1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.6
6 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
7 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
9 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
10 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
12 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
16 set mem inaccessible-by-default
17 show mem inaccessible-by-default
18 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
19 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
20 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
21 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
22 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
24 set breakpoint auto-hw
25 show breakpoint auto-hw
26 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
27 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
28 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
29 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
30 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
31 including "next" and "finish".
33 * New native configurations
35 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
39 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
40 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
45 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
46 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
49 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
54 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
56 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
57 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
58 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
60 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
61 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
64 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
65 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
67 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
68 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
75 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
76 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
77 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
78 between compilation and debugging.
82 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
83 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
84 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
88 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
90 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
91 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
93 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
98 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
99 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
100 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
101 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
105 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
106 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
108 * Removed remote packets
111 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
112 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
114 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
118 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
120 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
124 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
125 only if it doesn't already have a value.
127 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
129 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
131 restart <n> Return the program state to a
132 previously saved state.
134 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
136 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
138 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
139 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
141 info forks List forks of the user program that
142 are available to be debugged.
144 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
145 forks of the user program that are
146 available to be debugged.
148 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
149 that are available to be debugged (and
150 kill the forked process).
152 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
153 that are available to be debugged (and
154 allow the process to continue).
158 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
160 * Improved Windows host support
162 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
163 native console support, and remote communications using either
164 network sockets or serial ports.
166 * Improved Modula-2 language support
168 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
169 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
170 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
171 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
172 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
173 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
177 The ARM rdi-share module.
179 The Netware NLM debug server.
181 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
183 * New native configurations
185 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
186 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
190 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
192 * New command line options
194 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
195 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
196 the child (debugged) program exited with.
197 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
198 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
199 specified multiple times and in conjunction
200 with the --command (-x) option.
202 * Deprecated commands removed
204 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
208 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
209 othernames set arm disassembler
210 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
211 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
212 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
215 * New BSD user-level threads support
217 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
218 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
221 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
222 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
223 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
225 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
226 are not yet supported.
228 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
229 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
231 * REMOVED configurations and files
233 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
234 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
235 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
237 * New "set print array-indexes" command
239 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
240 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
243 * VAX floating point support
245 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
247 * User-defined command support
249 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
250 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
251 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
253 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
255 * New command line option
257 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
260 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
262 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
263 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
264 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
265 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
266 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
268 * Internationalization
270 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
271 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
272 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
276 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
277 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
278 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
280 * New native configurations
282 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
286 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
287 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
289 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
291 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
292 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
293 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
296 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
297 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
298 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
310 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
311 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
313 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
315 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
316 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
317 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
327 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
329 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
331 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
332 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
335 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
337 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
338 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
339 IRIX long double values).
343 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
344 command. This problem has been fixed.
346 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
348 * Fix for ``many threads''
350 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
351 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
354 ptrace: No such process.
355 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
357 This problem has been fixed.
359 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
361 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
364 * New ``start'' command.
366 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
368 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
370 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
371 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
372 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
374 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
375 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
376 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
377 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
378 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
379 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
380 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
381 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
382 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
384 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
386 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
387 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
388 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
389 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
390 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
392 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
393 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
394 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
396 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
398 * New native configurations
400 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
401 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
402 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
403 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
404 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
405 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
406 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
408 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
410 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
411 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
412 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
413 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
414 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
415 work, was also included.
417 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
418 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
428 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
429 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
431 * REMOVED configurations and files
433 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
434 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
435 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
436 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
437 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
438 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
439 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
440 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
441 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
443 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
445 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
447 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
449 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
450 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
451 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
452 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
455 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
457 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
458 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
459 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
460 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
461 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
462 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
465 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
467 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
469 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
470 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
471 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
473 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
475 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
476 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
478 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
480 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
481 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
482 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
484 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
486 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
487 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
489 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
491 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
492 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
493 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
495 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
497 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
498 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
499 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
501 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
503 * Removed --with-mmalloc
505 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
506 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
508 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
510 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
511 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
512 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
513 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
515 * Revised SPARC target
517 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
518 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
519 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
520 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
521 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
525 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
526 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
527 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
530 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
532 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
533 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
536 * C++ nested types and namespaces
538 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
539 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
540 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
541 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
542 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
543 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
544 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
545 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
546 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
548 * New native configurations
550 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
551 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
552 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
553 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
554 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
556 * New debugging protocols
558 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
560 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
562 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
563 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
564 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
566 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
568 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
569 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
570 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
573 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
574 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
575 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
576 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
577 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
578 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
579 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
580 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
581 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
583 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
585 * REMOVED configurations and files
587 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
588 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
589 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
590 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
591 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
592 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
593 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
594 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
595 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
596 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
597 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
598 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
599 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
600 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
601 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
602 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
603 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
605 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
609 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
612 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
614 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
615 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
616 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
619 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
620 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
625 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
626 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
627 remote protocol documentation for details.
629 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
631 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
632 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
633 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
636 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
638 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
639 per-thread variables.
641 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
643 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
644 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
646 * Separate debug info.
648 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
649 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
650 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
651 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
652 and optional debug files.
654 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
656 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
657 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
660 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
661 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
665 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
666 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
667 considered "useable".
669 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
671 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
672 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
675 * GDB supports logging output to a file
677 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
678 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
680 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
682 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
683 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
686 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
688 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
689 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
693 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
694 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
695 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
696 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
697 data, for more informative profiling results.
699 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
701 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
702 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
703 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
705 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
708 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
709 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
710 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
711 in a subsequent -var-update.
713 * New native configurations.
715 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
717 * Multi-arched targets.
719 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
720 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
722 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
724 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
725 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
726 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
729 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
730 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
731 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
732 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
733 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
734 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
735 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
736 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
737 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
738 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
739 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
740 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
742 * REMOVED configurations and files
745 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
746 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
747 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
748 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
749 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
750 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
752 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
753 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
754 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
755 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
756 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
757 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
759 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
761 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
762 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
763 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
764 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
765 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
767 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
769 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
771 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
772 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
773 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
774 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
775 shared libs like mad''.
777 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
779 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
780 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
781 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
782 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
784 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
786 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
787 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
790 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
791 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
793 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
794 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
796 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
797 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
798 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
799 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
801 * Multi-arched targets.
803 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
804 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
806 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
807 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
808 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
812 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
815 * New native configurations
817 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
818 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
819 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
820 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
822 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
824 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
825 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
826 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
829 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
830 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
831 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
832 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
833 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
834 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
835 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
836 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
837 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
838 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
840 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
841 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
845 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
847 * REMOVED configurations and files
849 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
850 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
851 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
852 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
853 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
855 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
857 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
859 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
860 commands. The default is 1024.
862 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
864 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
866 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
868 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
869 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
870 from a file into memory (restore).
872 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
874 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
875 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
876 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
878 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
886 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
887 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
888 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
890 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
891 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
892 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
894 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
895 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
896 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
898 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
899 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
900 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
902 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
904 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
906 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
907 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
908 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
909 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
910 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
911 (notably embedded) targets.
913 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
915 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
916 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
917 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
918 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
920 * New command line option
922 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
924 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
926 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
927 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
928 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
929 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
930 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
931 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
932 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
933 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
934 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
935 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
937 * Changes in ARM configurations.
939 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
940 configuration is fully multi-arch.
942 * New native configurations
944 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
945 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
946 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
947 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
951 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
953 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
955 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
956 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
957 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
960 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
961 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
962 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
963 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
964 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
966 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
968 * REMOVED configurations and files
970 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
972 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
973 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
974 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
975 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
976 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
977 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
978 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
979 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
980 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
981 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
982 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
984 * Changes to command line processing
986 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
987 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
989 * Changes to key bindings
991 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
993 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
995 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
997 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1000 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1002 Numerous documentation fixes.
1004 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1006 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1008 * New native configurations
1010 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1011 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1012 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1013 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1014 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1015 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1019 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1021 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1023 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1025 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1026 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1027 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1028 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1029 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1031 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1032 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1033 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1034 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1035 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1036 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1037 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1038 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1040 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1041 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1043 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1044 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1045 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1046 permanently REMOVED.
1048 * REMOVED configurations and files
1050 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1051 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1053 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1057 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1059 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1060 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1065 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1067 * The MI enabled by default.
1069 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1070 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1071 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1072 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1073 which is now deprecated.
1075 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1077 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1078 main features are supported:
1080 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1082 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1085 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1087 - a Pascal expression parser.
1089 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1091 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1093 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1095 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1096 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1098 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1100 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1102 * Changes in completion.
1104 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1105 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1106 users expect at the shell prompt.
1108 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1109 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1110 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1111 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1112 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1113 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1114 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1116 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1118 * New platform-independent commands:
1120 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1121 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1122 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1124 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1126 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1127 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1128 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1130 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1132 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1133 multi-threaded programs though.
1135 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1137 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1139 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1140 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1143 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1145 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1146 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1147 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1148 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1149 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1152 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1153 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1154 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1156 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1158 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1159 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1161 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1162 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1165 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1166 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1167 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1168 a given linear address.
1170 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1171 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1172 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1174 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1176 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1178 * Changes in documentation.
1180 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1181 Documentation License.
1183 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1186 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1188 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1191 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1192 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1193 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1195 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1197 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1198 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1199 contents of this file.
1203 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1205 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1207 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1209 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1210 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1211 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1212 greater level of detail.
1214 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1216 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1217 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1218 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1221 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1223 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1224 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1225 machines ``out of the box''.
1227 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1228 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1229 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1230 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1231 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1233 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1234 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1235 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1236 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1237 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1239 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1240 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1243 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1246 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1247 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1248 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1249 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1251 * New native configurations
1253 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1254 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1258 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1259 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1260 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1261 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1263 * OBSOLETE configurations
1265 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1266 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1268 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1271 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1272 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1273 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1274 be permanently REMOVED.
1276 * Gould support removed
1278 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1280 * New features for SVR4
1282 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1283 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1284 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1286 * Many C++ enhancements
1288 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1289 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1291 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1293 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1294 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1295 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1296 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1298 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1299 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1301 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1303 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1304 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1305 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1307 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1308 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1310 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1312 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1313 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1314 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1316 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1318 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1319 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1320 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1322 * ``apropos'' command added.
1324 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1325 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1326 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1330 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1331 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1332 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1333 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1334 enabled by configuring with:
1336 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1338 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1340 * New native configurations
1342 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1343 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1344 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1348 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1349 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1350 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1352 * OBSOLETE configurations
1354 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1356 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1357 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1358 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1359 be permanently REMOVED.
1363 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1364 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1365 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1366 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1367 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1369 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1374 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1376 * set extension-language
1378 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1379 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1380 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1381 set extension-language .c c++
1382 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1383 and their associated languages.
1385 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1387 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1388 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1389 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1393 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1394 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1396 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1397 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1399 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1400 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1401 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1402 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1403 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1404 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1405 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1406 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1408 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1409 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1410 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1411 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1415 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1416 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1417 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1418 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1419 for xdb and dbx commands.
1423 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1424 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1425 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1427 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1428 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1429 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1431 * Debugging across forks
1433 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1438 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1439 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1440 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1442 * GDB remote protocol additions
1444 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1445 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1446 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1447 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1449 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1450 full 64-bit address. The command
1452 set remoteaddresssize 32
1454 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1455 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1458 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1459 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1461 maint packet heythere
1463 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1464 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1467 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1468 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1469 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1471 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1473 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1474 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1475 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1477 * mask-address variable for Mips
1479 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1480 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1481 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1483 * Higher serial baud rates
1485 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1486 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1487 to achieve all of these rates.)
1491 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1492 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1495 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1497 * New native configurations
1499 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1500 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1501 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1502 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1503 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1504 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1505 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1509 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1510 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1511 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1512 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1513 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1514 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1515 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1516 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1517 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1518 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1519 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1521 * New debugging protocols
1523 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1524 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1525 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1526 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1527 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1528 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1532 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1533 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1538 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1539 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1541 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1543 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1544 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1545 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1547 * Live range splitting
1549 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1550 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1551 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1555 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1556 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1560 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1561 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1562 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1567 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1572 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1573 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1574 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1575 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1576 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1577 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1581 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1582 the symbol at the specified address.
1586 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1587 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1588 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1589 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1590 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1594 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1595 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1596 of most MIPS variants.
1600 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1601 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1602 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1606 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1607 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1608 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1609 the possible architectures.
1611 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1613 * New native configurations
1615 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1616 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1617 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1618 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1619 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1620 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1624 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1625 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1626 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1627 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1628 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1630 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1634 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1635 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1636 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1637 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1638 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1642 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1644 * Windows 95/NT native
1646 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1647 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1648 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1649 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1650 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1652 * dont-repeat command
1654 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1655 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1656 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1657 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1659 * Send break instead of ^C
1661 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1662 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1663 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1665 * Remote protocol timeout
1667 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1668 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1669 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1671 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1673 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1674 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1675 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1676 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1677 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1679 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1680 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1681 automatically on hpux10.
1683 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1685 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1687 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1689 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1690 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1691 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1692 every character. The default value is 1050.
1694 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1696 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1697 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1698 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1699 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1700 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1701 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1703 * Speedups for remote debugging
1705 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1706 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1707 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1709 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1711 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1712 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1714 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1716 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1718 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1719 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1721 * Remote targets use caching
1723 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1724 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1725 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1726 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1727 off' turns the the data cache off.
1729 * Remote targets may have threads
1731 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1732 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1733 gdb/remote.c for details.
1737 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1738 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1739 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1740 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1741 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1742 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1743 sequence is something like
1745 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1747 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1751 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1752 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1753 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1754 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1755 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1756 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1757 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1758 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1762 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1763 but does simplify configuration and building.
1767 GDB now supports hpux10.
1769 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1771 * New native configurations
1773 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1774 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1775 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1776 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1780 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1781 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1782 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1783 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1786 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1788 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1789 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1790 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1791 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1792 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1794 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1796 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1797 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1800 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1802 To execute the command use:
1805 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1806 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1807 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1809 * New `if' and `while' commands
1811 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1812 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1813 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1814 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1815 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1816 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1817 if the expression is zero.
1819 * Fortran source language mode
1821 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1822 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1823 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1824 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1827 * Better HPUX support
1829 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1830 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1831 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1832 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1833 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1839 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1840 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1846 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1847 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1850 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1851 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1853 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1855 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1856 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1857 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1858 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1859 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1860 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1862 * New DOS host serial code
1864 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1865 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1868 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1870 * New "complete" command
1872 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1873 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1875 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1877 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1878 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1880 * Breakpoint hit counts
1882 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1883 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1884 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1885 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1886 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1889 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1891 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1892 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1893 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1895 * Shared library breakpoints
1897 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1898 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1900 * Hardware watchpoints
1902 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1903 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1905 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1909 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1910 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1912 * Improved Irix 5 support
1914 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1916 * Improved HPPA support
1918 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1920 * New native configurations
1922 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1923 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1924 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1925 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1929 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1930 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1933 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1935 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1936 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1940 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1941 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1943 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1945 * Irix 5 is now supported
1949 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1950 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1951 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1952 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1953 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1956 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1958 * User visible changes:
1962 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1963 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1964 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1965 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1966 debugging info for the mips target).
1968 * DEC Alpha native support
1970 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1971 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1972 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1973 Alpha-specific notes.
1975 * Preliminary thread implementation
1977 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1979 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1981 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1982 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1985 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1987 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1988 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1989 call methods, ...etc.
1991 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1993 * User visible changes:
1995 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1996 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1997 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1998 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2000 Filename completion now works.
2002 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2003 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2004 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2006 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2007 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2008 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2009 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2010 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2014 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2015 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2018 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2022 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2023 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2024 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2028 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2029 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2030 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2031 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2032 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2036 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2037 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2038 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2040 * New targets supported
2042 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2043 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2044 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2045 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2046 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2048 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2049 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2050 GO32 memory extender.
2052 * New remote protocols
2054 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2056 * New source languages supported
2058 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2059 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2060 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2063 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2065 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2067 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2068 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2069 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2070 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2071 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2072 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2074 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2076 * Faster and better demangling
2078 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2079 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2080 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2081 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2082 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2083 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2086 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2087 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2088 compiler does not actually implement.
2090 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2092 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2093 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2094 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2095 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2096 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2097 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2100 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2101 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2103 * Improved configure script
2105 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2106 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2107 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2108 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2110 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2111 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2112 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2113 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2114 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2115 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2117 * Documentation improvements
2119 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2120 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2121 before submitting changes.
2123 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2124 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2125 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2126 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2127 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2129 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2130 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2131 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2132 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2133 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2134 around this problem.
2138 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2139 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2140 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2143 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2144 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2146 * New native hosts supported
2148 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2149 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2151 * New targets supported
2153 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2155 * New file formats supported
2157 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2158 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2162 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2164 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2165 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2167 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2168 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2169 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2171 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2172 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2174 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2175 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2176 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2179 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2180 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2181 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2182 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2183 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2185 * Internal improvements
2187 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2188 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2190 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2191 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2192 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2193 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2194 shared code that handles any of them.
2196 * New command line options
2198 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2202 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2203 General Public License.
2205 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2207 * Host/native/target split
2209 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2210 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2211 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2212 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2213 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2215 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2216 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2217 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2218 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2219 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2220 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2221 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2223 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2224 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2225 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2227 * New hosts supported
2229 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2230 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2231 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2233 * New targets supported
2235 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2236 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2238 * New native hosts supported
2240 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2241 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2242 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2244 * New file formats supported
2246 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2247 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2248 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2252 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2253 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2254 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2256 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2258 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2259 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2260 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2261 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2265 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2266 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2267 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2269 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2273 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2274 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2277 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2278 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2280 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2281 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2282 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2283 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2284 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2285 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2287 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2288 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2289 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2290 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2294 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2295 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2296 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2297 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2298 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2300 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2301 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2302 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2303 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2307 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2308 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2309 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2310 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2311 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2312 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2313 each instruction being stepped through.
2315 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2316 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2318 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2319 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2320 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2321 processor with a serial port.
2325 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2326 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2327 supported, and what files each one uses.
2331 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2332 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2333 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2334 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2336 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2337 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2338 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2339 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2343 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2344 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2345 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2346 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2347 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2350 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2353 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2355 * Better support for C++ function names
2357 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2358 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2359 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2360 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2361 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2363 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2364 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2365 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2366 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2367 for the list of formats.
2369 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2371 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2372 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2373 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2374 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2375 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2376 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2379 * New 'maintenance' command
2381 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2382 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2383 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2385 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2386 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2387 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2388 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2389 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2390 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2392 The following commands are new:
2394 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2395 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2396 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2398 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2400 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2401 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2402 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2403 read after argv processing.
2405 * New hosts supported
2407 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2409 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2411 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2412 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2413 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2414 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2415 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2418 * New targets supported
2420 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2422 * More smarts about finding #include files
2424 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2425 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2426 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2427 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2428 the one that contains your sources.
2430 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2431 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2432 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2434 * Interesting infernals change
2436 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2437 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2438 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2439 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2441 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2443 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2444 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2445 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2447 See the ChangeLog for details.
2449 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2451 * New machines supported (host and target)
2453 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2455 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2457 * New malloc package
2459 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2460 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2461 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2462 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2463 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2464 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2468 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2469 'help info proc' for details.
2471 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2473 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2474 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2477 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2479 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2480 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2481 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2482 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2483 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2484 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2486 * Cross byte order fixes
2488 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2489 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2491 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2493 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2494 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2495 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2496 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2497 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2498 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2499 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2500 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2501 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2502 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2504 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2505 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2506 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2507 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2509 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2510 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2511 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2514 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2516 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2517 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2518 shared across multiple host platforms.
2520 * longjmp() handling
2522 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2523 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2524 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2525 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2529 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2530 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2535 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2536 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2537 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2539 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2541 * New machines supported (host and target)
2543 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2545 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2546 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2548 * New machines supported (target)
2550 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2554 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2555 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2556 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2558 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2559 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2560 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2561 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2562 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2565 * New features for SVR4
2567 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2568 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2569 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2571 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2572 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2573 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2575 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2578 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2580 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2581 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2582 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2583 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2584 same code linked statically.
2588 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2589 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2590 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2591 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2592 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2593 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2597 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2598 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2599 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2602 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2604 * New machines supported (host and target)
2606 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2607 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2608 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2610 * Almost SCO Unix support
2612 We had hoped to support:
2613 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2614 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2615 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2616 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2618 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2620 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2621 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2622 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2628 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2629 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2630 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2634 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2635 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2636 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2638 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2640 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2641 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2642 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2644 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2645 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2646 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2647 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2650 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2651 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2652 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2653 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2656 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2657 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2660 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2661 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2662 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2665 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2667 * Improved configuration
2669 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2670 Porting BFD is simpler.
2674 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2675 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2676 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2677 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2681 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2683 * New host supported (not target)
2685 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2688 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2690 * Multiple source language support
2692 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2693 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2694 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2695 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2696 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2697 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2701 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2702 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2703 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2704 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2706 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2707 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2708 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2710 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2711 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2715 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2716 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2717 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2718 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2721 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2723 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2724 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2725 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2726 examining core files.
2730 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2733 * New machines supported (host and target)
2735 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2736 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2737 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2739 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2741 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2743 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2745 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2746 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2747 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2749 * New remote interfaces
2755 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2759 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2761 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2762 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2763 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2764 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2765 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2766 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2767 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2768 stub on the target system.
2770 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2772 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2773 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2774 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2776 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2777 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2780 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2782 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2783 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2785 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2786 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2787 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2789 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2790 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2791 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2792 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2794 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2795 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2796 it is already running. Default is ON.
2798 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2799 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2800 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2801 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2804 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2805 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2806 or the value of the environment variable
2809 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2810 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2813 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2814 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2815 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2817 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2818 history expansion will be performed on
2819 command line input. The default is OFF.
2821 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2822 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2823 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2825 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2826 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2827 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2830 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2831 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2832 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2835 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2836 ``set width'' instead.
2838 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2839 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2840 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2841 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2843 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2846 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2849 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2852 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2855 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2857 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2858 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2859 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2863 * Support for Shared Libraries
2865 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2866 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2867 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2868 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2869 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2870 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2871 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2872 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2874 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2875 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2876 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2878 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2883 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2884 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2885 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2886 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2887 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2888 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2890 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2892 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2894 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2895 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2896 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2899 * C++ multiple inheritance
2901 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2904 * C++ exception handling
2906 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2907 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2908 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2911 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2912 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2913 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2915 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2916 current stack frame.
2919 * Minor command changes
2921 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2922 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2923 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2925 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2926 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2927 frames without printing.
2929 * New directory command
2931 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2932 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2933 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2934 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2935 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2937 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2939 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2942 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2943 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2944 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2945 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / binutils.git / blob