1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.1
8 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
9 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
10 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
12 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
13 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
15 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
16 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
17 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
18 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
19 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
21 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
22 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
23 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
24 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
26 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
27 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
29 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
30 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
31 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
33 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
34 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
35 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
37 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
38 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
41 * Completion improvements
43 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
44 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
45 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
46 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
49 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
52 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
53 C++ anonymous namespaces:
56 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
57 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
58 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
60 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
61 completion support, that better understands what you're
62 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
63 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
66 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
68 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
70 * New command line options (gcore)
73 Dump all memory mappings.
75 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
77 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
78 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
79 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
81 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
86 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
89 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
90 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
91 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
92 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
93 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
94 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
95 a breakpoint from Python.
97 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
99 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
100 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
101 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
103 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
105 function[abi:cxx11](int)
108 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
111 (gdb) b function(int)
113 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
115 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
117 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
121 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
122 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
123 description of these.
125 ** A new command, "rbreak" has been added to the Python API. This
126 command allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints via a
127 regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
129 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
130 manual for a further description of this feature.
133 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
135 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
136 specified initial working directory.
138 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
139 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
141 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
142 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
144 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
145 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
147 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
148 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
149 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
150 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
151 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
153 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
154 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
155 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
157 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
158 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
159 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
160 in the *stopped notification.
162 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
163 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
167 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
168 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
169 the inferior when starting it.
172 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
173 before starting the remote inferior.
176 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
177 user-set environment variables should be unset).
180 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
183 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
186 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
187 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
189 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
190 filter the tests to be run.
192 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
193 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
198 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
201 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
202 with the 'compile' commands.
204 set debug separate-debug-file
205 show debug separate-debug-file
206 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
208 set dump-excluded-mappings
209 show dump-excluded-mappings
210 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
211 dumped when generating a core file.
214 List the registered selftests.
217 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
220 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
222 set|show print type nested-type-limit
223 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
224 type printer will show.
226 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
229 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
231 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
234 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
235 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
236 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
237 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
239 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
240 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
241 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
242 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
243 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
244 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
246 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
247 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
248 unless you tell it the variable's type:
251 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
255 * New native configurations
257 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
258 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
262 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
263 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
264 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
266 * Removed targets and native configurations
268 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
270 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
272 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
273 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
274 available in future Intel CPUs.
276 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
280 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
281 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
283 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
286 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
288 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
290 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
291 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
294 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
296 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
297 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
299 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
301 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
302 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
303 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
304 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
307 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
309 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
310 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
313 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
315 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
316 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
318 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
320 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
325 eval "print $arg%d", $i
330 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
332 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
333 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
335 * New native configurations
337 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
341 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
342 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
344 * Removed targets and native configurations
346 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
347 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
352 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
354 maint print arc arc-instruction address
355 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
359 set disassembler-options
360 show disassembler-options
361 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
362 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
363 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
364 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
365 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
370 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
371 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
373 -file-list-shared-libraries
374 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
375 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
377 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
379 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
381 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
382 default. One must now explicitly configure with
383 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
384 option will be removed in a future release.
386 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
389 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
390 memory backward from the given address. For example:
393 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
394 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
395 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
396 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
397 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
398 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
399 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
400 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
401 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
403 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
404 arrays of dynamic types.
406 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
407 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
408 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
409 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
410 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
411 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
413 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
416 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
417 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
418 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
420 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
422 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
423 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
424 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
425 signal received and code location.
429 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
430 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
431 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
432 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
434 * Rust language support.
435 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
436 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
439 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
441 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
442 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
443 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
444 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
445 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
446 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
447 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
448 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
449 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
450 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
453 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
455 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
456 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
461 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
462 skip -function function
463 skip -rfunction regular-expression
464 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
465 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
466 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
468 maint info line-table REGEXP
469 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
472 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
475 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
476 using the TTY file for input/output.
480 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
481 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
482 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
483 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
484 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
487 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
488 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
489 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
490 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
493 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
494 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
495 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
497 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
500 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
501 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
502 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
503 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
504 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
505 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
507 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
508 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
509 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
510 bytecode into native code.
512 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
513 recording. For example:
515 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
517 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
519 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
523 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
525 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
527 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
529 * Per-inferior thread numbers
531 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
532 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
533 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
537 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
538 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
539 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
540 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
542 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
543 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
544 are no longer unique between inferiors.
546 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
547 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
548 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
550 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
553 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
554 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
557 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
560 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
561 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
562 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
563 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
566 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
569 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
572 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
575 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
576 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
579 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
580 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
582 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
584 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
586 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
587 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
589 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
590 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
593 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
594 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
597 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
598 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
601 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
603 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
604 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
605 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
607 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
608 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
612 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
613 maint show target-non-stop
614 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
615 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
616 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
618 maint set bfd-sharing
619 maint show bfd-sharing
620 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
624 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
628 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
630 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
631 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
632 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
634 set remote thread-events
635 show remote thread-events
636 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
638 set ada print-signatures on|off
639 show ada print-signatures"
640 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
641 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
645 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
646 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
647 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
649 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
650 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
651 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
652 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
653 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
654 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
656 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
657 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
659 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
660 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
662 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
664 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
665 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
666 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
667 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
668 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
669 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
671 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
672 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
675 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
680 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
682 exec-events feature in qSupported
683 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
684 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
685 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
686 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
689 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
692 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
693 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
695 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
696 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
699 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
700 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
701 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
702 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
703 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
704 stop for that same thread.
707 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
708 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
709 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
712 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
713 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
715 syscall_entry stop reason
716 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
718 syscall_return stop reason
719 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
721 * Extended-remote exec events
723 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
724 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
725 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
727 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
728 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
729 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
731 * Thread names in remote protocol
733 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
736 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
738 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
739 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
740 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
741 fork and exec catchpoints.
743 * Remote syscall events
745 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
746 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
748 set remote catch-syscall-packet
749 show remote catch-syscall-packet
750 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
754 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
755 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
760 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
761 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
762 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
763 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
764 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
765 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
767 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
769 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
770 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
771 including advance SIMD instructions.
773 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
775 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
776 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
777 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
778 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
779 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
780 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
781 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
783 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
785 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
787 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
788 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
791 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
792 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
793 and may include things like its command line arguments.
795 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
796 is now available on all platforms.
798 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
799 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
800 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
801 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
802 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
803 backward compatibility.
805 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
806 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
807 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
808 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
810 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
811 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
812 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
813 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
816 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
818 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
820 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
821 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
822 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
823 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
824 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
825 See "New remote packets" below.
827 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
828 available register groups, including target specific groups.
830 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
831 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
832 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
833 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
838 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
842 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
843 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
844 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
845 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
846 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
847 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
848 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
849 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
850 "const" version of the value respectively.
854 maint print symbol-cache
855 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
857 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
858 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
860 maint flush-symbol-cache
861 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
865 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
868 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
872 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
875 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
876 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
880 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
883 Print information about branch tracing internals.
885 maint btrace packet-history
886 Print the raw branch tracing data.
888 maint btrace clear-packet-history
889 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
892 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
893 anew by the next "record" command.
898 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
900 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
903 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
904 show debug dwarf-read
905 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
907 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
908 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
909 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
910 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
912 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
913 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
914 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
915 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
918 show debug dwarf-line
919 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
923 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
924 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
925 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
926 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
928 set history remove-duplicates
929 show history remove-duplicates
930 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
932 maint set symbol-cache-size
933 maint show symbol-cache-size
934 Control the size of the symbol cache.
936 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
937 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
939 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
940 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
942 set debug linux-namespaces
943 show debug linux-namespaces
944 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
946 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
947 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
948 Intel Processor Trace format.
949 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
950 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
952 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
953 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
956 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
957 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
959 * Python/Guile scripting
961 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
962 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
966 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
967 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
969 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
970 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
973 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
974 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
978 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
982 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
983 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
984 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
988 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
989 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
992 Return information about files on the remote system.
995 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
996 create a process running on the remote system.
999 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
1000 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
1001 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1002 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1005 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1008 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1010 vforkdone stop reason
1011 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1012 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1014 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1015 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1016 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1017 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1018 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1019 whether these features are enabled.
1021 * Extended-remote fork events
1023 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1024 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1025 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1026 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1028 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1029 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1030 the btrace record target.
1031 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1033 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1034 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1036 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1039 * Removed command line options
1041 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1043 * Removed targets and native configurations
1045 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1046 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1048 * New configure options
1051 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1052 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1054 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1055 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1056 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1057 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1059 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1063 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1065 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1067 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1071 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1072 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1073 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1074 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1075 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1076 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1077 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1078 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1079 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1080 selecting a new file to debug.
1081 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1082 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1084 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1087 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1088 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1089 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1090 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1092 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1094 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1095 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1096 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1097 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1099 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1100 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1101 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1102 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1103 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1104 interface with this new feature are:
1106 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1107 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1111 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1112 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1113 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1114 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1115 as "maint demangler-warning".
1117 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1118 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1120 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1121 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1124 maint print user-registers
1125 List all currently available "user" registers.
1127 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1128 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1129 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1131 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1132 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1133 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1136 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1137 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1138 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1139 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1142 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1143 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1144 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1145 switched threads meanwhile.
1147 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1149 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1150 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1151 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1152 is now the default mode.
1156 set debug symbol-lookup
1157 show debug symbol-lookup
1158 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1162 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1163 inferiors that have exited.
1167 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1171 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1173 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1174 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1175 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1176 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1177 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1179 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1180 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1181 its alias "share", instead.
1183 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1185 * New command line options
1188 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1190 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1191 as specified in ISO C99.
1193 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1194 with or without disassembly.
1198 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1199 available is determined at configure time.
1200 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1201 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1203 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1207 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1211 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1213 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1214 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1216 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1217 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1221 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1222 show print symbol-loading
1223 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1224 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1225 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1226 becomes less useful.
1228 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1229 show guile print-stack
1230 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1232 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1233 show auto-load guile-scripts
1234 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1236 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1237 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1238 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1239 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1240 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1241 usage of this option.
1243 set auto-connect-native-target
1245 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1246 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1247 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1249 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1250 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1251 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1253 maint set target-async (on|off)
1254 maint show target-async
1255 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1256 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1257 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1258 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1260 set mi-async (on|off)
1262 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1263 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1265 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1266 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1268 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1269 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1270 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1271 "set target-async on" command.
1273 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1275 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1276 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1277 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1278 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1279 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1281 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1282 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1283 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1285 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1286 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1287 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1288 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1289 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1290 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1291 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1293 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1294 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1296 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1297 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1298 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1300 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1301 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1302 memory or registers.
1304 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1306 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1307 remote. It now works with all targets.
1309 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1310 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1311 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1312 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1313 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1314 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1315 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1316 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1317 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1320 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1321 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1322 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1324 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1326 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1327 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1328 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1330 * New remote packets
1332 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1333 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1334 branch trace incrementally.
1338 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1339 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1341 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1342 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1343 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1344 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1345 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1348 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1350 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1351 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1352 its alias "share", instead.
1354 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1355 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1360 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1361 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1362 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1363 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1364 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1365 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1366 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1367 commands and CLI execution commands.
1369 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1371 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1372 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1373 recording has been added.
1375 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1377 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1378 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1380 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1381 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1382 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1383 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1384 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1385 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1388 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1390 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1392 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1393 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1394 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1395 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1400 (gdb) info registers rax
1403 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1404 "*value not available*".
1406 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1411 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1412 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1413 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1414 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1415 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1416 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1420 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1421 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1422 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1424 * Removed native configurations
1426 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1427 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1429 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1430 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1431 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1432 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1433 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1434 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1435 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1439 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1440 maint check-psymtabs
1441 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1443 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1444 maint expand-symtabs
1445 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1448 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1450 maint set|show per-command
1451 maint set|show per-command space
1452 maint set|show per-command time
1453 maint set|show per-command symtab
1454 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1456 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1457 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1458 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1459 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1460 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1463 info exceptions REGEXP
1464 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1465 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1470 set debug symfile off|on
1472 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1473 symbol tables within those files
1475 set print raw frame-arguments
1476 show print raw frame-arguments
1477 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1478 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1480 set remote trace-status-packet
1481 show remote trace-status-packet
1482 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1486 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1490 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1492 set startup-with-shell
1493 show startup-with-shell
1494 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1499 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1500 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1502 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1503 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1504 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1505 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1508 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1509 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1510 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1512 * New command-line options
1514 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1516 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1517 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1519 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1522 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1524 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1525 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1527 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1528 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1530 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1531 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1532 due to an uncaught signal.
1536 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1537 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1538 command, which should contain "language-option".
1540 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1541 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1543 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1544 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1545 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1546 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1547 "undefined-command-error-code".
1549 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1552 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1554 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1555 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1558 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1559 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1561 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1562 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1563 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1565 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1566 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1567 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1568 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1569 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1570 "exec-run-start-option".
1572 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1573 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1575 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1576 the new "info exceptions" command.
1578 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1579 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1580 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1584 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1585 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1586 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1589 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1590 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1592 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1593 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1594 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1596 * New remote packets
1600 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1601 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1602 involvemement at each single-step.
1604 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1605 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1606 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1607 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1608 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1609 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1612 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1614 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1615 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1617 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1618 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1619 trace state variables.
1621 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1624 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1625 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1627 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1629 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1630 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1631 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1632 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1634 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
1636 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1637 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1638 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1639 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1641 set|show record full insn-number-max
1642 set|show record full stop-at-limit
1643 set|show record full memory-query
1645 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1646 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1647 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1648 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1649 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1653 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1654 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1656 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1657 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1658 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1660 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1661 instruction granularity
1663 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1664 function granularity
1666 * New native configurations
1668 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1669 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1670 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1671 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1675 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1676 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1677 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1678 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1679 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1681 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1682 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1683 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1684 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1685 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1686 --data-directory command-line option.
1688 * New command line options:
1690 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1691 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1693 * Removed command line options
1695 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1698 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1701 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1705 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1707 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1709 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1711 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1713 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1714 of architecture in the Python API.
1716 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1717 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1719 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1721 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1722 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1724 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1726 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1729 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1730 default for GCC since November 2000.
1732 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1734 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1735 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1737 * New configure options
1739 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1740 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1741 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1742 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1743 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1744 options allow the user to override that default.
1745 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1746 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1747 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1749 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1752 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1753 conditions to be attached.
1756 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1758 python-interactive [command]
1760 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1761 and print the result of expressions.
1764 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1766 enable type-printer [name]...
1767 disable type-printer [name]...
1768 Enable or disable type printers.
1772 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1773 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1778 set print type methods (on|off)
1779 show print type methods
1780 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1781 The default is to show them.
1783 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1784 show print type typedefs
1785 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1786 The default is to show them.
1788 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1789 show filename-display
1790 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1791 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1793 set trace-buffer-size
1794 show trace-buffer-size
1795 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1797 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1798 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1799 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1803 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1806 set debug coff-pe-read
1807 show debug coff-pe-read
1808 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1813 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1816 set debug notification
1817 show debug notification
1818 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1822 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1823 "=cmd-param-changed".
1824 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1825 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1826 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1827 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1828 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1829 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1830 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1831 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1833 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1834 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1835 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1836 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1837 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1838 library load/unload events.
1839 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1840 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1841 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1842 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1843 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1844 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1845 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1846 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1848 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1849 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1850 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1851 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1853 * New remote packets
1856 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1857 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1860 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1861 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1865 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1866 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1869 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1870 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1872 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1874 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1875 for more x32 ABI info.
1877 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1879 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1881 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1882 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1883 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1884 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1885 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1886 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1887 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1888 "info os msg" lists message queues
1889 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1891 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1892 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1893 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1894 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1895 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1896 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1898 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1899 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1900 record/replay support.
1902 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1906 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1909 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1911 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1912 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1914 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1916 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1917 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1919 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1920 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1921 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1924 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1925 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1927 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1928 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1929 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1931 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1932 object associated with a PC value.
1934 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1935 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1937 * Go language support.
1938 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1941 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1942 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1944 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1945 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1947 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1948 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1949 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1950 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1951 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1954 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1955 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1956 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1957 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1959 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1960 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1962 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1963 since December 2007.
1965 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1966 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1967 command does. For instance:
1969 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1971 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1972 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1973 created, using the "condition" command.
1975 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1976 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1978 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1980 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1981 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1982 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1983 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1984 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1985 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1986 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1987 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1989 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1990 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1991 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1992 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1993 the .gdb_index section.
1995 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1997 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
2002 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2004 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2008 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2009 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2010 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2012 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2013 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2015 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2018 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2019 C++ and Java objects.
2021 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2022 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2023 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2024 configured with '--with-python'.
2026 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2027 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2028 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2029 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2030 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2031 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2032 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2034 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2035 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2036 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2037 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2039 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2040 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2041 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2042 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2044 ** "set print symbol"
2046 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2047 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2048 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2050 * Deprecated commands
2052 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2053 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2057 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2058 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2060 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2061 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2062 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2063 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2068 set mips compression
2069 show mips compression
2070 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2071 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2074 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2076 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2077 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2078 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2079 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2081 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2085 Disable auto-loading globally.
2088 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2090 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2091 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2092 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2094 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2095 show auto-load python-scripts
2096 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2098 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2099 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2100 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2102 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2103 show auto-load libthread-db
2104 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2106 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2107 show auto-load scripts-directory
2108 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2109 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2110 of the directories listed by this option.
2111 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2113 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2114 show auto-load safe-path
2115 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2116 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2118 set debug auto-load on|off
2119 show debug auto-load
2120 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2122 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2124 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2125 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2126 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2127 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2129 set dprintf-function <expr>
2130 show dprintf-function
2131 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2132 show dprintf-channel
2133 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2134 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2136 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2137 show disconnected-dprintf
2138 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2139 after GDB disconnects.
2141 * New configure options
2143 --with-auto-load-dir
2144 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2145 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2146 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2147 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2148 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2150 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2151 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2152 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2154 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2155 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2158 * New remote packets
2160 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2162 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2163 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2164 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2165 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2169 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2170 program without GDB involvement.
2172 * New command line options
2174 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2175 before loading inferior.
2176 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2177 execute it before loading inferior.
2179 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2181 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2182 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2183 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2184 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2187 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2188 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2190 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2191 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2192 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2193 target hardware watchpoint.
2195 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2196 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2197 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2198 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2202 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2203 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2206 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2207 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2208 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2209 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2210 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2213 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2216 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2217 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2218 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2219 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2220 corresponding value.
2222 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2223 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2224 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2227 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2228 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2229 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2230 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2232 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2234 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2237 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2238 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2239 available in the CLI.
2241 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2242 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2243 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2244 "some_type.items()".
2246 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2249 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2250 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2251 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2252 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2253 any anonymous fields.
2257 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2260 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2261 "=breakpoint-modified".
2263 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2265 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2266 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2267 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2270 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2271 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2272 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2273 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2274 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2276 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2277 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2279 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2280 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2281 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2282 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2283 use this option to specify where to find it.
2285 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2286 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2287 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2288 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2289 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2290 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2291 section in the user manual for more details.
2293 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2294 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2295 become available after that.
2297 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2299 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2300 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2306 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2307 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2311 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2312 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2313 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2315 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2316 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2317 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2319 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2320 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2321 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2322 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2323 name starts with a hyphen.
2325 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2326 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2327 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2328 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2329 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2330 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2331 number of bytes that will be collected.
2334 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2335 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2336 setting the variable trace-notes.
2339 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2340 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2341 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2344 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2345 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2346 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2347 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2348 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2351 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2352 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2353 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2357 set debug dwarf2-read
2358 show debug dwarf2-read
2359 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2360 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2362 set debug symtab-create
2363 show debug symtab-create
2364 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2365 creation. The default is off.
2368 show extended-prompt
2369 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2370 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2371 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2372 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2373 prompt is displayed.
2375 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2376 show print entry-values
2377 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2378 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2379 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2381 set debug entry-values
2382 show debug entry-values
2383 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2384 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2386 set basenames-may-differ
2387 show basenames-may-differ
2388 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2389 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2390 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2391 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2392 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2393 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2394 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2395 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2401 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2402 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2403 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2404 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2406 set trace-stop-notes
2407 show trace-stop-notes
2408 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2409 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2410 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2411 started by someone else.
2413 * New remote packets
2417 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2421 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2425 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2429 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2433 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2436 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2437 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2441 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2445 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2447 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2449 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2451 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2453 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2454 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2455 matches the given regular expression.
2457 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2459 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2460 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2462 * New command line options
2464 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2465 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2467 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2468 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2470 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2471 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2472 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2474 * GDB now understands thread names.
2476 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2477 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2479 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2480 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2483 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2484 has been integrated into GDB.
2488 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2489 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2490 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2492 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2493 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2494 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2495 and allows for more dynamic content.
2497 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2498 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2499 have an is_valid method.
2501 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2502 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2503 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2505 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2507 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2508 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2509 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2510 that function like so:
2512 result = some_value (10,20)
2514 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2515 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2516 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2518 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2519 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2520 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2521 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2522 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2524 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2525 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2527 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2529 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2532 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2533 holds the thread's name.
2535 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2536 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2537 occurring in the process being debugged.
2538 The following events are currently supported:
2539 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2540 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2541 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2545 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2546 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2548 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2550 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2551 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2552 was added to GCC 4.5.
2554 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2555 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2556 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2557 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2558 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2559 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2561 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2562 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2563 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2564 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2565 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2567 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2568 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2569 execution to a label.
2571 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2572 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2573 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2574 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2576 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2577 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2578 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2581 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2583 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2584 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2585 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2586 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2587 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2588 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2591 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2593 While now you see this:
2596 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2598 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2601 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2602 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2603 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2604 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2606 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2607 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2608 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2609 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2610 section in the user manual for more details.
2612 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2614 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2615 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2617 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2619 * New native configurations
2621 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2625 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2627 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2628 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2629 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2630 in the GDB user manual.
2632 * Guile support was removed.
2634 * New features in the GNU simulator
2636 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2638 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2640 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
2642 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
2644 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2645 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2646 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2647 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2648 was always disabled for such configurations.
2652 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2654 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2655 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2665 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2666 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2667 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2669 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2671 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2672 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2673 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2674 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2676 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2677 mentioned flavors of operators.
2679 ** static const class members
2681 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2682 class definition has been fixed.
2684 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
2686 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2687 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2688 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2689 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2690 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2691 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2693 * Static tracepoints
2695 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2696 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2697 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2698 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2699 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2700 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2701 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2702 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2703 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2704 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2705 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2706 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2707 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2708 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2709 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2710 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2711 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2712 the "New remote packets" section below.
2714 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2716 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2717 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2718 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2719 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2723 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2724 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2725 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2726 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2727 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2728 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2729 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2731 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2734 * New remote packets
2738 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2742 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2743 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2744 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2745 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2746 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2747 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2751 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2755 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2758 qXfer:statictrace:read
2760 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2761 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2762 to gdb's qSupported query.
2766 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2770 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2771 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2773 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2774 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2777 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2779 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2780 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2781 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2782 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2784 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2785 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2786 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2787 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2788 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2789 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2790 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2792 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2793 for static tracepoints support.
2795 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2797 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2798 it understands register description.
2800 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2802 * X86 general purpose registers
2804 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2805 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2806 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2807 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2808 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2810 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2811 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2812 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2813 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2814 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2815 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2817 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2818 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2819 in the specified file.
2821 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2822 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2823 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2824 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2825 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2826 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2827 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2828 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2829 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2830 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2834 eval template, expressions...
2835 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2836 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2838 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2839 show target-file-system-kind
2840 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2843 save breakpoints <filename>
2844 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2845 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2846 definitions, use the `source' command.
2848 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2851 info static-tracepoint-markers
2852 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2854 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2855 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2856 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2860 Enable and disable observer mode.
2862 set may-write-registers on|off
2863 set may-write-memory on|off
2864 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2865 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2866 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2867 set may-interrupt on|off
2868 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2869 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2870 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2871 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2872 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2873 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2874 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2876 set record memory-query on|off
2877 show record memory-query
2878 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2879 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2884 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2888 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2889 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2890 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2891 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2892 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2894 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2895 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2896 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2897 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2899 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2900 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2902 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2904 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2906 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2908 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2909 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2910 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2912 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2913 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2914 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2915 regular breakpoints.
2919 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2921 * D language support.
2922 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2925 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2926 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2927 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2928 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2929 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2931 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2932 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2933 conditions of the form:
2935 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2937 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2938 interface mentioned above.
2940 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2944 ** Namespace Support
2946 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2947 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2948 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2949 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2950 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2954 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2955 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2960 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2961 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2965 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2970 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2973 * Multi-program debugging.
2975 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2976 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2977 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2978 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2979 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2980 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2981 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2982 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2984 * New tracing features
2986 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2988 ** Trace state variables
2990 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2991 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2992 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2993 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2994 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2995 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2996 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2997 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2998 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2999 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
3003 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3004 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3005 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3006 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3007 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3008 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3009 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3010 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3011 the regular trace command.
3013 ** Disconnected tracing
3015 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3016 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3017 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3018 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3019 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3023 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3024 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3025 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3026 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3027 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3028 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3031 ** Circular trace buffer
3033 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3034 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3035 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3036 not be available for all target agents.
3041 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3042 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3045 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3046 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3049 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3050 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3053 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3054 "set script-extension" (see below).
3056 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3058 record save [<FILENAME>]
3059 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3060 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3062 record restore <FILENAME>
3063 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3064 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3066 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3069 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3070 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3071 inferior has loaded.
3076 maint info program-spaces
3077 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3079 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3080 show remote interrupt-sequence
3081 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3082 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3083 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3084 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3085 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3087 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3088 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3089 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3090 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3093 set remotebreak [on | off]
3095 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3097 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3098 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3101 List trace state variables and their values.
3103 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3104 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3107 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3108 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3110 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3111 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3113 * New expression syntax
3115 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3116 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3120 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3121 show follow-exec-mode
3122 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3123 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3124 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3126 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3127 show default-collect
3128 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3129 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3130 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3132 set disconnected-tracing
3133 show disconnected-tracing
3134 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3135 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3138 set circular-trace-buffer
3139 show circular-trace-buffer
3140 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3141 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3142 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3143 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3145 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3146 show script-extension
3147 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3148 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3149 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3150 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3152 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3154 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3155 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3156 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3157 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3158 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3159 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3160 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3163 * Python API Improvements
3165 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3166 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3167 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3169 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3170 `is_base_class' attribute.
3172 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3174 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3175 evaluate an expression.
3177 * New remote packets
3180 Define a trace state variable.
3183 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3186 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3189 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3192 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3196 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3198 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3199 much more reliable. In particular:
3200 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3201 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3202 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3203 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3204 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3205 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3206 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3207 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3208 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3209 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3210 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3211 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3212 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3213 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3214 non-threaded programs.
3216 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3217 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3218 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3221 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3223 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3224 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3225 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3226 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3227 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3229 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3230 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3231 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3232 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3233 for tracepoint actions.
3235 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3236 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3237 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3239 * Process record and replay
3241 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3242 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3243 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3246 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3247 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3248 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3251 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3252 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3255 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3256 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3257 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3258 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3259 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3260 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3261 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3262 the installation instructions for more information.
3264 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3265 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3266 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3267 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3269 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3270 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3272 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3273 now complete on file names.
3275 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3276 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3277 For instance, consider:
3279 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3280 # struct example variable;
3283 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3284 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3286 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3287 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3289 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3290 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3293 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3294 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3295 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3297 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3298 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3299 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3300 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3302 * New remote packets
3305 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3308 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3309 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3310 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3313 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3314 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3317 Obtains additional operating system information
3321 Read or write additional signal information.
3323 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3325 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3326 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3327 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3329 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3330 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3332 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3333 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3334 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3336 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3337 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3339 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3341 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3343 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3344 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3346 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3347 list of section offsets.
3349 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3350 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3351 have also been fixed.
3353 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3354 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3355 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3357 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3360 template<typename T> class C { };
3363 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3365 ptype C<char const *>
3366 ptype C<char const*>
3367 ptype C<const char *>
3368 ptype C<const char*>
3370 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3372 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3373 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3375 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3376 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3377 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3379 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3380 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3382 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3385 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3386 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3388 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3389 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3394 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3395 available is determined at configure time.
3397 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3399 * Ada tasking support
3401 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3405 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3407 Print detailed information about task number N.
3409 Print the task number of the current task.
3411 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3413 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3414 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3416 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3418 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3419 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3420 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3421 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3422 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3423 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3426 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3427 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3430 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3431 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3432 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3433 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3436 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3438 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3439 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3440 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3441 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3442 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3444 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3445 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3446 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3447 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3448 --enable-targets configure option.
3450 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3452 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3453 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3454 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3455 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3456 section in the user manual for more information.
3458 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3459 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3460 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3461 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3462 extensions on linux targets.
3464 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3466 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3467 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3468 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3469 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3470 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3471 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3472 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3473 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3474 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3476 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3478 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3480 maint set python print-stack
3481 maint show python print-stack
3482 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3485 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3490 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3494 Show operating system information about processes.
3497 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3500 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3503 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3506 Kill inferior number NUM.
3510 set spu stop-on-load
3511 show spu stop-on-load
3512 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3514 set spu auto-flush-cache
3515 show spu auto-flush-cache
3516 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3517 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3519 set sh calling-convention
3520 show sh calling-convention
3521 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3524 show debug timestamp
3525 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3527 set disassemble-next-line
3528 show disassemble-next-line
3529 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3532 set remote noack-packet
3533 show remote noack-packet
3534 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3535 under "New remote packets."
3537 set remote query-attached-packet
3538 show remote query-attached-packet
3539 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3541 set remote read-siginfo-object
3542 show remote read-siginfo-object
3543 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3546 set remote write-siginfo-object
3547 show remote write-siginfo-object
3548 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3551 set remote reverse-continue
3552 show remote reverse-continue
3553 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3555 set remote reverse-step
3556 show remote reverse-step
3557 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3559 set displaced-stepping
3560 show displaced-stepping
3561 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3562 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3563 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3566 show debug displaced
3567 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3569 maint set internal-error
3570 maint show internal-error
3571 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3573 maint set internal-warning
3574 maint show internal-warning
3575 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3580 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3582 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3583 show multiple-symbols
3584 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3585 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3586 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3588 set breakpoint always-inserted
3589 show breakpoint always-inserted
3590 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3591 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3592 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3594 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3595 show arm fallback-mode
3596 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3598 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3599 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3600 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3601 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3603 set disable-randomization
3604 show disable-randomization
3605 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3606 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3607 multiple debugging sessions.
3611 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3616 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3617 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3618 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3619 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3621 set target-wide-charset
3622 show target-wide-charset
3623 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3624 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3626 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3628 set tcp connect-timeout
3629 show tcp connect-timeout
3630 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3631 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3632 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3634 set libthread-db-search-path
3635 show libthread-db-search-path
3636 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3639 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3640 show schedule-multiple
3641 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3642 the current process.
3646 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3647 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3648 affecting correctness.
3650 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3651 show interactive-mode
3652 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3653 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3654 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3655 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3656 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3661 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3662 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3663 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3667 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3668 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3669 alias for the `fork' command.
3672 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3673 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3674 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3677 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3678 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3679 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3683 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3684 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3685 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3688 * New native configurations
3690 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3692 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3696 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3697 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3698 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3701 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3702 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3708 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3710 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
3712 * New native configurations
3714 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3715 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3719 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3720 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3722 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3724 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3725 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3726 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3727 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3729 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3730 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3732 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3735 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3736 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3737 and in inlined functions.
3739 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3740 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3741 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3743 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3745 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3746 registers on PowerPC targets.
3748 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3749 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3751 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3752 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3754 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3755 extended-remote mode.
3757 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3758 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3759 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3760 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3762 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3763 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3764 target architectures.
3766 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3767 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3768 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3769 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3771 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3774 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3775 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3777 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3778 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3779 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3780 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3782 - Improved command completion in Ada
3785 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3790 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3791 show print frame-arguments
3792 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3793 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3798 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3805 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3807 * New remote packets
3814 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3817 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3821 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3823 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3825 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3826 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3827 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3829 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3830 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3831 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3833 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3834 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3837 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3838 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3840 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3841 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3843 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3845 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3846 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3847 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3849 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3850 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3852 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3853 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3856 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3857 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3858 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3860 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3863 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3864 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3865 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3867 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3869 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3871 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3872 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3873 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3875 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3876 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3878 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3879 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3880 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3881 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3882 Windows and SymbianOS).
3884 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3885 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3887 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3888 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3894 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3895 when debugging using remote targets.
3897 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3898 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3899 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3900 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3901 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3902 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3903 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3905 set breakpoint auto-hw
3906 show breakpoint auto-hw
3907 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3908 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3909 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3910 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3911 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3912 including "next" and "finish".
3915 catch exception unhandled
3916 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3919 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3923 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3924 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3925 an alias to "set sysroot".
3928 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3929 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3932 * New native configurations
3934 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3937 unset tdesc filename
3939 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3940 not query the target for its built-in description.
3944 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3945 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3946 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3948 * New remote packets
3951 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3952 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3954 qXfer:features:read:
3955 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3960 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3961 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3963 qXfer:libraries:read:
3964 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3965 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3966 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3967 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3971 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3979 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3980 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3981 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3982 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3984 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3987 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3988 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3997 * Other removed features
4004 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4011 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4016 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4017 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4022 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4023 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4025 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4027 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4028 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4029 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4030 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4032 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4034 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4035 in debugging information.
4039 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4040 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4042 set mips stack-arg-size
4043 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4045 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4047 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4052 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4054 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4055 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4056 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4058 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4059 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4062 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4063 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4065 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4066 stub provides the required support.
4068 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4069 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4074 unset substitute-path
4075 show substitute-path
4076 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4077 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4078 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4079 between compilation and debugging.
4083 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4084 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4085 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4089 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4091 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4092 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4094 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4096 * New remote packets
4099 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4100 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4101 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4102 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4106 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4107 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4109 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4110 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4111 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4116 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4118 * Removed remote packets
4121 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4122 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4124 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4128 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4130 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4134 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4135 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4137 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4139 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4141 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4142 previously saved state.
4144 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4146 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4148 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4149 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4151 info forks List forks of the user program that
4152 are available to be debugged.
4154 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4155 forks of the user program that are
4156 available to be debugged.
4158 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4159 that are available to be debugged (and
4160 kill the forked process).
4162 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4163 that are available to be debugged (and
4164 allow the process to continue).
4168 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4170 * Improved Windows host support
4172 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4173 native console support, and remote communications using either
4174 network sockets or serial ports.
4176 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4178 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4179 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4180 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4181 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4182 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4183 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4187 The ARM rdi-share module.
4189 The Netware NLM debug server.
4191 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4193 * New native configurations
4195 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4196 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4200 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4202 * New command line options
4204 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4205 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4206 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4207 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4208 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4209 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4210 with the --command (-x) option.
4212 * Deprecated commands removed
4214 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4218 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4219 othernames set arm disassembler
4220 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4221 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4222 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4225 * New BSD user-level threads support
4227 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4228 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4231 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4232 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4233 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4235 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4236 are not yet supported.
4238 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4239 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4241 * REMOVED configurations and files
4243 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4244 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4245 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4247 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4249 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4250 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4253 * VAX floating point support
4255 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4257 * User-defined command support
4259 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4260 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4261 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4263 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4265 * New command line option
4267 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4270 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4272 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4273 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4274 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4275 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4276 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4278 * Internationalization
4280 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4281 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4282 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4286 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4287 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4288 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4290 * New native configurations
4292 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4296 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4297 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4299 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4301 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4302 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4303 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4306 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4307 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4308 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4318 powerpc bdm protocol
4320 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4321 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4323 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4325 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4326 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4327 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4328 permanently REMOVED.
4337 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4339 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4341 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4342 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4345 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4347 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4348 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4349 IRIX long double values).
4353 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4354 command. This problem has been fixed.
4356 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4358 * Fix for ``many threads''
4360 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4361 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4364 ptrace: No such process.
4365 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4367 This problem has been fixed.
4369 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4371 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4374 * New ``start'' command.
4376 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4378 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4380 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4381 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4382 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4384 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4385 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4386 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4387 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4388 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4389 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4390 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4391 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4392 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4394 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4396 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4397 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4398 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4399 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4400 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4402 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4403 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4404 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4406 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4408 * New native configurations
4410 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4411 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4412 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4413 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4414 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4415 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4416 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4418 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4420 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4421 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4422 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4423 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4424 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4425 work, was also included.
4427 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4428 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4438 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4439 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4441 * REMOVED configurations and files
4443 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4444 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4445 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4446 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4447 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4448 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4449 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4450 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4451 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4452 sonymips mips-sony-*
4453 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4455 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4457 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4459 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4460 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4461 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4462 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4465 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4467 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4468 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4469 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4470 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4471 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4472 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4475 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4477 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4479 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4480 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4481 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4483 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4485 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4486 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4488 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4490 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4491 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4492 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4494 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4496 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4497 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4499 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4501 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4502 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4503 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4505 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4507 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4508 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4509 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4511 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4513 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4515 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4516 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4518 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4520 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4521 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4522 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4523 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4525 * Revised SPARC target
4527 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4528 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4529 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4530 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4531 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4535 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4536 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4537 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4540 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4542 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4543 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4546 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4548 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4549 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4550 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4551 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4552 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4553 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4554 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4555 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4556 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4558 * New native configurations
4560 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4561 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4562 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4563 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4564 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4566 * New debugging protocols
4568 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4570 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4572 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4573 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4574 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4576 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4578 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4579 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4580 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4581 permanently REMOVED.
4583 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4584 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4585 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4586 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4587 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4588 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4589 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4590 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4591 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4592 sonymips mips-sony-*
4593 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4595 * REMOVED configurations and files
4597 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4598 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4599 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4600 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4601 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4602 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4603 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4604 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4605 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4606 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4607 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4608 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4609 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4610 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4611 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4612 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4613 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4615 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4619 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4620 integrated into GDB.
4622 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4624 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4625 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4626 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4629 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4630 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4631 DWARF 2 CFI support.
4635 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4636 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4637 remote protocol documentation for details.
4639 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
4641 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4642 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4643 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4646 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4648 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4649 per-thread variables.
4651 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4653 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4654 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4656 * Separate debug info.
4658 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4659 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4660 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4661 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4662 and optional debug files.
4664 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4666 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4667 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4670 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4671 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4675 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4676 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4677 considered "useable".
4679 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4681 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4682 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4685 * GDB supports logging output to a file
4687 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4688 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4690 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4692 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4693 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4696 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4698 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4699 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4703 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4704 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4705 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4706 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4707 data, for more informative profiling results.
4709 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4711 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4712 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4713 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4715 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4718 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4719 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4720 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4721 in a subsequent -var-update.
4723 * New native configurations.
4725 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4727 * Multi-arched targets.
4729 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4730 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4732 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4734 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4735 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4736 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4737 permanently REMOVED.
4739 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4740 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4741 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4742 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4743 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4744 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4745 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4746 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4747 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4748 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4749 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4750 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4752 * REMOVED configurations and files
4755 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4756 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4757 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4758 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4759 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4760 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4762 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4763 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4764 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4765 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4766 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4767 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4769 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4771 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4772 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4773 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4774 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4775 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4777 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4779 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4781 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4782 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4783 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4784 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4785 shared libs like mad''.
4787 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4789 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4790 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4791 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4792 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4794 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4796 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4797 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4800 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4801 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4803 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4804 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4806 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4807 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4808 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4809 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4811 * Multi-arched targets.
4813 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4814 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4816 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4817 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4818 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4822 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4825 * New native configurations
4827 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4828 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4829 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4830 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4832 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4834 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4835 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4836 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4837 permanently REMOVED.
4839 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4840 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4841 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4842 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4843 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4844 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4845 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4846 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4847 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4848 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4850 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4851 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4853 * OBSOLETE languages
4855 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4857 * REMOVED configurations and files
4859 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4860 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4861 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4862 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4863 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4865 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4867 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4869 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4870 commands. The default is 1024.
4872 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4874 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4876 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4878 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4879 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4880 from a file into memory (restore).
4882 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4884 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4885 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4886 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4888 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4896 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4897 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4898 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4900 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4901 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4902 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4904 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4905 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4906 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4908 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4909 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4910 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4912 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4914 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4916 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4917 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4918 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4919 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4920 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4921 (notably embedded) targets.
4923 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4925 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4926 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4927 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4928 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4930 * New command line option
4932 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4934 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4936 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4937 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4938 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4939 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4940 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4941 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4942 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4943 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4944 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4945 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4947 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4949 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4950 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4952 * New native configurations
4954 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4955 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4956 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4957 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4961 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4963 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4965 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4966 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4967 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4968 permanently REMOVED.
4970 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4971 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4972 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4973 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4974 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4976 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4978 * REMOVED configurations and files
4980 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4982 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4983 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4984 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4985 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4986 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4987 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4988 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4989 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4990 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4991 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4992 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4994 * Changes to command line processing
4996 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4997 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4999 * Changes to key bindings
5001 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5003 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5005 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5007 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5010 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5012 Numerous documentation fixes.
5014 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5016 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5018 * New native configurations
5020 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5021 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5022 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5023 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5024 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5025 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5029 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5031 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5033 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5035 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5036 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5037 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5038 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5039 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5041 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5042 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5043 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5044 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5045 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5046 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5047 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5048 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5050 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5051 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5053 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5054 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5055 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5056 permanently REMOVED.
5058 * REMOVED configurations and files
5060 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5061 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5063 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5067 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5069 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5070 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5075 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5077 * The MI enabled by default.
5079 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5080 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5081 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5082 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5083 which is now deprecated.
5085 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5087 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5088 main features are supported:
5090 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5092 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5095 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5097 - a Pascal expression parser.
5099 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5101 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5103 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5105 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5106 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5108 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5110 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5112 * Changes in completion.
5114 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5115 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5116 users expect at the shell prompt.
5118 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5119 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5120 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5121 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5122 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5123 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5124 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5126 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5128 * New platform-independent commands:
5130 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5131 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5132 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5134 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5136 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5137 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5138 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5140 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5142 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5143 multi-threaded programs though.
5145 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5147 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5149 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5150 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5153 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5155 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5156 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5157 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5158 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5159 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5162 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5163 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5164 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5166 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5168 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5169 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5171 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5172 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5175 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5176 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5177 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5178 a given linear address.
5180 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5181 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5182 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5184 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5186 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5188 * Changes in documentation.
5190 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5191 Documentation License.
5193 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5196 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5198 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5201 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5202 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5203 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5205 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5207 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5208 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5209 contents of this file.
5213 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5215 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5217 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5219 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5220 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5221 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5222 greater level of detail.
5224 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5226 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5227 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5228 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5231 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5233 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5234 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5235 machines ``out of the box''.
5237 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5238 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5239 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5240 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5241 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5243 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5244 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5245 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5246 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5247 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5249 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5250 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5253 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5256 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5257 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5258 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5259 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5261 * New native configurations
5263 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5264 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5268 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5269 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5270 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5271 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5273 * OBSOLETE configurations
5275 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5276 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5278 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5281 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5282 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5283 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5284 be permanently REMOVED.
5286 * Gould support removed
5288 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5290 * New features for SVR4
5292 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5293 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5294 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5296 * Many C++ enhancements
5298 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5299 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5301 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5303 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5304 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5305 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5306 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5308 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5309 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5311 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5313 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5314 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5315 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5317 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5318 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5320 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5322 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5323 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5324 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5326 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5328 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5329 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5330 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5332 * ``apropos'' command added.
5334 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5335 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5336 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5340 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5341 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5342 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5343 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5344 enabled by configuring with:
5346 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5348 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5350 * New native configurations
5352 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5353 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5354 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5358 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5359 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5360 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5362 * OBSOLETE configurations
5364 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5366 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5367 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5368 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5369 be permanently REMOVED.
5373 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5374 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5375 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5376 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5377 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5378 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5379 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5384 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5386 * set extension-language
5388 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5389 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5390 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5391 set extension-language .c c++
5392 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5393 and their associated languages.
5395 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5397 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5398 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5399 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5403 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5404 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5406 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5407 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5409 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5410 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5411 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5412 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5413 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5414 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5415 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5416 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5418 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5419 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5420 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5421 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5425 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5426 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5427 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5428 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5429 for xdb and dbx commands.
5433 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5434 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5435 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5437 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5438 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5439 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5441 * Debugging across forks
5443 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5448 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5449 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5450 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5452 * GDB remote protocol additions
5454 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5455 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5456 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5457 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5459 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5460 full 64-bit address. The command
5462 set remoteaddresssize 32
5464 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5465 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5468 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5469 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5471 maint packet heythere
5473 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5474 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5477 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5478 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5479 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5481 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5483 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5484 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5485 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5487 * mask-address variable for Mips
5489 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5490 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5491 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5493 * Higher serial baud rates
5495 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5496 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5497 to achieve all of these rates.)
5501 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5502 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5505 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5507 * New native configurations
5509 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5510 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5511 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5512 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5513 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5514 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5515 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5519 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5520 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5521 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5522 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5523 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5524 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5525 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5526 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5527 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5528 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5529 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5531 * New debugging protocols
5533 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5534 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5535 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5536 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5537 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5538 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5542 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5543 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5548 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5549 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5551 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5553 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5554 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5555 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5557 * Live range splitting
5559 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5560 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5561 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5565 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5566 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5570 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5571 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5572 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5577 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5582 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5583 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5584 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5585 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5586 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5587 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5591 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5592 the symbol at the specified address.
5596 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5597 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5598 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5599 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5600 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5604 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5605 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5606 of most MIPS variants.
5610 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5611 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5612 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5616 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5617 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5618 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5619 the possible architectures.
5621 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5623 * New native configurations
5625 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5626 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5627 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5628 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5629 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5630 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5634 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5635 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5636 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5637 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5638 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5640 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5644 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5645 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5646 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5647 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5648 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5652 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5654 * Windows 95/NT native
5656 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5657 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5658 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5659 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5660 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5662 * dont-repeat command
5664 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5665 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5666 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5667 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5669 * Send break instead of ^C
5671 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5672 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5673 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5675 * Remote protocol timeout
5677 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5678 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5679 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5681 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5683 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5684 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5685 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5686 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5687 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5689 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5690 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5691 automatically on hpux10.
5693 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5695 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5697 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5699 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5700 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5701 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5702 every character. The default value is 1050.
5704 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5706 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5707 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5708 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5709 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5710 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5711 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5713 * Speedups for remote debugging
5715 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5716 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5717 and more efficient S-record downloading.
5719 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5721 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5722 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5724 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5726 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
5728 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5729 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5731 * Remote targets use caching
5733 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5734 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5735 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5736 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5737 off' turns the the data cache off.
5739 * Remote targets may have threads
5741 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5742 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5743 gdb/remote.c for details.
5747 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5748 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5749 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5750 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5751 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5752 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5753 sequence is something like
5755 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5757 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5761 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5762 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5763 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5764 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5765 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5766 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5767 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5768 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5772 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5773 but does simplify configuration and building.
5777 GDB now supports hpux10.
5779 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5781 * New native configurations
5783 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5784 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5785 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5786 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5790 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5791 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5792 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5793 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5796 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5798 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5799 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5800 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5801 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5802 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5804 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5806 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5807 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5810 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5812 To execute the command use:
5815 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5816 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5817 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5819 * New `if' and `while' commands
5821 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5822 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5823 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5824 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5825 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5826 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5827 if the expression is zero.
5829 * Fortran source language mode
5831 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5832 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5833 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5834 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5837 * Better HPUX support
5839 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5840 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5841 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5842 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5843 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5849 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5850 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5856 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5857 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5860 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5861 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5863 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5865 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5866 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5867 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5868 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5869 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5870 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5872 * New DOS host serial code
5874 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5875 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5878 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5880 * New "complete" command
5882 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5883 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5885 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5887 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5888 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5890 * Breakpoint hit counts
5892 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5893 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5894 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5895 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5896 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5899 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5901 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5902 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5903 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5905 * Shared library breakpoints
5907 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5908 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5910 * Hardware watchpoints
5912 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5913 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5915 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5919 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5920 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5922 * Improved Irix 5 support
5924 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5926 * Improved HPPA support
5928 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5930 * New native configurations
5932 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5933 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5934 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5935 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5939 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5940 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5943 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5945 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5946 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5950 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5951 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5953 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5955 * Irix 5 is now supported
5959 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5960 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5961 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5962 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5963 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5966 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5968 * User visible changes:
5972 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5973 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5974 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5975 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5976 debugging info for the mips target).
5978 * DEC Alpha native support
5980 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5981 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5982 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5983 Alpha-specific notes.
5985 * Preliminary thread implementation
5987 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5989 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5991 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5992 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5995 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5997 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5998 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5999 call methods, ...etc.
6001 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6003 * User visible changes:
6005 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6006 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6007 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6008 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6010 Filename completion now works.
6012 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6013 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6014 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6016 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6017 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6018 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6019 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6020 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6024 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6025 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6028 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6032 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6033 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6034 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6038 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6039 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6040 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6041 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6042 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6046 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6047 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6048 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6050 * New targets supported
6052 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6053 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6054 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6055 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6056 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6058 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6059 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6060 GO32 memory extender.
6062 * New remote protocols
6064 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6066 * New source languages supported
6068 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6069 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6070 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6073 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6075 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6077 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6078 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6079 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6080 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6081 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6082 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6084 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6086 * Faster and better demangling
6088 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6089 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6090 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6091 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6092 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6093 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6096 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6097 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6098 compiler does not actually implement.
6100 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6102 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6103 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6104 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6105 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6106 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6107 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6110 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6111 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6113 * Improved configure script
6115 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6116 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6117 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6118 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6120 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6121 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6122 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6123 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6124 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6125 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6127 * Documentation improvements
6129 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6130 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6131 before submitting changes.
6133 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6134 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6135 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6136 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6137 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6139 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6140 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6141 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6142 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6143 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6144 around this problem.
6148 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6149 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6150 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6153 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6154 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6156 * New native hosts supported
6158 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6159 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6161 * New targets supported
6163 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6165 * New file formats supported
6167 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6168 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6172 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6174 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6175 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6177 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6178 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6179 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6181 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6182 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6184 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6185 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6186 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6189 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6190 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6191 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6192 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6193 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6195 * Internal improvements
6197 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6198 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6200 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6201 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6202 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6203 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6204 shared code that handles any of them.
6206 * New command line options
6208 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6212 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6213 General Public License.
6215 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6217 * Host/native/target split
6219 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6220 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6221 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6222 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6223 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6225 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6226 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6227 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6228 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6229 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6230 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6231 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6233 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6234 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6235 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6237 * New hosts supported
6239 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6240 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6241 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6243 * New targets supported
6245 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6246 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6248 * New native hosts supported
6250 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6251 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6252 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6254 * New file formats supported
6256 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6257 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6258 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6262 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6263 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6264 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6266 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6268 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6269 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6270 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6271 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6275 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6276 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6277 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6279 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6283 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6284 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6287 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6288 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6290 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6291 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6292 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6293 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6294 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6295 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6297 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6298 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6299 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6300 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6304 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6305 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6306 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6307 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6308 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6310 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6311 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6312 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6313 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6317 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6318 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6319 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6320 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6321 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6322 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6323 each instruction being stepped through.
6325 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6326 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6328 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6329 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6330 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6331 processor with a serial port.
6335 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6336 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6337 supported, and what files each one uses.
6341 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6342 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6343 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6344 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6346 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6347 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6348 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6349 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6353 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6354 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6355 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6356 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6357 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6358 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6360 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6363 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6365 * Better support for C++ function names
6367 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6368 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6369 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6370 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6371 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6373 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6374 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6375 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6376 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6377 for the list of formats.
6379 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6381 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6382 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6383 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6384 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6385 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6386 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6389 * New 'maintenance' command
6391 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6392 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6393 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6395 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6396 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6397 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6398 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6399 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6400 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6402 The following commands are new:
6404 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6405 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6406 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6408 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6410 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6411 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6412 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6413 read after argv processing.
6415 * New hosts supported
6417 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6419 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6421 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6422 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6423 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6424 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6425 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6428 * New targets supported
6430 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6432 * More smarts about finding #include files
6434 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6435 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6436 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6437 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6438 the one that contains your sources.
6440 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6441 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6442 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6444 * Interesting infernals change
6446 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6447 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6448 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6449 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6451 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6453 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6454 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6455 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6457 See the ChangeLog for details.
6459 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6461 * New machines supported (host and target)
6463 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6465 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6467 * New malloc package
6469 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6470 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6471 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6472 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6473 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6474 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6478 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6479 'help info proc' for details.
6481 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6483 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6484 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6487 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6489 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6490 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6491 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6492 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6493 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6494 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6496 * Cross byte order fixes
6498 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6499 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6501 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6503 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6504 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6505 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6506 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6507 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6508 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6509 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6510 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6511 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6512 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6514 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6515 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6516 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6517 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6519 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6520 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6521 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6524 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6526 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6527 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6528 shared across multiple host platforms.
6530 * longjmp() handling
6532 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6533 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6534 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6535 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6539 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6540 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6545 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6546 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6547 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6549 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6551 * New machines supported (host and target)
6553 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6555 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6556 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6558 * New machines supported (target)
6560 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6564 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6565 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6566 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6568 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6569 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6570 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6571 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6572 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6575 * New features for SVR4
6577 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6578 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6579 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6581 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6582 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6583 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6585 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6586 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6588 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6590 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6591 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6592 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6593 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6594 same code linked statically.
6598 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6599 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6600 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6601 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6602 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6603 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6607 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6608 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6609 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6612 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6614 * New machines supported (host and target)
6616 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6617 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6618 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6620 * Almost SCO Unix support
6622 We had hoped to support:
6623 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6624 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6625 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6626 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6628 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6630 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6631 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6632 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6633 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6638 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6639 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6640 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6644 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6645 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6646 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6648 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6650 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6651 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6652 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6654 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6655 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6656 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6657 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6660 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6661 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6662 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6663 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6666 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6667 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6670 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6671 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6672 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6675 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6677 * Improved configuration
6679 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6680 Porting BFD is simpler.
6684 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6685 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6686 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6687 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6691 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6693 * New host supported (not target)
6695 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6698 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6700 * Multiple source language support
6702 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6703 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6704 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6705 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6706 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6707 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6711 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6712 currently under development at the State University of New York at
6713 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6714 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6716 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6717 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6718 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6720 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6721 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6725 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6726 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6727 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6728 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6731 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6733 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6734 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6735 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6736 examining core files.
6740 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6743 * New machines supported (host and target)
6745 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6746 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6747 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6749 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6751 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6753 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6755 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6756 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6757 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6759 * New remote interfaces
6765 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6769 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6771 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6772 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6773 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6774 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6775 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6776 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6777 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6778 stub on the target system.
6780 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6782 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6783 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6784 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6786 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6787 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6790 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6792 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6793 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6795 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6796 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6797 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6799 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6800 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6801 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6802 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6804 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6805 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6806 it is already running. Default is ON.
6808 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6809 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6810 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6811 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6814 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6815 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6816 or the value of the environment variable
6819 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6820 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6823 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6824 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6825 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6827 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6828 history expansion will be performed on
6829 command line input. The default is OFF.
6831 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6832 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6833 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6835 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6836 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6837 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6840 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6841 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6842 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6845 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6846 ``set width'' instead.
6848 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6849 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6850 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6851 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6853 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6856 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6859 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6862 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6865 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6867 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6868 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6869 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6873 * Support for Shared Libraries
6875 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6876 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6877 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6878 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6879 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6880 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6881 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6882 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6884 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6885 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6886 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6888 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6893 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6894 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6895 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6896 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6897 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6898 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6900 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6902 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6904 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6905 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6906 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6909 * C++ multiple inheritance
6911 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6914 * C++ exception handling
6916 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6917 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6918 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6921 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6922 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6923 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6925 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6926 current stack frame.
6929 * Minor command changes
6931 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6932 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6933 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6935 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6936 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6937 frames without printing.
6939 * New directory command
6941 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6942 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6943 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6944 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6945 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6947 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6949 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6952 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6953 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6954 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6955 where the program that you are debugging will run.