1 What has changed in GDB? 2 (Organized release by release) 3 4*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1: 5 6* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1) 7 8The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default 9GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the 10command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui" 11program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging 12with GDB". 13 14* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1) 15 16Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared 17libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location 18cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto, 19GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future 20shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol, 21the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints 22are created. 23 24Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging. 25 26* Fixed ISO-C build problems 27 28The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained 29non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C 30compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler). 31 32* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5 33 34Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c 35wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system. 36 37* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure 38 39The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute 40permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of 41systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519. 42 43* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler 44 45Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c 46has been updated to use constant array sizes. 47 48* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7 49 50GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in 51its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to 52panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628. 53 54* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code. 55 56When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated 57by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is 58not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value. 59 60*** Changes in GDB 6.1: 61 62* Removed --with-mmalloc 63 64Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it 65conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache. 66 67* Changes in AMD64 configurations 68 69The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result 70the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point 71and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging, 72you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side. 73 74* Revised SPARC target 75 76The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the 77FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result 78support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions 79from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack 80(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works. 81 82* New C++ demangler 83 84GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled 85names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so 86with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++ 87programs. 88 89* DWARF 2 Location Expressions 90 91GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function 92arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they 93encountered these. 94 95* C++ nested types and namespaces 96 97GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been 98improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This 99is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.) 100Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or 101namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is 102"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the 103frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition, 104if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace, 105GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly. 106 107* New native configurations 108 109NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd* 110OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd* 111OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd* 112OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd* 113OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd* 114 115* New debugging protocols 116 117M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf* 118 119* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted. 120 121The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command, 122and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented, 123tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file. 124 125* OBSOLETE configurations and files 126 127Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have 128been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these 129configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources 130permanently REMOVED. 131 132Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3* 133Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4* 134Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3* 135Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4* 136Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos* 137AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-* 138Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv* 139decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-* 140riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv* 141sonymips mips-sony-* 142sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included) 143 144* REMOVED configurations and files 145 146SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4 147SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris 148Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim 149Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-* 150H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms 151HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd* 152HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf* 153HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro* 154PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3* 155386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd* 156Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4* 157 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv* 158 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd* 159SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos* 160SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4* 161Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-* 162Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite 163 164*** Changes in GDB 6.0: 165 166* Objective-C 167 168Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been 169integrated into GDB. 170 171* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information). 172 173DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated 174information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack. 175By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack 176backtraces. 177 178The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets 179have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes 180DWARF 2 CFI support. 181 182* Hosted file I/O. 183 184GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted 185file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's 186remote protocol documentation for details. 187 188* All targets using the new architecture framework. 189 190All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal 191architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases 192to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64, 193ppc32 on ppc64). 194 195* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS) 196 197GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of 198per-thread variables. 199 200* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL) 201 202GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new 203GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library. 204 205* Separate debug info. 206 207GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for 208automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead 209of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries, 210system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries 211and optional debug files. 212 213* DWARF 2 Location Expressions 214 215DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely 216describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the 217debugger. 218 219GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support 220for DW_OP_piece is still missing). 221 222* Java 223 224A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a 225Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now 226considered "useable". 227 228* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec. 229 230The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode" 231commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later 232kernel. 233 234* GDB supports logging output to a file 235 236There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be 237used to capture GDB's output to a file. 238 239* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver 240 241The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To 242disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect" 243command. 244 245* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated 246 247The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the 248registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command. 249 250* Profiling support 251 252A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can 253be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a 254session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch, 255"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling 256data, for more informative profiling results. 257 258* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2". 259 260The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line 261option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax, 262"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1". 263 264Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been 265removed. 266 267Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level. 268Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format. 269Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up 270 in a subsequent -var-update. 271 272* New native configurations. 273 274FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd* 275 276* Multi-arched targets. 277 278HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux* 279Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf* 280 281* OBSOLETE configurations and files 282 283Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have 284been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these 285configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources 286permanently REMOVED. 287 288Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim 289Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-* 290H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms 291HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd* 292HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf* 293HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro* 294PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3* 295Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4* 296 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv* 297 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd* 298Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-* 299Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite 300 301* REMOVED configurations and files 302 303V850EA ISA 304Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88 305IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix 306i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3* 307i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach* 308i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk* 309HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*, 310 m68*-apollo*-bsd*, 311 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux* 312Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-* 313Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-* 314Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf* 315OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k 316I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff 317 318* MIPS $fp behavior changed 319 320The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns 321the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the 322context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base 323address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB: 324The GNU Source-Level Debugger''. 325 326*** Changes in GDB 5.3: 327 328* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved. 329 330When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses 331`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result 332in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared 333library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads 334shared libs like mad''. 335 336* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets 337 338Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use 339the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for 340arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*, 341powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*. 342 343* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros. 344 345GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions, 346and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how 347they expand. 348 349The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro 350invocations in expression, and shows the result. 351 352The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the 353macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined. 354 355Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging 356information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile 357your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro 358information is present in the executable, GDB will read it. 359 360* Multi-arched targets. 361 362DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-* 363DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-* 364NEC V850 v850-*-* 365National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-* 366Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-* 367Motorola MCORE mcore-*-* 368 369* New targets. 370 371Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-* 372 373 374* New native configurations 375 376Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd* 377SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf* 378MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd* 379UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd* 380 381* OBSOLETE configurations and files 382 383Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have 384been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these 385configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources 386permanently REMOVED. 387 388Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-* 389OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k 390IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix 391Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf* 392Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88 393Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-* 394i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3* 395i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach* 396i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk* 397HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*, 398 m68*-apollo*-bsd*, 399 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux* 400I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff 401 402* OBSOLETE languages 403 404CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies. 405 406* REMOVED configurations and files 407 408AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k 409A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks 410AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none 411AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff 412AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout 413 414testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory 415 416* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>" 417 418This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined 419commands. The default is 1024. 420 421* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging. 422 423Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added. 424 425* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore". 426 427These commands allow data to be copied from target memory 428to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back 429from a file into memory (restore). 430 431* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64. 432 433The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems, 434including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use 435of a software single-step mechanism prevents this. 436 437*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1: 438 439* New targets. 440 441Atmel AVR avr*-*-* 442 443* Bug fixes 444 445gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting: 446mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized 447Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline. 448 449gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting: 450dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize 451Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline. 452 453Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways. 454Surprisingly enough, it works now. 455By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline. 456 457i386 hardware watchpoint support: 458avoid misses on second run for some targets. 459By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline. 460 461*** Changes in GDB 5.2: 462 463* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]". 464 465This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections 466really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change). 467In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the 468target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text"). 469This can be a significant performance improvement on some 470(notably embedded) targets. 471 472* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore"). 473 474This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child 475process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for 476GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other 477hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>). 478 479* New command line option 480 481GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id. 482 483* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids. 484 485There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles 486command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always 487a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either 488be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to 489open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would 490issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as 491a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit, 492it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit, 493GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process 494is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile. 495 496* Changes in ARM configurations. 497 498Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD 499configuration is fully multi-arch. 500 501* New native configurations 502 503ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd* 504x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd* 505AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-* 506Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd* 507 508* New targets 509 510Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf 511 512* OBSOLETE configurations and files 513 514Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have 515been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these 516configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources 517permanently REMOVED. 518 519AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k 520A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks 521AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none 522AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff 523AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout 524 525testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory 526 527* REMOVED configurations and files 528 529TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-* 530WDC 65816 w65-*-* 531PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris* 532PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32 533PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware* 534Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux* 535Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-* 536 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-* 537SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos* 538Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern* 539Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news 540ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-* 541Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos* 542 543* Changes to command line processing 544 545The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments 546for the inferior from gdb's command line. 547 548* Changes to key bindings 549 550There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'. 551 552*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1 553 554Fix compile problem on DJGPP. 555 556Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being 557corrupted. 558 559Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info. 560 561Numerous documentation fixes. 562 563Numerous testsuite fixes. 564 565*** Changes in GDB 5.1: 566 567* New native configurations 568 569Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd* 570x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]* 571MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux* 572MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6* 573ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix* 574s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux* 575 576* New targets 577 578Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf 579CRIS cris-axis 580UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux* 581 582* OBSOLETE configurations and files 583 584x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*, 585Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux* 586Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-* 587 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-* 588TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-* 589WDC 65816 w65-*-* 590Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern* 591PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris* 592PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32 593PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware* 594SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos* 595Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news 596ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-* 597Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A 598 599stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb) 600kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger) 601 602Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have 603been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these 604configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources 605permanently REMOVED. 606 607* REMOVED configurations and files 608 609Altos 3068 m68*-altos-* 610Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-* 611Pyramid pyramid-*-* 612ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host) 613Tahoe tahoe-*-* 614ser-ocd.c *-*-* 615 616* GDB has been converted to ISO C. 617 618GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the 619sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being 620present. 621 622* Other news: 623 624* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM. 625 626* The MI enabled by default. 627 628The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been 629revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging 630engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to 631using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface 632which is now deprecated. 633 634* Support for debugging Pascal programs. 635 636GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following 637main features are supported: 638 639 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets; 640 641 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name 642 extension; 643 644 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions; 645 646 - a Pascal expression parser. 647 648However, some important features are not yet supported. 649 650 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all; 651 652 - there are some problems with boolean types; 653 654 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported 655 because they conflict with the internal variables format; 656 657 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet; 658 659 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names. 660 661* Changes in completion. 662 663Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments 664to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what 665users expect at the shell prompt. 666 667Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print', 668`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as 669program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source 670files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will 671be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not 672considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file 673name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar". 674 675`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles. 676 677* New platform-independent commands: 678 679It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a 680hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the 681documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual. 682 683* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging. 684 685Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely 686revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as 687many threads as your system allows you to have. 688 689Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs. 690 691Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for 692multi-threaded programs though. 693 694* Changes in MIPS configurations. 695 696Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations. 697 698GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for 699debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet 700supported.) 701 702* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations. 703 704Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted 705breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support 706implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to 707put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address, 708and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug 709registers. 710 711The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles 712debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test 713watchpoints and hardware breakpoints. 714 715* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration. 716 717New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about 718the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server. 719 720New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt'' 721display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and 722IDT. 723 724New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries 725from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only). 726New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for 727a given linear address. 728 729GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the 730program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library 731which is part of the DJGPP development kit). 732 733DWARF2 debug info is now supported. 734 735It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'. 736 737* Changes in documentation. 738 739All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free 740Documentation License. 741 742Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB 743manual. 744 745TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual. 746 747Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB 748manual. 749 750The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes 751documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86 752hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes. 753 754* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in'' 755 756The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file 757``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the 758contents of this file. 759 760* gdba.el deleted 761 762GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution. 763 764*** Changes in GDB 5.0: 765 766* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets 767 768Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point 769programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now 770displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with 771greater level of detail. 772 773* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints 774 775It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and 776bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints 777on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is 778written. 779 780* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB 781 782The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files 783necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows 784machines ``out of the box''. 785 786The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is 787possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver 788signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal 789would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware 790interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged. 791 792It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their 793standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or 794even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected, 795and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's 796terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc. 797 798The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which 799enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C 800also works. 801 802DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by 803GDB. 804 805It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working 806directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of 807times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup, 808breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions. 809 810* New native configurations 811 812ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux* 813PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux* 814 815* New targets 816 817Motorola MCore mcore-*-* 818x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks* 819PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks* 820TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-* 821 822* OBSOLETE configurations 823 824Altos 3068 m68*-altos-* 825Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-* 826Pyramid pyramid-*-* 827ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host) 828Tahoe tahoe-*-* 829 830Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out, 831but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive 832these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will 833be permanently REMOVED. 834 835* Gould support removed 836 837Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed. 838 839* New features for SVR4 840 841On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process 842without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and 843load symbols from the running process's executable file. 844 845* Many C++ enhancements 846 847C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly 848in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way. 849 850* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program 851 852A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a 853sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates 854with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax 855``|<program> <args>'' vis: 856 857 (gdb) set remotedebug 1 858 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args 859 860* MIPS 64 remote protocol 861 862A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB 863expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32 864instead of 64 bits has been fixed. 865 866The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been 867added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB. 868 869* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet'' 870 871The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by 872``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family 873include ``set remote P-packet''. 874 875* Breakpoint commands accept ranges. 876 877The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now 878accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command 879``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints. 880 881* ``apropos'' command added. 882 883The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and 884documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to 885try to find a command that does what you are looking for. 886 887* New MI interface 888 889A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This 890interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate 891process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the 892"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be 893enabled by configuring with: 894 895 .../configure --enable-gdbmi 896 897*** Changes in GDB-4.18: 898 899* New native configurations 900 901HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20 902HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0* 903M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux* 904 905* New targets 906 907Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf* 908Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-* 909Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-* 910 911* OBSOLETE configurations 912 913Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-* 914 915Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out, 916but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive 917these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will 918be permanently REMOVED. 919 920* ANSI/ISO C 921 922As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and 923buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer 924containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in 925use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port 926available. If this is not true, please report the affected 927configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for 928information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one 929already. 930 931* Readline 2.2 932 933GDB now uses readline 2.2. 934 935* set extension-language 936 937You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source 938languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance, 939you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying 940 set extension-language .c c++ 941The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions 942and their associated languages. 943 944* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000 945 946When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target, 947you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the 948PowerPC family you are debugging. The command 949 950 set processor NAME 951 952sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the 953following PowerPC and RS6000 variants: 954 955 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code 956 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view 957 403 IBM PowerPC 403 958 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC 959 505 Motorola PowerPC 505 960 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850 961 601 Motorola PowerPC 601 962 602 Motorola PowerPC 602 963 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e 964 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e 965 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750 966 967At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the 968special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected 969registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is 970only useful for remote debugging in its present form. 971 972* HP-UX support 973 974Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much 975more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared 976library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00, 977support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode 978for xdb and dbx commands. 979 980* Catchpoints 981 982HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a 983generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible 984to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading. 985 986This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first 987argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the 988output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types. 989 990* Debugging across forks 991 992On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens 993in the inferior. 994 995* TUI 996 997HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get 998it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any 999configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging. 1000 1001* GDB remote protocol additions 1002 1003A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available. 1004Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub 1005fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload' 1006allows explicit control over the use of 'X'. 1007 1008For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a 1009full 64-bit address. The command 1010 1011 set remoteaddresssize 32 1012 1013can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs 1014the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information 1015will be discarded. 1016 1017In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance 1018command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance, 1019 1020 maint packet heythere 1021 1022sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to 1023disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong 1024time. 1025 1026The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the 1027target to what is in the executable file without uploading or 1028downloading, by comparing CRC checksums. 1029 1030* Tracing can collect general expressions 1031 1032You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires 1033further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and 1034doc/agentexpr.texi for further details. 1035 1036* mask-address variable for Mips 1037 1038For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of 1039a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly 1040of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors. 1041 1042* Higher serial baud rates 1043 1044GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200, 1045230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able 1046to achieve all of these rates.) 1047 1048* i960 simulator 1049 1050The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a 1051builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson. 1052 1053 1054*** Changes in GDB-4.17: 1055 1056* New native configurations 1057 1058Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux* 1059Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2* 1060Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6* 1061PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux* 1062PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris* 1063Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux* 1064Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv 1065 1066* New targets 1067 1068Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-* 1069Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-* 1070Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-* 1071Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-* 1072MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf* 1073MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf* 1074MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf* 1075Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-* 1076Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf* 1077Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-* 1078NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-* 1079 1080* New debugging protocols 1081 1082ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-* 1083M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf} 1084DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-* 1085PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi 1086PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi 1087Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi 1088 1089* DWARF 2 1090 1091All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging 1092format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2 1093information. 1094 1095* Java frontend 1096 1097GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is 1098only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code. 1099 1100* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path 1101 1102For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for 1103loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for 1104locating non-absolute shared library symbol files. 1105 1106* Live range splitting 1107 1108GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live 1109range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for 1110more details on the expected format of the stabs information. 1111 1112* Hurd support 1113 1114GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been 1115updated to work with current versions of the Hurd. 1116 1117* ARM Thumb support 1118 1119GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit 1120instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb 1121instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing 1122accordingly. 1123 1124* MIPS16 support 1125 1126GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit 1127instruction set. 1128 1129* Overlay support 1130 1131GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been 1132linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB 1133will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to 1134control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement 1135additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring 1136in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail. 1137 1138* info symbol 1139 1140The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about 1141the symbol at the specified address. 1142 1143* Trace support 1144 1145The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows 1146asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires 1147extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode 1148includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the 1149file tracepoint.c for more details. 1150 1151* MIPS simulator 1152 1153Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed 1154by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets 1155of most MIPS variants. 1156 1157* Sparc simulator 1158 1159Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed 1160by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into 1161Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it. 1162 1163* set architecture 1164 1165For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a 1166basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the 1167architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists 1168the possible architectures. 1169 1170*** Changes in GDB-4.16: 1171 1172* New native configurations 1173 1174Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32 1175M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd* 1176PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix* 1177PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos* 1178PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32 1179RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4* 1180 1181* New targets 1182 1183ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-* 1184I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff 1185MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks* 1186MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf* 1187PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi* 1188Hitachi SH3 sh-*-* 1189Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-* 1190 1191* PowerPC simulator 1192 1193The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator, 1194contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner. 1195PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only 1196basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit 1197performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details. 1198 1199* Solaris 2.5 1200 1201GDB now works with Solaris 2.5. 1202 1203* Windows 95/NT native 1204 1205GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT. 1206To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment, 1207which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools. 1208Further information, binaries, and sources are available at 1209ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32. 1210 1211* dont-repeat command 1212 1213If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the 1214command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is 1215useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental 1216extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times. 1217 1218* Send break instead of ^C 1219 1220The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break 1221rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default, 1222GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1. 1223 1224* Remote protocol timeout 1225 1226The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout' 1227that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying 1228to read from the target. The default value is 2. 1229 1230* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only) 1231 1232By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are 1233loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set 1234stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior 1235when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints 1236in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior. 1237 1238Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link 1239/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work 1240automatically on hpux10. 1241 1242* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support 1243 1244Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints. 1245 1246* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit" 1247 1248When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you 1249may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting 1250the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore 1251every character. The default value is 1050. 1252 1253* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions 1254 1255If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it 1256a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be 1257replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for 1258details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing 1259remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it 1260to someone else, who can then recreate the problem. 1261 1262* Speedups for remote debugging 1263 1264GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using 1265the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator, 1266and more efficient S-record downloading. 1267 1268* Memory use reductions and statistics collection 1269 1270GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage. 1271Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example. 1272 1273*** Changes in GDB-4.15: 1274 1275* Psymtabs for XCOFF 1276 1277The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This 1278can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables. 1279 1280* Remote targets use caching 1281 1282Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the 1283remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because 1284it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to 1285debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache 1286off' turns the the data cache off. 1287 1288* Remote targets may have threads 1289 1290The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads 1291in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See 1292gdb/remote.c for details. 1293 1294* NetROM support 1295 1296If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include 1297support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM 1298acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can 1299write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of 1300support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use 1301another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual 1302sequence is something like 1303 1304 target nrom <netrom-hostname> 1305 load <prog> 1306 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235 1307 1308* Macintosh host 1309 1310GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It 1311may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and 1312it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are 1313available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the 1314device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main 1315directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration 1316scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the 1317mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested. 1318 1319* Autoconf 1320 1321GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible, 1322but does simplify configuration and building. 1323 1324* hpux10 1325 1326GDB now supports hpux10. 1327 1328*** Changes in GDB-4.14: 1329 1330* New native configurations 1331 1332x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd 1333x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd 1334NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd 1335Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd 1336 1337* New targets 1338 1339A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks 1340HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro* 1341CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est* 1342PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf 1343WDC 65816 w65-*-* 1344 1345* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs 1346 1347GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it 1348possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc 1349filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines 1350the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems 1351if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started. 1352 1353* Arguments to user-defined commands 1354 1355User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace. 1356Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A 1357trivial example: 1358define adder 1359 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2 1360 1361To execute the command use: 1362adder 1 2 3 1363 1364Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments. 1365Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables, 1366use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls. 1367 1368* New `if' and `while' commands 1369 1370This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined 1371commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the 1372expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to 1373execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being 1374terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an 1375`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only 1376if the expression is zero. 1377 1378* Fortran source language mode 1379 1380GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize 1381Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but 1382variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work 1383with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other 1384Fortran compilers. 1385 1386* Better HPUX support 1387 1388Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs 1389running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked 1390processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so 1391for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change 1392that behavior do the following before running the program: 1393 1394 adb -w a.out 1395 __dld_flags?W 0x5 1396 control-d 1397 1398This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write. 1399To revert to the normal behavior, do this: 1400 1401 adb -w a.out 1402 __dld_flags?W 0x4 1403 control-d 1404 1405You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after 1406the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have 1407external linkage. 1408 1409GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on 1410HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support). 1411 1412* Target byte order now dynamically selectable 1413 1414You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the 1415commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the 1416current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command 1417"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order 1418associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS 1419configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order. 1420 1421* New DOS host serial code 1422 1423This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you 1424no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to 1425a PC's serial port. 1426 1427*** Changes in GDB-4.13: 1428 1429* New "complete" command 1430 1431This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it 1432were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs. 1433 1434* Trailing space optional in prompt 1435 1436"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This 1437allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not. 1438 1439* Breakpoint hit counts 1440 1441"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint 1442has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you 1443can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info 1444to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one 1445less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of 1446that breakpoint. 1447 1448* Ability to stop printing at NULL character 1449 1450"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of 1451an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large 1452arrays actually contain only short strings. 1453 1454* Shared library breakpoints 1455 1456In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set 1457breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run. 1458 1459* Hardware watchpoints 1460 1461There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite 1462targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note. 1463 1464Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux. 1465 1466* Annotations 1467 1468Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces, 1469and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these. 1470 1471* Improved Irix 5 support 1472 1473GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2. 1474 1475* Improved HPPA support 1476 1477GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS. 1478 1479* New native configurations 1480 1481Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4 1482HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf* 1483Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4* 1484RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos* 1485 1486* New targets 1487 1488OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k 1489MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf} 1490Sparc64 sparc64-*-* 1491 1492* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support 1493 1494There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE. 1495This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH. 1496 1497* Fixes 1498 1499As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic 1500and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail. 1501 1502*** Changes in GDB-4.12: 1503 1504* Irix 5 is now supported 1505 1506* HPPA support 1507 1508GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable 1509to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and 1510GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release 1511of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12 1512can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist. 1513 1514 1515*** Changes in GDB-4.11: 1516 1517* User visible changes: 1518 1519* Remote Debugging 1520 1521The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote 1522target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's 1523debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an 1524integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more 1525debugging info for the mips target). 1526 1527* DEC Alpha native support 1528 1529GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable 1530debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should 1531work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few 1532Alpha-specific notes. 1533 1534* Preliminary thread implementation 1535 1536GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS. 1537 1538* LynxOS native and target support for 386 1539 1540This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured 1541to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README 1542for details). 1543 1544* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling. 1545 1546This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name 1547mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table, 1548call methods, ...etc. 1549 1550*** Changes in GDB-4.10: 1551 1552 * User visible changes: 1553 1554Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now 1555supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some 1556other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it 1557somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download. 1558 1559Filename completion now works. 1560 1561When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the 1562arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints 1563addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex). 1564 1565All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called 1566vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb 1567should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if 1568your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens 1569to be on the far side of a thin network line. 1570 1571 * DEC alpha support 1572 1573This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for 1574cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet. 1575 1576 1577*** Changes in GDB-4.9: 1578 1579 * Testsuite 1580 1581This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite. 1582The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available 1583via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software. 1584 1585 * C++ demangling 1586 1587'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to 1588emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated 1589Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite 1590disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to 1591use gdb with AT&T cfront. 1592 1593 * Simulators 1594 1595GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library. 1596So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the 1597Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H. 1598 1599 * New targets supported 1600 1601H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms 1602H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms 1603SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh 1604Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim 1605IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff 1606 1607Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom 1608version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the 1609GO32 memory extender. 1610 1611 * New remote protocols 1612 1613MIPS remote debugging protocol. 1614 1615 * New source languages supported 1616 1617This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language 1618used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated 1619into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available. 1620 1621 1622*** Changes in GDB-4.8: 1623 1624 * HP Precision Architecture supported 1625 1626GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary 1627version of this support was available as a set of patches from the 1628University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs 1629compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file 1630format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS 1631(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z). 1632 1633Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed. 1634 1635 * Faster and better demangling 1636 1637We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style 1638demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide 1639character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now 1640only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in. 1641This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate 1642increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in 1643symbol lookups. 1644 1645`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written 1646from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's 1647compiler does not actually implement. 1648 1649 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem 1650 1651In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple 1652inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We 1653recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a 1654very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes. 1655The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to 1656circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete 1657fix. 1658 1659The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7 1660release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2. 1661 1662 * Improved configure script 1663 1664The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if 1665you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a 1666host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is 1667done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details. 1668 1669We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's 1670version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular, 1671`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller. 1672The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats -- 1673only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system. 1674We hope to make this the default in a future release. 1675 1676 * Documentation improvements 1677 1678There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to 1679produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it 1680before submitting changes. 1681 1682The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane 1683M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built 1684`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch, 1685you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in 1686a future texinfo-X.Y release. 1687 1688*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang. 1689We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has 1690been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141 1691or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in 1692`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work 1693around this problem. 1694 1695 * New features 1696 1697GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by 1698the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type 1699`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in 1700the target program. 1701 1702The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates 1703how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor. 1704 1705 * New native hosts supported 1706 1707HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux 1708386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4 1709 1710 * New targets supported 1711 1712AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k 1713 1714 * New file formats supported 1715 1716BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?), 1717HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files. 1718 1719 * Major bug fixes 1720 1721Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports. 1722 1723We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by 1724printf_filtered("%s") problems. 1725 1726We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files 1727for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7 1728release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB. 1729 1730You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This 1731will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB. 1732 1733We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors 1734for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was 1735especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared 1736libraries. 1737 1738The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number 1739information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next' 1740command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was 1741any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems 1742when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines. 1743 1744 * Internal improvements 1745 1746GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support 1747debugging of multiple languages in the future. 1748 1749GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally. 1750Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial 1751symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols 1752contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write 1753shared code that handles any of them. 1754 1755 * New command line options 1756 1757We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet. 1758 1759 * Mmalloc licensing 1760 1761The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library 1762General Public License. 1763 1764*** Changes in GDB-4.7: 1765 1766 * Host/native/target split 1767 1768GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for 1769hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote 1770target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging 1771local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will 1772ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible. 1773 1774The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in 1775GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB 1776is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific 1777code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on 1778any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be 1779built when the host and target are the same system. Child process 1780handling and core file support are two common `native' examples. 1781 1782GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner. 1783It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector, 1784plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc. 1785 1786 * New hosts supported 1787 1788HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd 1789386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd 1790386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco 1791 1792 * New targets supported 1793 1794Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite 179568030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-* 1796 1797 * New native hosts supported 1798 1799386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd 1800 (386bsd is not well tested yet) 1801386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco 1802 1803 * New file formats supported 1804 1805BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It 1806supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out 1807format extended with minimal information about multiple sections. 1808 1809 * New commands 1810 1811`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'. 1812`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'. 1813These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work. 1814 1815`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'. 1816 1817You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command 1818scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed 1819prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be 1820executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo. 1821 1822 * C++ improvements 1823 1824We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type 1825info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which 1826symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses. 1827 1828Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well. 1829 1830 * Major bug fixes 1831 1832The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is 1833fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output 1834by the compiler. 1835 1836We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file 1837support, with help from a dozen people on the net. 1838 1839John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so 1840slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was 1841that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal 1842purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing 1843the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++ 1844mangled symbol sped things up a great deal. 1845 1846Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter 1847about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol 1848completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as 1849we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6. 1850 1851 * AMD 29k support 1852 1853A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can 1854specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB 1855calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the 1856usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work 1857in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces. 1858 1859We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger 1860Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all 1861of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to 1862resolve this, and hope to have it available soon. 1863 1864 * Remote interfaces 1865 1866We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets 1867with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T') 1868message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message. 1869This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB 1870needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional 1871breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for 1872each instruction being stepped through. 1873 1874The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for 1875registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run. 1876 1877There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can 1878find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the 1879Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC 1880processor with a serial port. 1881 1882 * Configuration 1883 1884Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new 1885`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are 1886supported, and what files each one uses. 1887 1888 * Library changes 1889 1890There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the 1891disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains 1892Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and 1893disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines. 1894 1895The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General 1896Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++ 1897can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License 1898grants all the rights from the General Public License. 1899 1900 * Documentation 1901 1902The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete 1903reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far 1904as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We 1905encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your 1906system, and send improvements on the document in general (to 1907bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu). 1908 1909And, of course, many bugs have been fixed. 1910 1911 1912*** Changes in GDB-4.6: 1913 1914 * Better support for C++ function names 1915 1916GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function 1917names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names 1918(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of 1919single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'. 1920Make use of command completion, it is your friend. 1921 1922GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are 1923the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style. 1924You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu, 1925lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo' 1926for the list of formats. 1927 1928 * G++ symbol mangling problem 1929 1930Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for 1931C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this 1932directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you 1933can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The 1934usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains 1935about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has 1936this problem.) 1937 1938 * New 'maintenance' command 1939 1940All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of 1941the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This 1942can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made: 1943 1944 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me 1945 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints 1946 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms 1947 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles 1948 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols 1949 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols 1950 1951The following commands are new: 1952 1953 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to 1954 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result. 1955 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol 1956 1957 * Change to .gdbinit file processing 1958 1959We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments 1960(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to 1961be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still 1962read after argv processing. 1963 1964 * New hosts supported 1965 1966Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2 1967 1968GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux 1969 1970We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This 1971is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it 1972for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or 1973masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the 1974fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option. 1975It costs extra. 1976 1977 * New targets supported 1978 1979Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms 1980 1981 * More smarts about finding #include files 1982 1983GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for 1984all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This 1985greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files, 1986especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from 1987the one that contains your sources. 1988 1989We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting 1990breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to 1991try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.) 1992 1993 * Interesting infernals change 1994 1995GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each 1996section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the 1997target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded 1998stabs used by Solaris-2.0. 1999 2000 * Bug fixes (of course!) 2001 2002There have been loads of fixes for the following things: 2003 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k, 2004 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc... 2005 2006See the ChangeLog for details. 2007 2008*** Changes in GDB-4.5: 2009 2010 * New machines supported (host and target) 2011 2012IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000 2013 2014SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4 2015 2016 * New malloc package 2017 2018GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc. 2019Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also 2020capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later. 2021This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a 2022pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For 2023more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi. 2024 2025 * info proc 2026 2027The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See 2028'help info proc' for details. 2029 2030 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format 2031 2032The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts. 2033Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this 2034possible. 2035 2036 * File name changes for MS-DOS 2037 2038Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to 2039support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name 2040conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32 2041environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note 2042that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations 2043in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging. 2044 2045 * Cross byte order fixes 2046 2047Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS 2048targets from hosts whose byte order differs. 2049 2050 * New -mapped and -readnow options 2051 2052If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap' 2053system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or 2054`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your 2055program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is 2056called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'. 2057Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file, 2058and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading 2059the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped' 2060option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as 2061starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option. 2062 2063You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using 2064the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table 2065information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command 2066slower, but makes future operations faster. 2067 2068The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to 2069build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information. 2070A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future 2071use is: 2072 2073 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname 2074 2075The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run. 2076It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be 2077shared across multiple host platforms. 2078 2079 * longjmp() handling 2080 2081GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and 2082siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to 2083all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based 2084platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4. 2085 2086 * Solaris 2.0 2087 2088Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At 2089this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of 2090reading symbols. 2091 2092 * Bug fixes 2093 2094As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread. 2095People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious 2096crashes and trashed symbol tables. 2097 2098*** Changes in GDB-4.4: 2099 2100 * New machines supported (host and target) 2101 2102SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco 2103 (except core files) 2104BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd 2105Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix 2106 2107 * New machines supported (target) 2108 2109AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none 2110 2111 * C++ support 2112 2113GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better. 2114The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as 2115per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide. 2116 2117GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS 2118`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily 2119extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a 2120good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option 2121will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is 2122released. 2123 2124 * New features for SVR4 2125 2126GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS 2127shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present 2128only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs. 2129 2130The `info proc' command will print out information about any process 2131on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment, 2132it prints the address mappings of the process. 2133 2134If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to 2135bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any). 2136 2137 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS 2138 2139Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols 2140now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic 2141skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which 2142make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the 2143same code linked statically. 2144 2145 * New Getopt 2146 2147GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This 2148version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will 2149continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well. 2150Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity 2151added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the 2152future by other options that begin with the same letter. 2153 2154 * Bugs fixed 2155 2156The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed. 2157Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled. 2158See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details. 2159 2160 2161*** Changes in GDB-4.3: 2162 2163 * New machines supported (host and target) 2164 2165Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix 2166NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000 2167Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88 2168 2169 * Almost SCO Unix support 2170 2171We had hoped to support: 2172SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco 2173(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release 2174that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry 2175about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes. 2176 2177 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support 2178 2179GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle 2180debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support 2181is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please 2182send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were 2183reqired (if any). 2184 2185 * New Readline 2186 2187GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change 2188is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously 2189required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?). 2190 2191 * Bugs fixed 2192 2193The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed. 2194Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled. 2195See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details. 2196 2197 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered): 2198 2199GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers 2200supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These 2201symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses. 2202 2203Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called 2204mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level 2205debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship 2206mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc 2207version 2. 2208 2209Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not 2210really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get 2211line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local 2212variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the 2213situation somewhat. 2214 2215When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck. 2216However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and 2217methods. 2218 2219We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on 2220DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff 2221encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet. 2222 2223 2224*** Changes in GDB-4.2: 2225 2226 * Improved configuration 2227 2228Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying. 2229Porting BFD is simpler. 2230 2231 * Stepping improved 2232 2233The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction 2234of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur 2235in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a 2236function that has debugging information is called within the line. 2237 2238 * Bug fixing 2239 2240Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain. 2241 2242 * New host supported (not target) 2243 2244Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach 2245 2246 2247*** Changes in GDB-4.1: 2248 2249 * Multiple source language support 2250 2251GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages. 2252It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension, 2253and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the 2254language of the function in the currently selected stack frame. 2255You can also specifically set the language to be used, with 2256`set language c' or `set language modula-2'. 2257 2258 * GDB and Modula-2 2259 2260GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler, 2261currently under development at the State University of New York at 2262Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will 2263continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992. 2264 2265Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to 2266debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the 2267symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though! 2268 2269There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking, 2270in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work. 2271 2272 * set write on/off 2273 2274GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch 2275a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify 2276the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g. 2277by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take 2278effect immediately. 2279 2280 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading 2281 2282When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its 2283shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols. 2284The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when 2285examining core files. 2286 2287 * set listsize 2288 2289You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows. 2290The default is 10. 2291 2292 * New machines supported (host and target) 2293 2294SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris 2295Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news 2296Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3 2297 2298 * New hosts supported (not targets) 2299 2300IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc 2301 2302 * New targets supported (not hosts) 2303 2304AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff 2305AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout 2306Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern 2307 2308 * New remote interfaces 2309 2310AMD 29000 Adapt 2311AMD 29000 Minimon 2312 2313 2314*** Changes in GDB-4.0: 2315 2316 * New Facilities 2317 2318Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable. 2319 2320Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a 2321target machine of another type. Communication with the target system 2322is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the 2323remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the 2324remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb 2325also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks, 2326using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger 2327stub on the target system. 2328 2329New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960. 2330 2331GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file'' 2332library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple 2333object file types such as a.out and coff. 2334 2335There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets 2336refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it). 2337 2338 2339 * Control-Variable user interface simplified 2340 2341All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set 2342by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command. 2343 2344For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>. 2345``Show prompt'' produces the response: 2346Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>. 2347 2348What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will 2349print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO'' 2350will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show 2351all of the variable descriptions and their current settings. 2352 2353confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are 2354 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while 2355 it is already running. Default is ON. 2356 2357editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing 2358 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with 2359 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B, 2360 you can search for commands with control-R, etc. 2361 Default is ON. 2362 2363history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history 2364 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history, 2365 or the value of the environment variable 2366 GDBHISTFILE. 2367 2368history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The 2369 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable 2370 HISTSIZE. 2371 2372history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will 2373 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the 2374 file will not be saved. The default is OFF. 2375 2376history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like 2377 history expansion will be performed on 2378 command line input. The default is OFF. 2379 2380radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set 2381 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted 2382 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op. 2383 2384height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default 2385 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#'' 2386 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment 2387 variable TERM. 2388 2389width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line. 2390 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#'' 2391 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment 2392 variable TERM. 2393 2394Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and 2395``set width'' instead. 2396 2397print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays, 2398 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks 2399 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more 2400 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON. 2401 2402print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default 2403 is OFF. 2404 2405print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on, 2406 "raw" form if off. 2407 2408print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts 2409 like instructions. 2410 2411print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF. 2412 2413 2414 * Support for Epoch Environment. 2415 2416The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One 2417new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you 2418are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own 2419window. 2420 2421 2422 * Support for Shared Libraries 2423 2424GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries. 2425Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced 2426before the shared library has been linked with the program (this 2427happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered). 2428At any time after this linking (including when examining core files 2429from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each 2430shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command. 2431It can be abbreviated ``share''. 2432 2433sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files 2434 matching a unix regular expression. No argument 2435 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries. 2436 2437info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries. 2438 2439 2440 * Watchpoints 2441 2442A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an 2443expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution 2444tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is 2445quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse 2446problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this 2447more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware. 2448 2449watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression. 2450 2451info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints. 2452 2453delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints). 2454disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints). 2455enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints). 2456 2457 2458 * C++ multiple inheritance 2459 2460When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance 2461for C++ programs. 2462 2463 * C++ exception handling 2464 2465Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing 2466ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on 2467the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the 2468handler's context). 2469 2470catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope, 2471 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there. 2472 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught. 2473 2474info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the 2475 current stack frame. 2476 2477 2478 * Minor command changes 2479 2480The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print 2481command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result 2482is void. This is similar to dbx usage. 2483 2484The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up 2485at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change 2486frames without printing. 2487 2488 * New directory command 2489 2490'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path. 2491The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information 2492about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even 2493with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't 2494find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .". 2495 2496 * Configuring GDB for compilation 2497 2498For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo 2499for more details. 2500 2501GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between 2502two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''. 2503Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine 2504where the program that you are debugging will run. 2505