467 * New machines supported (host and target)
6469 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6470 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6471 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6473 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6475 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6477 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6479 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6480 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6481 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6483 * New remote interfaces
6489 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6493 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6495 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6496 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6497 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6498 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6499 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6500 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6501 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6502 stub on the target system.
6504 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6506 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6507 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6508 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6510 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6511 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6514 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6516 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6517 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6519 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6520 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6521 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6523 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6524 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6525 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6526 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6528 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6529 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6530 it is already running. Default is ON.
6532 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6533 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6534 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6535 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6538 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6539 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6540 or the value of the environment variable
6543 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6544 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6547 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6548 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6549 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6551 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6552 history expansion will be performed on
6553 command line input. The default is OFF.
6555 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6556 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6557 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6559 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6560 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6561 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6564 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6565 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6566 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6569 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6570 ``set width'' instead.
6572 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6573 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6574 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6575 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6577 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6580 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6583 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6586 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6589 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6591 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6592 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6593 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6597 * Support for Shared Libraries
6599 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6600 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6601 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6602 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6603 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6604 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6605 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6606 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6608 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6609 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6610 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6612 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6617 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6618 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6619 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6620 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6621 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6622 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6624 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6626 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6628 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6629 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6630 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6633 * C++ multiple inheritance
6635 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6638 * C++ exception handling
6640 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6641 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6642 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6645 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6646 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6647 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6649 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6650 current stack frame.
6653 * Minor command changes
6655 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6656 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6657 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6659 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6660 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6661 frames without printing.
6663 * New directory command
6665 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6666 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6667 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6668 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6669 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6671 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6673 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6676 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6677 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6678 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6679 where the program that you are debugging will run.