1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 10
6 * Building GDB now requires GMP (The GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic
11 ** '-break-insert --qualified' and '-dprintf-insert --qualified'
13 The MI -break-insert and -dprintf-insert commands now support a
14 new "--qualified" option that makes GDB interpret a specified
15 function name as a complete fully-qualified name. This is the
16 equivalent of the CLI's "break -qualified" and "dprintf
19 * GDB now supports core file debugging for x86_64 Cygwin programs.
21 * GDB will now look for the .gdbinit file in a config directory before
22 looking for ~/.gdbinit. The file is searched for in the following
23 locations: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gdb/gdbinit, $HOME/.config/gdb/gdbinit,
24 $HOME/.gdbinit. On Apple hosts the search order is instead:
25 $HOME/Library/Preferences/gdb/gdbinit, $HOME/.gdbinit.
27 * GDB now supports fixed point types which are described in DWARF
28 as base types with a fixed-point encoding. Additionally, support
29 for the DW_AT_GNU_numerator and DW_AT_GNU_denominator has also
32 For Ada, this allows support for fixed point types without requiring
33 the use of the GNAT encoding (based on information added to the type's
34 name following a GNAT-specific format).
40 Control the display of debug output about GDB's event loop.
44 break [PROBE_MODIFIER] [LOCATION] [thread THREADNUM]
45 [-force-condition] [if CONDITION]
46 This command would previously refuse setting a breakpoint if the
47 CONDITION expression is invalid at a location. It now accepts and
48 defines the breakpoint if there is at least one location at which
49 the CONDITION is valid. The locations for which the CONDITION is
50 invalid, are automatically disabled. If CONDITION is invalid at all
51 of the locations, setting the breakpoint is still rejected. However,
52 the '-force-condition' flag can be used in this case for forcing GDB to
53 define the breakpoint, making all the current locations automatically
54 disabled. This may be useful if the user knows the condition will
55 become meaningful at a future location, e.g. due to a shared library
58 condition [-force] N COND
59 The behavior of this command is changed the same way for the 'break'
60 command as explained above. The '-force' flag can be used to force
61 GDB into defining the condition even when COND is invalid for all the
62 current locations of breakpoint N.
66 * There are new feature names for ARC targets: "org.gnu.gdb.arc.core"
67 and "org.gnu.gdb.arc.aux". The old names are still supported but
68 must be considered obsolete. They will be deprecated after some
71 * Help and apropos commands will now show the documentation of a
72 command only once, even if that command has one or more aliases.
73 These commands now show the command name, then all of its aliases,
74 and finally the description of the command.
76 * 'help aliases' now shows only the user defined aliases. GDB predefined
77 aliases are shown together with their aliased command.
79 * GDB now supports debuginfod, an HTTP server for distributing ELF/DWARF
80 debugging information as well as source code.
82 When built with debuginfod, GDB can automatically query debuginfod
83 servers for the separate debug files and source code of the executable
86 To build GDB with debuginfod, pass --with-debuginfod to configure (this
87 requires libdebuginfod, the debuginfod client library).
89 debuginfod is distributed with elfutils, starting with version 0.178.
91 You can get the latest version from https://sourceware.org/elfutils.
93 * Multi-target debugging support
95 GDB now supports debugging multiple target connections
96 simultaneously. For example, you can now have each inferior
97 connected to different remote servers running in different machines,
98 or have one inferior debugging a local native process, an inferior
99 debugging a core dump, etc.
101 This support is experimental and comes with some limitations -- you
102 can only resume multiple targets simultaneously if all targets
103 support non-stop mode, and all remote stubs or servers must support
104 the same set of remote protocol features exactly. See also "info
105 connections" and "add-inferior -no-connection" below, and "maint set
106 target-non-stop" in the user manual.
108 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
110 ** GDBserver is now supported on ARC GNU/Linux.
112 ** GDBserver is now supported on RISC-V GNU/Linux.
114 ** GDBserver no longer supports these host triplets:
125 i[34567]86-*-mingw32ce*
127 * Debugging MS-Windows processes now sets $_exitsignal when the
128 inferior is terminated by a signal, instead of setting $_exitcode.
130 * Multithreaded symbol loading has now been enabled by default on systems
131 that support it (see entry for GDB 9, below), providing faster
132 performance for programs with many symbols.
134 * The $_siginfo convenience variable now also works on Windows targets,
135 and will display the EXCEPTION_RECORD of the last handled exception.
137 * TUI windows can now be arranged horizontally.
139 * The command history filename can now be set to the empty string
140 either using 'set history filename' or by setting 'GDBHISTFILE=' in
141 the environment. The effect of setting this filename to the empty
142 string is that GDB will not try to load any previous command
145 * On Windows targets, it is now possible to debug 32-bit programs with a
150 set exec-file-mismatch -- Set exec-file-mismatch handling (ask|warn|off).
151 show exec-file-mismatch -- Show exec-file-mismatch handling (ask|warn|off).
152 Set or show the option 'exec-file-mismatch'. When GDB attaches to a
153 running process, this new option indicates whether to detect
154 a mismatch between the current executable file loaded by GDB and the
155 executable file used to start the process. If 'ask', the default,
156 display a warning and ask the user whether to load the process
157 executable file; if 'warn', just display a warning; if 'off', don't
158 attempt to detect a mismatch.
160 tui new-layout NAME WINDOW WEIGHT [WINDOW WEIGHT]...
161 Define a new TUI layout, specifying its name and the windows that
164 maintenance print xml-tdesc [FILE]
165 Prints the current target description as an XML document. If the
166 optional FILE is provided (which is an XML target description) then
167 the target description is read from FILE into GDB, and then
170 maintenance print core-file-backed-mappings
171 Prints file-backed mappings loaded from a core file's note section.
172 Output is expected to be similar to that of "info proc mappings".
174 set debug fortran-array-slicing on|off
175 show debug fortran-array-slicing
176 Print debugging when taking slices of Fortran arrays.
178 set fortran repack-array-slices on|off
179 show fortran repack-array-slices
180 When taking slices from Fortran arrays and strings, if the slice is
181 non-contiguous within the original value then, when this option is
182 on, the new value will be repacked into a single contiguous value.
183 When this option is off, then the value returned will consist of a
184 descriptor that describes the slice within the memory of the
185 original parent value.
189 alias [-a] [--] ALIAS = COMMAND [DEFAULT-ARGS...]
190 The alias command can now specify default args for an alias.
191 GDB automatically prepends the alias default args to the argument list
192 provided explicitly by the user.
193 For example, to have a backtrace with full details, you can define
195 'alias bt_ALL = backtrace -entry-values both -frame-arg all
196 -past-main -past-entry -full'.
197 Alias default arguments can also use a set of nested 'with' commands,
198 e.g. 'alias pp10 = with print pretty -- with print elem 10 -- print'
199 defines the alias pp10 that will pretty print a maximum of 10 elements
200 of the given expression (if the expression is an array).
204 GNU/Linux/RISC-V (gdbserver) riscv*-*-linux*
209 ** gdb.register_window_type can be used to implement new TUI windows
212 ** Dynamic types can now be queried. gdb.Type has a new attribute,
213 "dynamic", and gdb.Type.sizeof can be None for a dynamic type. A
214 field of a dynamic type may have None for its "bitpos" attribute
217 ** Commands written in Python can be in the "TUI" help class by
218 registering with the new constant gdb.COMMAND_TUI.
220 ** New method gdb.PendingFrame.architecture () to retrieve the
221 architecture of the pending frame.
223 ** New gdb.Architecture.registers method that returns a
224 gdb.RegisterDescriptorIterator object, an iterator that returns
225 gdb.RegisterDescriptor objects. The new RegisterDescriptor is a
226 way to query the registers available for an architecture.
228 ** New gdb.Architecture.register_groups method that returns a
229 gdb.RegisterGroupIterator object, an iterator that returns
230 gdb.RegisterGroup objects. The new RegisterGroup is a way to
231 discover the available register groups.
235 ** GDB can now be built with GNU Guile 3.0 and 2.2 in addition to 2.0.
237 ** Procedures 'memory-port-read-buffer-size',
238 'set-memory-port-read-buffer-size!', 'memory-port-write-buffer-size',
239 and 'set-memory-port-write-buffer-size!' are deprecated. When
240 using Guile 2.2 and later, users who need to control the size of
241 a memory port's internal buffer can use the 'setvbuf' procedure.
245 * 'thread-exited' event is now available in the annotations interface.
247 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
248 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
249 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
250 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
251 such as in system-wide init files.
253 * New built-in convenience functions $_gdb_setting, $_gdb_setting_str,
254 $_gdb_maint_setting and $_gdb_maint_setting_str provide access to values
255 of the GDB settings and the GDB maintenance settings. They are handy
256 for changing the logic of user defined commands depending on the
257 current GDB settings.
259 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
260 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
261 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
262 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
264 * Support for Pointer Authentication (PAC) on AArch64 Linux. Return
265 addresses that required unmasking are shown in the backtrace with the
268 * Two new convenience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
269 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
271 * New built-in convenience variables $_shell_exitcode and $_shell_exitsignal
272 provide the exitcode or exit status of the shell commands launched by
273 GDB commands such as "shell", "pipe" and "make".
275 * The command define-prefix can now define user defined prefix commands.
276 User defined commands can now be defined using these user defined prefix
279 * Command names can now use the . character.
281 * The RX port now supports XML target descriptions.
283 * GDB now shows the Ada task names at more places, e.g. in task switching
286 * GDB can now be compiled with Python 3 on Windows.
288 * New convenience variable $_ada_exception holds the address of the
289 Ada exception being thrown. This is set by Ada-related catchpoints.
291 * GDB can now place breakpoints on nested functions and subroutines in
292 Fortran code. The '::' operator can be used between parent and
293 child scopes when placing breakpoints, for example:
295 (gdb) break outer_function::inner_function
297 The 'outer_function::' prefix is only needed if 'inner_function' is
298 not visible in the current scope.
300 * In addition to the system-wide gdbinit file, if configured with
301 --with-system-gdbinit-dir, GDB will now also load files in that directory
302 as system gdbinit files, unless the -nx or -n flag is provided. Files
303 with extensions .gdb, .py and .scm are supported as long as GDB was
304 compiled with support for that language.
306 * GDB now supports multithreaded symbol loading for higher performance.
307 This feature is still in testing, so it is disabled by default. You
308 can turn it on using 'maint set worker-threads unlimited'.
312 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
313 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
314 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
315 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
316 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
318 ** gdb.Type has a new property 'objfile' which returns the objfile the
321 ** The frame information printed by the python frame filtering code
322 is now consistent with what the 'backtrace' command prints when
323 there are no filters, or when the 'backtrace' '-no-filters' option
326 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbol can be used to look up
327 symbols with static linkage.
329 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbols can be used to look up
330 all static symbols with static linkage.
332 ** gdb.Objfile has new methods 'lookup_global_symbol' and
333 'lookup_static_symbol' to lookup a symbol from this objfile only.
335 ** gdb.Block now supports the dictionary syntax for accessing symbols in
336 this block (e.g. block['local_variable']).
340 | [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
341 | -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
342 pipe [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
343 pipe -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
344 Executes COMMAND and sends its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
345 With no COMMAND, repeat the last executed command
346 and send its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
348 define-prefix COMMAND
349 Define or mark a command as a user-defined prefix command.
351 with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
352 w SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
353 Temporarily set SETTING, run COMMAND, and restore SETTING.
354 Usage: with SETTING -- COMMAND
355 With no COMMAND, repeats the last executed command.
356 SETTING is any GDB setting you can change with the "set"
357 subcommands. For example, 'with language c -- print someobj'
358 temporarily switches to the C language in order to print someobj.
359 Settings can be combined: 'w lang c -- w print elements unlimited --
360 usercmd' switches to the C language and runs usercmd with no limit
361 of array elements to print.
363 maint with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
364 Like "with", but works with "maintenance set" settings.
366 set may-call-functions [on|off]
367 show may-call-functions
368 This controls whether GDB will attempt to call functions in
369 the program, such as with expressions in the print command. It
370 defaults to on. Calling functions in the program being debugged
371 can have undesired side effects. It is now possible to forbid
372 such function calls. If function calls are forbidden, GDB will throw
373 an error when a command (such as print expression) calls a function
376 set print finish [on|off]
378 This controls whether the `finish' command will display the value
379 that is returned by the current function. When `off', the value is
380 still entered into the value history, but it is not printed. The
385 Allows deeply nested structures to be simplified when printing by
386 replacing deeply nested parts (beyond the max-depth) with ellipses.
387 The default max-depth is 20, but this can be set to unlimited to get
388 the old behavior back.
390 set print raw-values [on|off]
391 show print raw-values
392 By default, GDB applies the enabled pretty printers when printing a
393 value. This allows to ignore the enabled pretty printers for a series
394 of commands. The default is 'off'.
396 set logging debugredirect [on|off]
397 By default, GDB debug output will go to both the terminal and the logfile.
398 Set if you want debug output to go only to the log file.
400 set style title foreground COLOR
401 set style title background COLOR
402 set style title intensity VALUE
403 Control the styling of titles.
405 set style highlight foreground COLOR
406 set style highlight background COLOR
407 set style highlight intensity VALUE
408 Control the styling of highlightings.
410 maint set worker-threads
411 maint show worker-threads
412 Control the number of worker threads that can be used by GDB. The
413 default is 0. "unlimited" lets GDB choose a number that is
414 reasonable. Currently worker threads are only used when demangling
415 the names of linker symbols.
417 set style tui-border foreground COLOR
418 set style tui-border background COLOR
419 Control the styling of TUI borders.
421 set style tui-active-border foreground COLOR
422 set style tui-active-border background COLOR
423 Control the styling of the active TUI border.
425 maint set test-settings KIND
426 maint show test-settings KIND
427 A set of commands used by the testsuite for exercising the settings
430 maint set tui-resize-message [on|off]
431 maint show tui-resize-message
432 Control whether GDB prints a message each time the terminal is
433 resized when in TUI mode. This is primarily useful for testing the
436 set print frame-info [short-location|location|location-and-address
437 |source-and-location|source-line|auto]
438 show print frame-info
439 This controls what frame information is printed by the commands printing
440 a frame. This setting will e.g. influence the behaviour of 'backtrace',
441 'frame', 'stepi'. The python frame filtering also respect this setting.
442 The 'backtrace' '-frame-info' option can override this global setting.
444 set tui compact-source
445 show tui compact-source
447 Enable the "compact" display mode for the TUI source window. The
448 compact display uses only as much space as is needed for the line
449 numbers in the current file, and only a single space to separate the
450 line numbers from the source.
452 info modules [-q] [REGEXP]
453 Return a list of Fortran modules matching REGEXP, or all modules if
456 info module functions [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
457 Return a list of functions within all modules, grouped by module.
458 The list of functions can be restricted with the optional regular
459 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
460 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the function type signature, and REGEXP
461 matches against the function name.
463 info module variables [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
464 Return a list of variables within all modules, grouped by module.
465 The list of variables can be restricted with the optional regular
466 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
467 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the variable type, and REGEXP matches
468 against the variable name.
470 set debug remote-packet-max-chars
471 show debug remote-packet-max-chars
472 Controls the number of characters to output in a remote packet when using
474 The default is 512 bytes.
477 Lists the target connections currently in use.
482 The "help" command uses the title style to enhance the
483 readibility of its output by styling the classes and
487 Similarly to "help", the "apropos" command also uses the
488 title style for the command names. "apropos" accepts now
489 a flag "-v" (verbose) to show the full documentation
490 of matching commands and to use the highlight style to mark
491 the documentation parts matching REGEXP.
495 The GDB printf and eval commands can now print C-style and Ada-style
496 string convenience variables without calling functions in the program.
497 This allows to do formatted printing of strings without having
498 a running inferior, or when debugging a core dump.
500 info sources [-dirname | -basename] [--] [REGEXP]
501 This command has now optional arguments to only print the files
502 whose names match REGEXP. The arguments -dirname and -basename
503 allow to restrict matching respectively to the dirname and basename
507 The "show style" and its subcommands are now styling
508 a style name in their output using its own style, to help
509 the user visualize the different styles.
511 set print frame-arguments
512 The new value 'presence' indicates to only indicate the presence of
513 arguments using ..., instead of printing argument names and values.
515 set print raw-frame-arguments
516 show print raw-frame-arguments
518 These commands replace the similarly-named "set/show print raw
519 frame-arguments" commands (now with a dash instead of a space). The
520 old commands are now deprecated and may be removed in a future
523 add-inferior [-no-connection]
524 The add-inferior command now supports a "-no-connection" flag that
525 makes the new inferior start with no target connection associated.
526 By default, the new inferior inherits the target connection of the
527 current inferior. See also "info connections".
530 This command's output now includes a new "Connection" column
531 indicating which target connection an inferior is bound to. See
532 "info connections" above.
534 maint test-options require-delimiter
535 maint test-options unknown-is-error
536 maint test-options unknown-is-operand
537 maint show test-options-completion-result
538 Commands used by the testsuite to validate the command options
541 focus, winheight, +, -, >, <
542 These commands are now case-sensitive.
544 * New command options, command completion
546 GDB now has a standard infrastructure to support dash-style command
547 options ('-OPT'). One benefit is that commands that use it can
548 easily support completion of command line arguments. Try "CMD
549 -[TAB]" or "help CMD" to find options supported by a command. Over
550 time, we intend to migrate most commands to this infrastructure. A
551 number of commands got support for new command options in this
554 ** The "print" and "compile print" commands now support a number of
555 options that allow overriding relevant global print settings as
556 set by "set print" subcommands:
560 -array-indexes [on|off]
561 -elements NUMBER|unlimited
566 -repeats NUMBER|unlimited
567 -static-members [on|off]
572 Note that because the "print"/"compile print" commands accept
573 arbitrary expressions which may look like options (including
574 abbreviations), if you specify any command option, then you must
575 use a double dash ("--") to mark the end of argument processing.
577 ** The "backtrace" command now supports a number of options that
578 allow overriding relevant global print settings as set by "set
579 backtrace" and "set print" subcommands:
581 -entry-values no|only|preferred|if-needed|both|compact|default
582 -frame-arguments all|scalars|none
583 -raw-frame-arguments [on|off]
584 -frame-info auto|source-line|location|source-and-location
585 |location-and-address|short-location
589 In addition, the full/no-filters/hide qualifiers are now also
590 exposed as command options too:
596 ** The "frame apply", "tfaas" and "faas" commands similarly now
597 support the following options:
602 ** The new "info sources" options -dirname and -basename options
603 are using the standard '-OPT' infrastructure.
605 All options above can also be abbreviated. The argument of boolean
606 (on/off) options can be 0/1 too, and also the argument is assumed
607 "on" if omitted. This allows writing compact command invocations,
610 (gdb) p -ra -p -o 0 -- *myptr
612 The above is equivalent to:
614 (gdb) print -raw-values -pretty -object off -- *myptr
616 ** The "info types" command now supports the '-q' flag to disable
617 printing of some header information in a similar fashion to "info
618 variables" and "info functions".
620 ** The "info variables", "info functions", and "whereis" commands
621 now take a '-n' flag that excludes non-debug symbols (symbols
622 from the symbol table, not from the debug info such as DWARF)
625 * Completion improvements
627 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "thread apply all" and
628 "taas" commands, and their "-ascending" option can now be
631 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "info threads", "info
632 functions", "info variables", "info locals", and "info args"
635 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "compile file" and
636 "compile code" commands. The "compile file" command now
637 completes on filenames.
639 ** GDB can now complete the backtrace command's
640 "full/no-filters/hide" qualifiers.
642 * In settings, you can now abbreviate "unlimited".
644 E.g., "set print elements u" is now equivalent to "set print
650 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
651 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by MI
652 frontends in cases when separate CLI and MI channels cannot be used.
654 -catch-throw, -catch-rethrow, and -catch-catch
655 These can be used to catch C++ exceptions in a similar fashion to
656 the CLI commands 'catch throw', 'catch rethrow', and 'catch catch'.
658 -symbol-info-functions, -symbol-info-types, and -symbol-info-variables
659 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
660 functions', 'info types', and 'info variables' respectively.
662 -symbol-info-modules, this is the MI equivalent of the CLI 'info
665 -symbol-info-module-functions and -symbol-info-module-variables.
666 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
667 module functions' and 'info module variables'.
671 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
673 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
674 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
675 the following commands and events:
679 - =breakpoint-created
680 - =breakpoint-modified
682 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
683 this behavior with previous MI versions.
685 ** Backtraces and frames include a new optional field addr_flags which is
686 given after the addr field. On AArch64 this contains PAC if the address
687 has been masked in the frame. On all other targets the field is not
692 The testsuite now creates the files gdb.cmd (containing the arguments
693 used to launch GDB) and gdb.in (containing all the commands sent to
694 GDB) in the output directory for each test script. Multiple invocations
695 are appended with .1, .2, .3 etc.
697 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.82.
699 Using another implementation of the make program or an earlier version of
700 GNU make to build GDB or GDBserver is not supported.
702 * Building GDB now requires GNU readline >= 7.0.
704 GDB now bundles GNU readline 8.0, but if you choose to use
705 --with-system-readline, only readline >= 7.0 can be used.
707 * The TUI SingleKey keymap is now named "SingleKey". This can be used
708 from .inputrc to bind keys in this keymap. This feature is only
709 available when gdb is built against GNU readline 8.0 or later.
711 * Removed targets and native configurations
713 GDB no longer supports debugging the Cell Broadband Engine. This includes
714 both debugging standalone Cell/B.E. SPU applications and integrated debugging
715 of Cell/B.E. applications that use both the PPU and SPU architectures.
721 * Removed targets and native configurations
723 Solaris 10 i?86-*-solaris2.10, x86_64-*-solaris2.10,
726 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
728 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
729 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
732 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
733 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
734 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
737 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
740 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
741 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
742 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
744 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
745 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
747 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
748 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
749 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
750 in the GDB user manual.
752 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
755 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
757 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
758 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
759 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
760 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
761 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
762 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
763 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
764 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
765 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
766 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
767 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
768 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
770 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
771 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
772 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
775 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
780 set debug compile-cplus-types
781 show debug compile-cplus-types
782 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
783 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiling
788 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
791 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
792 Apply a command to some frames.
793 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
794 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
797 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
798 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
801 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
802 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
805 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
807 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
809 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
810 maint show dwarf unwinders
811 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
814 Display a list of open files for a process.
818 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
819 These commands all now take a frame specification which
820 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
821 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
822 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
823 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
824 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
826 target remote FILENAME
827 target extended-remote FILENAME
828 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
829 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
831 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
832 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
833 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
834 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
835 These commands can now print only the searched entities
836 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
837 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
838 printing headers or informations messages.
844 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
845 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
846 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
849 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
850 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
851 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
852 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
854 set tui tab-width NCHARS
855 show tui tab-width NCHARS
856 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
858 set style enabled [on|off]
860 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
861 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
863 set style sources [on|off]
865 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
866 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
867 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
869 set style filename foreground COLOR
870 set style filename background COLOR
871 set style filename intensity VALUE
872 Control the styling of file names.
874 set style function foreground COLOR
875 set style function background COLOR
876 set style function intensity VALUE
877 Control the styling of function names.
879 set style variable foreground COLOR
880 set style variable background COLOR
881 set style variable intensity VALUE
882 Control the styling of variable names.
884 set style address foreground COLOR
885 set style address background COLOR
886 set style address intensity VALUE
887 Control the styling of addresses.
891 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
892 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
893 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
894 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
895 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
897 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
898 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
900 * New native configurations
902 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
903 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
907 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
909 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
910 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
912 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
916 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
921 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
923 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
924 space associated to that inferior.
926 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
927 of objfiles associated to that program space.
929 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
930 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
933 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
934 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
935 correct and did not work properly.
937 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
938 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
944 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
945 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
946 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
947 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
948 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
950 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
952 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
955 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
956 offset to all sections.
958 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
959 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
960 address of individual sections using '-s'.
962 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
963 (address of the text section).
965 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
966 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
967 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
968 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
971 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
972 for the rest of the current command.
974 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
975 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
977 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
978 files created on FreeBSD systems.
980 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
983 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
984 the vector length while the process is running.
990 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
992 set|show varsize-limit
993 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
994 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
995 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
997 set|show record btrace cpu
998 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
1001 maint check libthread-db
1002 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
1005 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
1006 maint show check-libthread-db
1007 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
1008 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
1009 perform such checks.
1013 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
1015 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
1016 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
1018 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
1020 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
1021 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
1022 of convenience variables.
1024 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
1025 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
1026 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
1030 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
1032 * Removed targets and native configurations
1034 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
1035 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
1036 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
1037 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
1039 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
1041 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
1042 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
1043 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
1044 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
1045 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
1046 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
1051 --enable-codesign=CERT
1052 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
1053 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
1054 gdb to work properly.
1056 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
1057 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
1059 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
1061 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
1062 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
1063 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
1065 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
1066 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
1068 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
1069 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
1070 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
1071 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
1072 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
1074 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
1075 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
1076 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
1077 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
1079 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
1080 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
1082 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
1083 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
1084 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
1086 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
1087 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
1088 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
1090 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
1091 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
1092 environment" command.
1094 * Completion improvements
1096 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
1097 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
1098 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
1099 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
1102 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
1103 (gdb) b function(int)
1105 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
1106 C++ anonymous namespaces:
1109 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
1110 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
1111 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
1113 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
1114 completion support, that better understands what you're
1115 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
1116 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
1117 setting a breakpoint.
1119 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
1121 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
1123 * New command line options (gcore)
1126 Dump all memory mappings.
1128 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
1130 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
1131 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
1132 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
1134 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
1139 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
1142 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
1143 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
1144 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
1145 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
1146 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
1147 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
1148 a breakpoint from Python.
1150 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
1152 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
1153 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
1154 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
1156 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
1158 function[abi:cxx11](int)
1161 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
1164 (gdb) b function(int)
1166 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
1168 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
1170 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
1174 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
1175 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
1176 description of these.
1178 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
1179 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
1180 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
1182 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
1183 manual for a further description of this feature.
1186 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1188 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
1189 specified initial working directory.
1191 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
1192 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
1194 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
1195 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
1197 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
1198 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
1200 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
1201 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
1202 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
1203 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
1204 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
1206 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
1207 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
1208 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
1210 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
1211 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
1212 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
1213 in the *stopped notification.
1215 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
1216 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
1218 * New remote packets
1220 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
1221 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
1222 the inferior when starting it.
1225 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
1226 before starting the remote inferior.
1229 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
1230 user-set environment variables should be unset).
1233 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
1236 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
1239 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
1240 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
1242 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
1243 filter the tests to be run.
1245 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
1246 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
1251 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
1253 set|show compile-gcc
1254 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
1255 with the 'compile' commands.
1257 set debug separate-debug-file
1258 show debug separate-debug-file
1259 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
1261 set dump-excluded-mappings
1262 show dump-excluded-mappings
1263 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
1264 dumped when generating a core file.
1266 maint info selftests
1267 List the registered selftests.
1270 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
1273 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
1275 set|show print type nested-type-limit
1276 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
1277 type printer will show.
1279 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
1282 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
1284 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
1287 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
1288 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
1289 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
1290 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
1292 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
1293 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
1294 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
1295 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
1296 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
1297 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
1299 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
1300 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
1301 unless you tell it the variable's type:
1304 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
1308 * New native configurations
1310 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
1311 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
1315 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
1316 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
1317 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
1319 * Removed targets and native configurations
1321 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
1323 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
1325 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
1326 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
1327 available in future Intel CPUs.
1329 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
1333 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
1334 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
1336 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
1339 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
1341 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
1343 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
1344 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
1347 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
1349 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
1350 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
1352 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
1354 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
1355 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
1356 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
1357 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
1360 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
1362 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
1363 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
1366 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
1368 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
1369 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
1371 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
1373 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
1378 eval "print $arg%d", $i
1383 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
1385 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
1386 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
1388 * New native configurations
1390 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1394 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
1395 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1397 * Removed targets and native configurations
1399 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1400 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
1405 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
1407 maint print arc arc-instruction address
1408 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
1412 set disassembler-options
1413 show disassembler-options
1414 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
1415 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
1416 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
1417 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
1418 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
1423 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
1424 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
1426 -file-list-shared-libraries
1427 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
1428 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
1431 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
1432 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
1434 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
1436 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
1438 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
1439 default. One must now explicitly configure with
1440 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
1441 option will be removed in a future release.
1443 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
1446 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
1447 memory backward from the given address. For example:
1450 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
1451 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
1452 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
1453 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
1454 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
1455 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
1456 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
1457 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
1458 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
1460 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
1461 arrays of dynamic types.
1463 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
1464 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1465 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1466 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1467 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1468 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
1470 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
1473 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
1474 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
1475 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
1477 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
1479 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
1480 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
1481 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
1482 signal received and code location.
1486 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
1487 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
1488 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
1489 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
1491 * Rust language support.
1492 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
1493 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
1496 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
1498 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
1499 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
1500 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
1501 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
1502 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
1503 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
1504 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
1505 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
1506 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
1507 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
1510 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
1512 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
1513 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
1518 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
1519 skip -function function
1520 skip -rfunction regular-expression
1521 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
1522 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
1523 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
1525 maint info line-table REGEXP
1526 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data structure.
1529 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
1532 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
1533 using the TTY file for input/output.
1537 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
1538 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
1539 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
1540 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
1541 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
1543 signal-event EVENTID
1544 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
1545 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
1546 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
1547 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
1548 signalling an event.
1550 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
1551 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
1552 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
1554 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
1557 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
1558 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
1559 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
1560 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
1561 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
1562 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
1564 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
1565 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
1566 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
1567 bytecode into native code.
1569 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
1570 recording. For example:
1572 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
1574 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
1576 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
1580 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
1582 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
1584 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
1586 * Per-inferior thread numbers
1588 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
1589 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
1590 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
1594 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
1595 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
1596 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
1597 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
1599 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
1600 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
1601 are no longer unique between inferiors.
1603 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
1604 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
1605 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
1607 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
1610 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
1611 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
1614 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
1617 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
1618 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
1619 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
1620 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
1623 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
1626 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
1629 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
1632 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
1633 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
1636 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
1637 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
1639 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
1641 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
1643 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
1644 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
1646 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
1647 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
1650 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1651 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
1654 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
1655 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
1658 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1660 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
1661 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
1662 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
1664 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
1665 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
1669 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
1670 maint show target-non-stop
1671 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
1672 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
1673 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
1675 maint set bfd-sharing
1676 maint show bfd-sharing
1677 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
1680 show debug bfd-cache
1681 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
1685 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
1687 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1688 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1689 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
1691 set remote thread-events
1692 show remote thread-events
1693 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
1695 set ada print-signatures on|off
1696 show ada print-signatures"
1697 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
1698 selection menus. It is activated (@code{on}) by default.
1702 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
1703 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
1704 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1706 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1707 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1708 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1709 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1710 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1711 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1713 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1714 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1716 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1717 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1719 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1721 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1722 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1723 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1724 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1725 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1726 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1728 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1729 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1732 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1734 * New remote packets
1737 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1739 exec-events feature in qSupported
1740 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1741 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1742 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1743 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1746 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1749 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1750 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1752 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1753 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1756 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1757 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1758 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1759 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1760 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1761 stop for that same thread.
1764 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1765 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1766 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1769 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1770 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1772 syscall_entry stop reason
1773 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1775 syscall_return stop reason
1776 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
1778 * Extended-remote exec events
1780 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
1781 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
1782 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
1784 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
1785 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
1786 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
1788 * Thread names in remote protocol
1790 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
1793 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
1795 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
1796 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
1797 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
1798 fork and exec catchpoints.
1800 * Remote syscall events
1802 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
1803 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
1805 set remote catch-syscall-packet
1806 show remote catch-syscall-packet
1807 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
1811 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
1812 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
1817 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
1818 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
1819 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
1820 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
1821 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
1822 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
1824 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
1826 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
1827 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
1828 including advance SIMD instructions.
1830 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
1832 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
1833 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
1834 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
1835 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
1836 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
1837 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
1838 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
1840 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1842 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
1844 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
1845 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
1848 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
1849 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
1850 and may include things like its command line arguments.
1852 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
1853 is now available on all platforms.
1855 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
1856 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
1857 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
1858 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
1859 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
1860 backward compatibility.
1862 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
1863 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
1864 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
1865 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
1867 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
1868 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
1869 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
1870 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
1873 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
1875 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
1877 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
1878 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
1879 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
1880 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
1881 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
1882 See "New remote packets" below.
1884 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
1885 available register groups, including target specific groups.
1887 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
1888 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
1889 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
1890 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
1895 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
1899 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
1900 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
1901 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
1902 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
1903 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
1904 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
1905 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
1906 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
1907 "const" version of the value respectively.
1911 maint print symbol-cache
1912 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
1914 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
1915 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
1917 maint flush-symbol-cache
1918 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
1922 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
1925 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
1929 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
1932 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
1933 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
1937 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
1940 Print information about branch tracing internals.
1942 maint btrace packet-history
1943 Print the raw branch tracing data.
1945 maint btrace clear-packet-history
1946 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
1949 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
1950 anew by the next "record" command.
1955 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
1956 show debug dwarf-die
1957 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
1959 set debug dwarf-read
1960 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
1961 show debug dwarf-read
1962 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
1964 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
1965 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1966 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
1967 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1969 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
1970 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1971 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
1972 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1974 set debug dwarf-line
1975 show debug dwarf-line
1976 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
1979 show max-completions
1980 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
1981 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
1982 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
1983 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
1985 set history remove-duplicates
1986 show history remove-duplicates
1987 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
1989 maint set symbol-cache-size
1990 maint show symbol-cache-size
1991 Control the size of the symbol cache.
1993 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
1994 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1996 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1997 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1999 set debug linux-namespaces
2000 show debug linux-namespaces
2001 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
2003 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
2004 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
2005 Intel Processor Trace format.
2006 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
2007 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
2009 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
2010 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
2013 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
2014 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
2016 * Python/Guile scripting
2018 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
2019 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
2021 * New remote packets
2023 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
2024 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
2026 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
2027 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
2030 Enable Intel Processor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
2031 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
2034 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
2035 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
2039 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
2040 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
2041 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
2045 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
2046 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
2049 Return information about files on the remote system.
2051 qXfer:exec-file:read
2052 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
2053 create a process running on the remote system.
2056 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
2057 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
2058 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
2059 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
2062 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
2065 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
2067 vforkdone stop reason
2068 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
2069 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
2071 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
2072 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
2073 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
2074 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
2075 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
2076 whether these features are enabled.
2078 * Extended-remote fork events
2080 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
2081 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
2082 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
2083 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
2085 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
2086 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
2087 the btrace record target.
2088 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
2090 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
2091 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
2093 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
2096 * Removed command line options
2098 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
2100 * Removed targets and native configurations
2102 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
2103 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2105 * New configure options
2108 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
2109 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
2111 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
2112 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
2113 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
2114 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
2116 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
2120 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
2122 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
2124 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
2128 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
2129 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
2130 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
2131 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
2132 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
2133 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
2134 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
2135 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
2136 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
2137 selecting a new file to debug.
2138 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
2139 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
2141 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
2144 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
2145 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
2146 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
2147 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
2149 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2151 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
2152 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
2153 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
2154 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
2156 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
2157 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
2158 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
2159 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
2160 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
2161 interface with this new feature are:
2163 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
2164 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
2168 demangle [-l language] [--] name
2169 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
2170 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
2171 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
2172 as "maint demangler-warning".
2174 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
2175 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
2177 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
2178 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
2181 maint print user-registers
2182 List all currently available "user" registers.
2184 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
2185 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
2186 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
2188 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
2189 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
2190 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
2193 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
2194 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
2195 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
2196 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
2199 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
2200 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
2201 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
2202 switched threads meanwhile.
2204 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
2206 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
2207 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
2208 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
2209 is now the default mode.
2213 set debug symbol-lookup
2214 show debug symbol-lookup
2215 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
2219 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
2220 inferiors that have exited.
2224 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
2228 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2230 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
2231 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
2232 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
2233 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
2234 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
2236 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2237 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2238 its alias "share", instead.
2240 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
2242 * New command line options
2245 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
2247 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
2248 as specified in ISO C99.
2250 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
2251 with or without disassembly.
2255 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
2256 available is determined at configure time.
2257 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
2258 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
2260 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2264 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
2268 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
2270 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
2271 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
2273 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
2274 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
2278 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
2279 show print symbol-loading
2280 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
2281 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
2282 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
2283 becomes less useful.
2285 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
2286 show guile print-stack
2287 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
2289 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
2290 show auto-load guile-scripts
2291 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
2293 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
2294 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
2295 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
2296 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
2297 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
2298 usage of this option.
2300 set auto-connect-native-target
2302 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
2303 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
2304 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
2306 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
2307 show record btrace replay-memory-access
2308 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
2310 maint set target-async (on|off)
2311 maint show target-async
2312 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
2313 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
2314 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
2315 occurring only in synchronous mode.
2317 set mi-async (on|off)
2319 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
2320 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
2322 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
2323 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
2325 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
2326 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
2327 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
2328 "set target-async on" command.
2330 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2332 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
2333 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
2334 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
2335 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
2336 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
2338 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
2339 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
2340 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
2342 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
2343 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
2344 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
2345 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
2346 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
2347 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
2348 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
2350 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
2351 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
2353 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
2354 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
2355 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
2357 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
2358 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
2359 memory or registers.
2361 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
2363 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
2364 remote. It now works with all targets.
2366 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
2367 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
2368 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
2369 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
2370 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
2371 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
2372 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
2373 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
2374 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
2377 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
2378 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
2379 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
2381 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
2383 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
2384 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
2385 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
2387 * New remote packets
2389 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
2390 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
2391 branch trace incrementally.
2395 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
2396 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
2398 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
2399 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
2400 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
2401 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
2402 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
2405 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
2407 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2408 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2409 its alias "share", instead.
2411 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
2412 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
2417 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
2418 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
2419 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
2420 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
2421 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
2422 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
2423 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
2424 commands and CLI execution commands.
2426 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
2428 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
2429 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
2430 recording has been added.
2432 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
2434 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
2435 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
2437 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
2438 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
2439 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
2440 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
2441 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
2442 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
2445 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
2447 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
2449 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
2450 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
2451 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
2452 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
2457 (gdb) info registers rax
2460 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
2461 "*value not available*".
2463 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
2468 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
2469 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
2470 ** Line tables representation has been added.
2471 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
2472 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
2473 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
2477 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
2478 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
2479 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
2481 * Removed native configurations
2483 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
2484 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
2486 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2487 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2488 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
2489 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
2490 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2491 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2492 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2496 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
2497 maint check-psymtabs
2498 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
2500 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
2501 maint expand-symtabs
2502 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
2505 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2507 maint set|show per-command
2508 maint set|show per-command space
2509 maint set|show per-command time
2510 maint set|show per-command symtab
2511 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
2513 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
2514 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
2515 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
2516 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
2517 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
2520 info exceptions REGEXP
2521 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
2522 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
2527 set debug symfile off|on
2529 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
2530 symbol tables within those files
2532 set print raw frame-arguments
2533 show print raw frame-arguments
2534 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
2535 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
2537 set remote trace-status-packet
2538 show remote trace-status-packet
2539 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
2543 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
2547 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
2549 set startup-with-shell
2550 show startup-with-shell
2551 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
2556 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
2557 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
2559 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
2560 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
2561 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
2562 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
2565 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
2566 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
2567 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
2569 * New command-line options
2571 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2573 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
2574 buffer in Common Trace Format.
2576 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
2579 * GDB now implements the C++ 'typeid' operator.
2581 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
2582 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
2584 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
2585 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
2587 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
2588 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
2589 due to an uncaught signal.
2593 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
2594 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
2595 command, which should contain "language-option".
2597 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
2598 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
2600 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
2601 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
2602 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
2603 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2604 "undefined-command-error-code".
2606 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
2609 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
2611 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
2612 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
2615 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
2616 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
2618 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
2619 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
2620 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
2622 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
2623 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
2624 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
2625 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
2626 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2627 "exec-run-start-option".
2629 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
2630 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
2632 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
2633 the new "info exceptions" command.
2635 * New system-wide configuration scripts
2636 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
2637 configuration scripts for the following systems:
2641 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
2642 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
2643 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
2646 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
2647 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
2649 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
2650 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
2651 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
2653 * New remote packets
2657 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
2658 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
2659 involvemement at each single-step.
2661 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
2662 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
2663 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
2664 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
2665 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
2666 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
2669 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2671 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
2672 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
2674 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
2675 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
2676 trace state variables.
2678 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
2681 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
2682 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
2684 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
2686 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
2687 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
2688 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
2689 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2691 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
2693 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
2694 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
2695 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
2696 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
2698 set|show record full insn-number-max
2699 set|show record full stop-at-limit
2700 set|show record full memory-query
2702 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
2703 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
2704 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
2705 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2706 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2710 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2711 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2713 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2714 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2715 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2717 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2718 instruction granularity
2720 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2721 function granularity
2723 * New native configurations
2725 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2726 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2727 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2728 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2732 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2733 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2734 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2735 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2736 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2738 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2739 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2740 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2741 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2742 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2743 --data-directory command-line option.
2745 * New command line options:
2747 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2748 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2750 * Removed command line options
2752 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2755 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2758 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2762 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2764 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2766 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2768 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2770 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2771 of architecture in the Python API.
2773 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2774 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2776 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2778 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
2779 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
2781 ** $_regex(str, regex)
2783 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
2786 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
2787 default for GCC since November 2000.
2789 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
2791 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
2792 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
2794 * New configure options
2796 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
2797 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
2798 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
2799 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
2800 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
2801 options allow the user to override that default.
2802 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
2803 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
2804 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
2806 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2809 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
2810 conditions to be attached.
2813 List the BFDs known to GDB.
2815 python-interactive [command]
2817 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
2818 and print the result of expressions.
2821 "py" is a new alias for "python".
2823 enable type-printer [name]...
2824 disable type-printer [name]...
2825 Enable or disable type printers.
2829 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
2830 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
2835 set print type methods (on|off)
2836 show print type methods
2837 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
2838 The default is to show them.
2840 set print type typedefs (on|off)
2841 show print type typedefs
2842 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
2843 The default is to show them.
2845 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
2846 show filename-display
2847 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
2848 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
2850 set trace-buffer-size
2851 show trace-buffer-size
2852 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
2854 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
2855 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
2856 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
2860 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
2863 set debug coff-pe-read
2864 show debug coff-pe-read
2865 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
2870 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
2873 set debug notification
2874 show debug notification
2875 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
2879 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
2880 "=cmd-param-changed".
2881 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
2882 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
2883 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
2884 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
2885 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
2886 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
2887 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
2888 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
2890 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
2891 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
2892 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
2893 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
2894 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
2895 library load/unload events.
2896 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
2897 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
2898 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
2899 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
2900 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
2901 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
2902 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
2903 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
2905 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
2906 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
2907 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
2908 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
2910 * New remote packets
2913 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
2914 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2917 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
2918 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
2922 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
2923 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2926 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
2927 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2929 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
2931 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
2932 for more x32 ABI info.
2934 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
2936 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
2938 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2939 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
2940 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
2941 "info os files" lists file descriptors
2942 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
2943 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
2944 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
2945 "info os msg" lists message queues
2946 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
2948 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
2949 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
2950 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
2951 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
2952 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
2953 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
2955 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
2956 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
2957 record/replay support.
2959 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
2963 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
2966 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
2968 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
2969 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
2971 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
2973 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
2974 the source at which the symbol was defined.
2976 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
2977 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
2978 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
2981 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
2982 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
2984 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
2985 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
2986 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
2988 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
2989 object associated with a PC value.
2991 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
2992 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
2994 * Go language support.
2995 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
2998 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
2999 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
3001 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
3002 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
3004 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
3005 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
3006 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
3007 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
3008 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
3011 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
3012 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
3013 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
3014 build/libcpp/expr.c.
3016 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
3017 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
3019 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
3020 since December 2007.
3022 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
3023 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
3024 command does. For instance:
3026 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
3028 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
3029 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
3030 created, using the "condition" command.
3032 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
3033 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
3035 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
3037 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
3038 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
3039 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
3040 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
3041 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
3042 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
3043 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
3044 files with older .gdb_index sections.
3046 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
3047 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
3048 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
3049 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
3050 the .gdb_index section.
3052 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
3054 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
3059 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
3061 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
3065 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
3066 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
3067 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
3069 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
3070 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
3072 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
3075 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
3076 C++ and Java objects.
3078 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
3079 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
3080 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
3081 configured with '--with-python'.
3083 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
3084 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
3085 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
3086 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
3087 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
3088 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
3089 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
3091 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
3092 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
3093 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
3094 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
3096 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
3097 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
3098 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
3099 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
3101 ** "set print symbol"
3103 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
3104 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
3105 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
3107 * Deprecated commands
3109 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
3110 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
3114 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3115 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
3117 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
3118 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
3119 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
3120 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
3125 set mips compression
3126 show mips compression
3127 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
3128 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
3131 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
3133 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
3134 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
3135 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
3136 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
3138 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
3142 Disable auto-loading globally.
3145 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
3147 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
3148 show auto-load gdb-scripts
3149 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
3151 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
3152 show auto-load python-scripts
3153 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
3155 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
3156 show auto-load local-gdbinit
3157 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
3159 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
3160 show auto-load libthread-db
3161 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
3163 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
3164 show auto-load scripts-directory
3165 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
3166 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
3167 of the directories listed by this option.
3168 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
3170 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
3171 show auto-load safe-path
3172 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
3173 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
3175 set debug auto-load on|off
3176 show debug auto-load
3177 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
3179 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
3181 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
3182 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
3183 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
3184 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
3186 set dprintf-function <expr>
3187 show dprintf-function
3188 set dprintf-channel <expr>
3189 show dprintf-channel
3190 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
3191 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
3193 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
3194 show disconnected-dprintf
3195 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
3196 after GDB disconnects.
3198 * New configure options
3200 --with-auto-load-dir
3201 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
3202 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
3203 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
3204 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
3205 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
3207 --with-auto-load-safe-path
3208 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
3209 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
3211 --without-auto-load-safe-path
3212 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
3215 * New remote packets
3217 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
3219 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
3220 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
3221 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
3222 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
3226 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
3227 program without GDB involvement.
3229 * New command line options
3231 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
3232 before loading inferior.
3233 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
3234 execute it before loading inferior.
3236 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
3238 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
3239 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
3240 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
3241 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
3244 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
3245 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
3247 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
3248 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
3249 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
3250 target hardware watchpoint.
3252 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
3253 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
3254 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
3255 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
3259 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
3260 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
3263 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
3264 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
3265 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
3266 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
3267 now "message", which just prints the error message without
3270 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3273 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
3274 modules library. This module provides functionality for
3275 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
3276 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
3277 corresponding value.
3279 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
3280 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
3281 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
3284 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
3285 static_block will return the global and static blocks
3286 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
3287 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
3289 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
3291 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
3294 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
3295 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
3296 available in the CLI.
3298 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
3299 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
3300 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
3301 "some_type.items()".
3303 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
3306 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
3307 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
3308 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
3309 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
3310 any anonymous fields.
3314 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
3317 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
3318 "=breakpoint-modified".
3320 ** New command -ada-task-info.
3322 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
3323 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
3324 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
3327 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
3328 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
3329 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
3330 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
3331 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
3333 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
3334 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
3336 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
3337 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
3338 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
3339 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
3340 use this option to specify where to find it.
3342 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3343 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
3344 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
3345 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
3346 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
3347 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3348 section in the user manual for more details.
3350 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
3351 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
3352 become available after that.
3354 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
3356 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
3357 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
3363 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
3364 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
3368 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
3369 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
3370 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
3372 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
3373 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
3374 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
3376 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
3377 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
3378 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
3379 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
3380 name starts with a hyphen.
3382 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
3383 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
3384 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
3385 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
3386 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
3387 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
3388 number of bytes that will be collected.
3391 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
3392 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
3393 setting the variable trace-notes.
3396 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
3397 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
3398 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
3401 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
3402 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
3403 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
3404 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
3405 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
3408 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
3409 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
3410 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
3414 set debug dwarf2-read
3415 show debug dwarf2-read
3416 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
3417 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
3419 set debug symtab-create
3420 show debug symtab-create
3421 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
3422 creation. The default is off.
3425 show extended-prompt
3426 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
3427 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
3428 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
3429 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
3430 prompt is displayed.
3432 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
3433 show print entry-values
3434 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
3435 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
3436 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
3438 set debug entry-values
3439 show debug entry-values
3440 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
3441 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
3443 set basenames-may-differ
3444 show basenames-may-differ
3445 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
3446 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
3447 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
3448 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
3449 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
3450 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
3451 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
3452 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
3458 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
3459 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
3460 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
3461 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
3463 set trace-stop-notes
3464 show trace-stop-notes
3465 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
3466 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
3467 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
3468 started by someone else.
3470 * New remote packets
3474 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3478 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3482 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
3486 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
3490 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
3493 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
3494 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
3498 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
3502 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3504 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
3506 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
3508 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
3510 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
3511 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
3512 matches the given regular expression.
3514 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
3516 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
3517 dumping the instruction opcodes.
3519 * New command line options
3521 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
3522 This is mostly for testing purposes.
3524 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
3525 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
3527 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
3528 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
3529 source path list instead of augmenting it.
3531 * GDB now understands thread names.
3533 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
3534 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
3536 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
3537 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
3540 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
3541 has been integrated into GDB.
3545 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
3546 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
3547 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
3549 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3550 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
3551 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
3552 and allows for more dynamic content.
3554 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
3555 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
3556 have an is_valid method.
3558 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3559 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
3560 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
3562 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
3564 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
3565 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
3566 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
3567 that function like so:
3569 result = some_value (10,20)
3571 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
3572 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
3573 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
3575 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
3576 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
3577 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
3578 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
3579 New function: register_pretty_printer.
3581 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
3582 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
3584 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
3586 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
3589 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
3590 holds the thread's name.
3592 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
3593 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
3594 occurring in the process being debugged.
3595 The following events are currently supported:
3596 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
3597 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
3598 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
3602 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
3603 instantiation. For example, if you have:
3605 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
3607 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
3608 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
3609 was added to GCC 4.5.
3611 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
3612 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
3613 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
3614 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
3615 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
3616 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
3618 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
3619 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
3620 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
3621 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
3622 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
3624 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
3625 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
3626 execution to a label.
3628 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
3629 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
3630 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
3631 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
3633 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
3634 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
3635 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
3638 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
3640 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
3641 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
3642 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
3643 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
3644 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
3645 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
3648 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
3650 While now you see this:
3653 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
3655 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
3658 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
3659 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
3660 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
3661 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
3663 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3664 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
3665 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
3666 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3667 section in the user manual for more details.
3669 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3671 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
3672 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
3674 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
3676 * New native configurations
3678 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
3682 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
3684 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
3685 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
3686 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
3687 in the GDB user manual.
3689 * Guile support was removed.
3691 * New features in the GNU simulator
3693 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
3695 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
3697 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
3699 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
3701 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
3702 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
3703 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
3704 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
3705 was always disabled for such configurations.
3709 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3711 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3712 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3722 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3723 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3724 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3726 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3728 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3729 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3730 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3731 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3733 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3734 mentioned flavors of operators.
3736 ** static const class members
3738 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3739 class definition has been fixed.
3741 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3743 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3744 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3745 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3746 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3747 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3748 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3750 * Static tracepoints
3752 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3753 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3754 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3755 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3756 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3757 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3758 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3759 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3760 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3761 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3762 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3763 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3764 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3765 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3766 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3767 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3768 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3769 the "New remote packets" section below.
3771 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3773 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3774 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3775 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3776 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
3780 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
3781 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
3782 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
3783 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
3784 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
3785 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
3786 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
3788 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
3791 * New remote packets
3795 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
3799 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
3800 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
3801 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
3802 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
3803 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
3804 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
3808 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
3812 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
3815 qXfer:statictrace:read
3817 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
3818 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
3819 to gdb's qSupported query.
3823 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
3827 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
3828 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
3830 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
3831 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
3834 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3836 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
3837 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
3838 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
3839 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
3841 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
3842 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
3843 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
3844 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
3845 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
3846 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
3847 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
3849 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
3850 for static tracepoints support.
3852 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
3854 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
3855 it understands register description.
3857 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
3859 * X86 general purpose registers
3861 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
3862 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
3863 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
3864 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
3865 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
3867 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
3868 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
3869 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
3870 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
3871 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
3872 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
3874 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
3875 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
3876 in the specified file.
3878 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
3879 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
3880 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
3881 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
3882 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
3883 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
3884 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
3885 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
3886 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
3887 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
3891 eval template, expressions...
3892 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
3893 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
3895 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
3896 show target-file-system-kind
3897 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
3900 save breakpoints <filename>
3901 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
3902 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
3903 definitions, use the `source' command.
3905 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
3908 info static-tracepoint-markers
3909 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
3911 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
3912 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
3913 function, line, address, or marker ID.
3917 Enable and disable observer mode.
3919 set may-write-registers on|off
3920 set may-write-memory on|off
3921 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
3922 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
3923 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
3924 set may-interrupt on|off
3925 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
3926 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
3927 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
3928 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
3929 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
3930 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
3931 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
3933 set record memory-query on|off
3934 show record memory-query
3935 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
3936 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
3941 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
3945 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
3946 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
3947 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
3948 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
3949 GDB using Python' in the manual.
3951 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
3952 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
3953 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
3954 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
3956 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
3957 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
3959 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
3961 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
3963 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
3965 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
3966 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
3967 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
3969 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
3970 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
3971 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
3972 regular breakpoints.
3976 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
3978 * D language support.
3979 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
3982 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
3983 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
3984 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
3985 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
3986 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
3988 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
3989 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
3990 conditions of the form:
3992 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
3994 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
3995 interface mentioned above.
3997 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
4001 ** Namespace Support
4003 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
4004 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
4005 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
4006 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
4007 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
4011 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
4012 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
4017 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
4018 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
4022 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
4027 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
4030 * Multi-program debugging.
4032 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
4033 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
4034 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
4035 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
4036 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
4037 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
4038 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
4039 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
4041 * New tracing features
4043 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
4045 ** Trace state variables
4047 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
4048 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
4049 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
4050 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
4051 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
4052 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
4053 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
4054 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
4055 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
4056 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
4060 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
4061 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
4062 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
4063 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
4064 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
4065 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
4066 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
4067 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
4068 the regular trace command.
4070 ** Disconnected tracing
4072 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
4073 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
4074 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
4075 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
4076 connection is lost unexpectedly.
4080 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
4081 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
4082 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
4083 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
4084 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
4085 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
4088 ** Circular trace buffer
4090 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
4091 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
4092 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
4093 not be available for all target agents.
4098 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
4099 the arguments to be comma-separated.
4102 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
4103 which only declare a variable are not shown.
4106 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
4107 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
4110 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
4111 "set script-extension" (see below).
4113 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4115 record save [<FILENAME>]
4116 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
4117 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
4119 record restore <FILENAME>
4120 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
4121 earlier time, for replay debugging.
4123 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
4126 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
4127 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
4128 inferior has loaded.
4133 maint info program-spaces
4134 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
4136 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
4137 show remote interrupt-sequence
4138 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
4139 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
4140 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
4141 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
4142 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
4144 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
4145 show remote interrupt-on-connect
4146 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
4147 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
4150 set remotebreak [on | off]
4152 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
4154 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
4155 Create or modify a trace state variable.
4158 List trace state variables and their values.
4160 delete tvariable $NAME ...
4161 Delete one or more trace state variables.
4164 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
4165 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
4167 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
4168 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
4170 * New expression syntax
4172 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
4173 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
4177 set follow-exec-mode new|same
4178 show follow-exec-mode
4179 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
4180 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
4181 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
4183 set default-collect EXPR, ...
4184 show default-collect
4185 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
4186 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
4187 such as registers or a critical global variable.
4189 set disconnected-tracing
4190 show disconnected-tracing
4191 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
4192 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
4195 set circular-trace-buffer
4196 show circular-trace-buffer
4197 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
4198 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
4199 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
4200 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
4202 set script-extension off|soft|strict
4203 show script-extension
4204 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
4205 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
4206 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
4207 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
4209 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
4211 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
4212 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
4213 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
4214 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
4215 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
4216 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
4217 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
4220 * Python API Improvements
4222 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
4223 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
4224 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
4226 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
4227 `is_base_class' attribute.
4229 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
4231 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
4232 evaluate an expression.
4234 * New remote packets
4237 Define a trace state variable.
4240 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
4243 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
4246 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
4249 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
4253 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
4255 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
4256 much more reliable. In particular:
4257 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
4258 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
4259 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
4260 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
4261 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
4262 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
4263 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
4264 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
4265 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
4266 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
4267 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
4268 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
4269 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
4270 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
4271 non-threaded programs.
4273 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
4274 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
4275 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
4278 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
4280 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
4281 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
4282 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
4283 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
4284 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
4286 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
4287 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
4288 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
4289 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
4290 for tracepoint actions.
4292 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
4293 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
4294 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
4296 * Process record and replay
4298 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
4299 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
4300 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
4303 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
4304 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
4305 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
4308 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
4309 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
4312 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
4313 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
4314 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
4315 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
4316 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
4317 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
4318 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
4319 the installation instructions for more information.
4321 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
4322 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
4323 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
4324 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
4326 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
4327 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
4329 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
4330 now complete on file names.
4332 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
4333 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
4334 For instance, consider:
4336 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
4337 # struct example variable;
4340 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
4341 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
4343 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
4344 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
4346 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
4347 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
4350 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
4351 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
4352 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
4354 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
4355 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
4356 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
4357 and simulator targets may also provide them.
4359 * New remote packets
4362 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4365 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
4366 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
4367 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
4370 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
4371 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
4374 Obtains additional operating system information
4378 Read or write additional signal information.
4380 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
4382 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
4383 packet that permitted the stub to pass a process id was removed.
4384 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
4386 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
4387 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
4389 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
4390 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
4391 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
4393 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
4394 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
4396 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
4398 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
4400 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
4401 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
4403 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote protocol packet now allows passing a
4404 list of section offsets.
4406 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
4407 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
4408 have also been fixed.
4410 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
4411 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
4412 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
4414 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
4417 template<typename T> class C { };
4420 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
4422 ptype C<char const *>
4423 ptype C<char const*>
4424 ptype C<const char *>
4425 ptype C<const char*>
4427 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
4429 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
4430 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4432 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
4433 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4434 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
4436 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
4437 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
4439 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
4442 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
4443 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4445 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
4446 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
4451 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
4452 available is determined at configure time.
4454 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
4456 * Ada tasking support
4458 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
4462 Print the list of Ada tasks.
4464 Print detailed information about task number N.
4466 Print the task number of the current task.
4468 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
4470 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
4471 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
4473 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
4475 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
4476 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
4477 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
4478 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
4479 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
4480 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
4483 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
4484 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
4487 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
4488 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
4489 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
4490 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
4493 * Multi-architecture debugging.
4495 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
4496 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
4497 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
4498 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
4499 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
4501 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
4502 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
4503 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
4504 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
4505 --enable-targets configure option.
4507 * Non-stop mode debugging.
4509 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
4510 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
4511 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
4512 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
4513 section in the user manual for more information.
4515 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
4516 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
4517 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
4518 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
4519 extensions on linux targets.
4521 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4523 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
4524 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
4525 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
4526 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
4527 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
4528 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
4529 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
4530 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
4531 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
4533 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
4535 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4537 maint set python print-stack
4538 maint show python print-stack
4539 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
4542 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
4547 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
4551 Show operating system information about processes.
4554 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
4557 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
4560 Detach from inferior number NUM.
4563 Kill inferior number NUM.
4567 set spu stop-on-load
4568 show spu stop-on-load
4569 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4571 set spu auto-flush-cache
4572 show spu auto-flush-cache
4573 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
4574 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4576 set sh calling-convention
4577 show sh calling-convention
4578 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
4581 show debug timestamp
4582 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
4584 set disassemble-next-line
4585 show disassemble-next-line
4586 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
4589 set remote noack-packet
4590 show remote noack-packet
4591 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
4592 under "New remote packets."
4594 set remote query-attached-packet
4595 show remote query-attached-packet
4596 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
4598 set remote read-siginfo-object
4599 show remote read-siginfo-object
4600 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
4603 set remote write-siginfo-object
4604 show remote write-siginfo-object
4605 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
4608 set remote reverse-continue
4609 show remote reverse-continue
4610 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
4612 set remote reverse-step
4613 show remote reverse-step
4614 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
4616 set displaced-stepping
4617 show displaced-stepping
4618 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
4619 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
4620 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
4623 show debug displaced
4624 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
4626 maint set internal-error
4627 maint show internal-error
4628 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
4630 maint set internal-warning
4631 maint show internal-warning
4632 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
4637 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4639 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
4640 show multiple-symbols
4641 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
4642 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
4643 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
4645 set breakpoint always-inserted
4646 show breakpoint always-inserted
4647 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
4648 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
4649 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
4651 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4652 show arm fallback-mode
4653 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4655 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
4656 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
4657 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
4658 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
4660 set disable-randomization
4661 show disable-randomization
4662 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
4663 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
4664 multiple debugging sessions.
4668 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
4673 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
4674 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
4675 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
4676 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
4678 set target-wide-charset
4679 show target-wide-charset
4680 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
4681 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
4683 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
4685 set tcp connect-timeout
4686 show tcp connect-timeout
4687 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
4688 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
4689 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
4691 set libthread-db-search-path
4692 show libthread-db-search-path
4693 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
4696 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
4697 show schedule-multiple
4698 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
4699 the current process.
4703 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
4704 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
4705 affecting correctness.
4707 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4708 show interactive-mode
4709 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4710 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4711 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4712 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4713 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4718 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4719 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4720 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4724 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4725 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4726 alias for the `fork' command.
4729 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4730 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4731 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4734 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4735 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4736 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4740 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4741 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4742 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4745 * New native configurations
4747 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4749 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4753 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4754 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4755 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4758 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4759 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4765 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4767 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4769 * New native configurations
4771 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4772 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4776 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
4777 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4779 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4781 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
4782 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
4783 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
4784 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
4786 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
4787 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
4789 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
4792 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
4793 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
4794 and in inlined functions.
4796 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
4797 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
4798 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
4800 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
4802 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
4803 registers on PowerPC targets.
4805 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
4806 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
4808 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
4809 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
4811 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
4812 extended-remote mode.
4814 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
4815 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
4816 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
4817 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
4819 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
4820 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
4821 target architectures.
4823 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
4824 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
4825 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
4826 stored in two consecutive float registers.
4828 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
4831 * Improved support for debugging Ada
4832 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
4834 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
4835 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
4836 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
4837 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
4839 - Improved command completion in Ada
4842 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
4847 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
4848 show print frame-arguments
4849 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
4850 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
4855 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4862 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4864 * New remote packets
4871 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
4874 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
4878 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
4880 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
4882 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
4883 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
4884 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
4886 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
4887 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
4888 -Bsymbolic linker option.
4890 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
4891 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
4894 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
4895 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
4897 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
4898 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
4900 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
4902 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
4903 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
4904 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
4906 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
4907 automatically displayed as character or string data.
4909 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
4910 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
4913 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
4914 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
4915 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
4917 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
4920 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
4921 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
4922 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
4924 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
4926 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
4928 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
4929 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
4930 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
4932 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
4933 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
4935 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
4936 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
4937 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
4938 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
4939 Windows and SymbianOS).
4941 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
4942 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
4944 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
4945 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
4951 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
4952 when debugging using remote targets.
4954 set mem inaccessible-by-default
4955 show mem inaccessible-by-default
4956 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4957 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4958 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
4959 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
4960 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
4962 set breakpoint auto-hw
4963 show breakpoint auto-hw
4964 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4965 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4966 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
4967 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
4968 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
4969 including "next" and "finish".
4972 catch exception unhandled
4973 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
4976 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
4980 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
4981 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
4982 an alias to "set sysroot".
4985 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
4986 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
4989 * New native configurations
4991 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
4994 unset tdesc filename
4996 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
4997 not query the target for its built-in description.
5001 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
5002 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
5003 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
5005 * New remote packets
5008 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
5009 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
5011 qXfer:features:read:
5012 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
5017 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
5018 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
5020 qXfer:libraries:read:
5021 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
5022 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
5023 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
5024 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
5028 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
5036 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
5037 i[34567]86-*-netware*
5038 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
5039 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
5041 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
5044 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
5045 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
5054 * Other removed features
5061 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
5068 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
5073 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
5074 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
5079 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
5080 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
5082 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
5084 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
5085 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
5086 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
5087 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
5089 MIPS ".pdr" sections
5091 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
5092 in debugging information.
5096 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
5097 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
5099 set mips stack-arg-size
5100 set mips saved-gpreg-size
5102 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
5104 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
5109 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
5111 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
5112 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
5113 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
5115 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
5116 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
5119 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
5120 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
5122 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
5123 stub provides the required support.
5125 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
5126 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
5131 unset substitute-path
5132 show substitute-path
5133 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
5134 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
5135 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
5136 between compilation and debugging.
5140 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
5141 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
5142 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
5146 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
5148 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
5149 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
5151 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
5153 * New remote packets
5156 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
5157 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
5158 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
5159 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
5163 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
5164 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
5166 qXfer:memory-map:read:
5167 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
5168 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
5173 Erase and program a flash memory device.
5175 * Removed remote packets
5178 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
5179 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
5181 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
5185 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
5187 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
5191 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
5192 only if it doesn't already have a value.
5194 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
5196 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
5198 restart <n> Return the program state to a
5199 previously saved state.
5201 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
5203 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
5205 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
5206 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
5208 info forks List forks of the user program that
5209 are available to be debugged.
5211 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
5212 forks of the user program that are
5213 available to be debugged.
5215 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
5216 that are available to be debugged (and
5217 kill the forked process).
5219 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
5220 that are available to be debugged (and
5221 allow the process to continue).
5225 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
5227 * Improved Windows host support
5229 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
5230 native console support, and remote communications using either
5231 network sockets or serial ports.
5233 * Improved Modula-2 language support
5235 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
5236 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
5237 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
5238 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
5239 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
5240 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
5244 The ARM rdi-share module.
5246 The Netware NLM debug server.
5248 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
5250 * New native configurations
5252 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
5253 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
5257 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
5259 * New command line options
5261 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
5262 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
5263 the child (debugged) program exited with.
5264 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
5265 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
5266 specified multiple times and in conjunction
5267 with the --command (-x) option.
5269 * Deprecated commands removed
5271 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
5275 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
5276 othernames set arm disassembler
5277 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
5278 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
5279 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
5282 * New BSD user-level threads support
5284 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
5285 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
5288 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5289 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
5290 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
5292 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
5293 are not yet supported.
5295 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
5296 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
5298 * REMOVED configurations and files
5300 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
5301 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5302 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
5304 * New "set print array-indexes" command
5306 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
5307 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
5310 * VAX floating point support
5312 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
5314 * User-defined command support
5316 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
5317 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
5318 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
5320 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
5322 * New command line option
5324 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
5327 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
5329 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
5330 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
5331 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
5332 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
5333 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
5335 * Internationalization
5337 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
5338 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
5339 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
5343 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
5344 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
5345 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
5347 * New native configurations
5349 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
5353 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
5354 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
5356 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
5358 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5359 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
5360 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
5363 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the registers[]
5364 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
5365 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
5375 powerpc bdm protocol
5377 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5378 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
5380 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5382 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5383 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5384 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5385 permanently REMOVED.
5394 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
5396 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
5398 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
5399 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
5402 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
5404 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
5405 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
5406 IRIX long double values).
5410 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
5411 command. This problem has been fixed.
5413 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
5415 * Fix for ``many threads''
5417 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
5418 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
5421 ptrace: No such process.
5422 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
5424 This problem has been fixed.
5426 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
5428 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
5431 * New ``start'' command.
5433 This command runs the program until the beginning of the main procedure.
5435 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
5437 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
5438 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
5439 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
5441 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5442 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
5443 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
5444 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
5445 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
5446 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5447 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
5448 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
5449 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5451 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
5453 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
5454 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
5455 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
5456 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
5457 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
5459 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
5460 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
5461 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
5463 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
5465 * New native configurations
5467 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
5468 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
5469 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
5470 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
5471 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
5472 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
5473 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
5475 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
5477 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5478 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
5479 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
5480 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
5481 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
5482 work, was also included.
5484 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
5485 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
5495 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5496 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
5498 * REMOVED configurations and files
5500 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5501 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5502 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5503 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5504 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5505 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5506 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5507 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5508 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5509 sonymips mips-sony-*
5510 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5512 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
5514 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
5516 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
5517 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
5518 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
5519 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
5522 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
5524 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
5525 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
5526 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
5527 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
5528 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
5529 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
5532 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
5534 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
5536 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
5537 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
5538 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
5540 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
5542 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
5543 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
5545 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
5547 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
5548 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
5549 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
5551 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
5553 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
5554 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
5556 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
5558 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
5559 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
5560 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
5562 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
5564 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
5565 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
5566 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
5568 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
5570 * Removed --with-mmalloc
5572 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
5573 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
5575 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
5577 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
5578 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
5579 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
5580 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
5582 * Revised SPARC target
5584 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
5585 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
5586 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
5587 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
5588 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
5592 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
5593 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
5594 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
5597 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5599 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
5600 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
5603 * C++ nested types and namespaces
5605 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
5606 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
5607 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
5608 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
5609 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
5610 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
5611 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
5612 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
5613 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
5615 * New native configurations
5617 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
5618 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5619 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
5620 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5621 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
5623 * New debugging protocols
5625 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
5627 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
5629 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
5630 and its very obscure effect on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
5631 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
5633 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5635 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5636 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5637 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5638 permanently REMOVED.
5640 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5641 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5642 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5643 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5644 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5645 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5646 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5647 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5648 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5649 sonymips mips-sony-*
5650 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5652 * REMOVED configurations and files
5654 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5655 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5656 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5657 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5658 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5659 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5660 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5661 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5662 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5663 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
5664 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5665 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5666 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5667 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
5668 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
5669 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5670 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5672 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
5676 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
5677 integrated into GDB.
5679 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
5681 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
5682 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
5683 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
5686 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
5687 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
5688 DWARF 2 CFI support.
5692 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
5693 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
5694 remote protocol documentation for details.
5696 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
5698 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
5699 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
5700 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
5703 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
5705 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5706 per-thread variables.
5708 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5710 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5711 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5713 * Separate debug info.
5715 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5716 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5717 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5718 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5719 and optional debug files.
5721 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5723 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5724 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5727 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5728 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5732 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5733 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5734 considered "useable".
5736 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5738 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5739 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5742 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5744 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5745 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5747 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5749 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5750 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5753 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5755 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5756 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5760 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5761 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5762 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5763 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5764 data, for more informative profiling results.
5766 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5768 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5769 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5770 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5772 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5775 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5776 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
5777 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
5778 in a subsequent -var-update.
5780 * New native configurations.
5782 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5784 * Multi-arched targets.
5786 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
5787 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5789 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5791 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5792 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5793 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5794 permanently REMOVED.
5796 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5797 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5798 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5799 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5800 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5801 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5802 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5803 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5804 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5805 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5806 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5807 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5809 * REMOVED configurations and files
5812 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5813 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5814 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5815 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5816 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5817 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5819 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5820 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5821 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5822 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5823 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5824 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5826 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
5828 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
5829 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
5830 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
5831 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
5832 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
5834 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
5836 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
5838 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
5839 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
5840 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
5841 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
5842 shared libs like mad''.
5844 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
5846 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
5847 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
5848 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
5849 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
5851 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
5853 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
5854 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
5857 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
5858 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
5860 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
5861 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
5863 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
5864 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
5865 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
5866 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
5868 * Multi-arched targets.
5870 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
5871 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
5873 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
5874 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
5875 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5879 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
5882 * New native configurations
5884 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
5885 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
5886 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
5887 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
5889 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5891 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5892 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5893 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5894 permanently REMOVED.
5896 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5897 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5898 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5899 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5900 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5901 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5902 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5903 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5904 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5905 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5907 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5908 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5910 * OBSOLETE languages
5912 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
5914 * REMOVED configurations and files
5916 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5917 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5918 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5919 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5920 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5922 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5924 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
5926 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
5927 commands. The default is 1024.
5929 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
5931 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
5933 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
5935 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
5936 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
5937 from a file into memory (restore).
5939 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
5941 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
5942 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
5943 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
5945 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
5953 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
5954 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
5955 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
5957 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
5958 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
5959 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
5961 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
5962 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
5963 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
5965 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
5966 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
5967 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
5969 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
5971 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
5973 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
5974 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
5975 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
5976 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
5977 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
5978 (notably embedded) targets.
5980 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
5982 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
5983 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
5984 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
5985 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
5987 * New command line option
5989 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
5991 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
5993 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
5994 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
5995 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
5996 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
5997 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
5998 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
5999 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
6000 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
6001 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
6002 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
6004 * Changes in ARM configurations.
6006 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
6007 configuration is fully multi-arch.
6009 * New native configurations
6011 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
6012 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
6013 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
6014 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
6018 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
6020 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6022 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6023 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6024 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6025 permanently REMOVED.
6027 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
6028 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6029 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6030 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6031 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6033 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
6035 * REMOVED configurations and files
6037 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6039 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6040 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6041 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
6042 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
6043 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
6044 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
6045 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
6046 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
6047 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
6048 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
6049 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
6051 * Changes to command line processing
6053 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
6054 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
6056 * Changes to key bindings
6058 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
6060 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
6062 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
6064 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
6067 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
6069 Numerous documentation fixes.
6071 Numerous testsuite fixes.
6073 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
6075 * New native configurations
6077 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
6078 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
6079 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
6080 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6081 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
6082 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
6086 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
6088 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
6090 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6092 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
6093 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
6094 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
6095 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
6096 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6098 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
6099 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6100 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6101 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
6102 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
6103 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
6104 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
6105 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
6107 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
6108 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
6110 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6111 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6112 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6113 permanently REMOVED.
6115 * REMOVED configurations and files
6117 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
6118 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
6120 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
6124 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
6126 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
6127 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
6132 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
6134 * The MI enabled by default.
6136 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
6137 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
6138 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
6139 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
6140 which is now deprecated.
6142 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
6144 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
6145 main features are supported:
6147 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
6149 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
6152 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
6154 - a Pascal expression parser.
6156 However, some important features are not yet supported.
6158 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
6160 - there are some problems with boolean types;
6162 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
6163 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
6165 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
6167 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
6169 * Changes in completion.
6171 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
6172 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
6173 users expect at the shell prompt.
6175 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
6176 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
6177 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
6178 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
6179 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
6180 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
6181 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
6183 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
6185 * New platform-independent commands:
6187 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
6188 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
6189 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
6191 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
6193 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
6194 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
6195 many threads as your system allows you to have.
6197 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
6199 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
6200 multi-threaded programs though.
6202 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
6204 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
6206 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
6207 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
6210 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
6212 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
6213 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
6214 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
6215 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
6216 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
6219 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
6220 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
6221 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
6223 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
6225 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
6226 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
6228 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
6229 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
6232 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
6233 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
6234 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
6235 a given linear address.
6237 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
6238 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
6239 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
6241 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
6243 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
6245 * Changes in documentation.
6247 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
6248 Documentation License.
6250 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
6253 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
6255 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
6258 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
6259 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
6260 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
6262 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
6264 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
6265 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
6266 contents of this file.
6270 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
6272 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
6274 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
6276 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
6277 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
6278 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
6279 greater level of detail.
6281 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
6283 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
6284 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
6285 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
6288 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
6290 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
6291 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
6292 machines ``out of the box''.
6294 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
6295 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
6296 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
6297 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
6298 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
6300 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
6301 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
6302 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
6303 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
6304 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
6306 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
6307 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
6310 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
6313 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
6314 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
6315 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
6316 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
6318 * New native configurations
6320 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
6321 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6325 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
6326 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
6327 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
6328 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6330 * OBSOLETE configurations
6332 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
6333 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
6335 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
6338 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6339 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6340 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6341 be permanently REMOVED.
6343 * Gould support removed
6345 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
6347 * New features for SVR4
6349 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
6350 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
6351 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
6353 * Many C++ enhancements
6355 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
6356 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
6358 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
6360 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
6361 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
6362 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
6363 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
6365 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
6366 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
6368 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
6370 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
6371 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
6372 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
6374 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
6375 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
6377 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
6379 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
6380 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
6381 include ``set remote P-packet''.
6383 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
6385 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
6386 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
6387 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
6389 * ``apropos'' command added.
6391 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
6392 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
6393 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
6397 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
6398 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
6399 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
6400 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
6401 enabled by configuring with:
6403 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
6405 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
6407 * New native configurations
6409 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
6410 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
6411 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
6415 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6416 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
6417 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6419 * OBSOLETE configurations
6421 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
6423 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6424 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6425 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6426 be permanently REMOVED.
6430 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
6431 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
6432 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
6433 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
6434 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
6436 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
6441 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
6443 * set extension-language
6445 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
6446 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
6447 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
6448 set extension-language .c c++
6449 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
6450 and their associated languages.
6452 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
6454 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
6455 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
6456 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
6460 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
6461 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
6463 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
6464 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
6466 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
6467 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
6468 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
6469 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
6470 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
6471 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
6472 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
6473 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
6475 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
6476 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
6477 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
6478 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
6482 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
6483 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
6484 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
6485 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
6486 for xdb and dbx commands.
6490 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
6491 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
6492 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
6494 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
6495 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
6496 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
6498 * Debugging across forks
6500 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
6505 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
6506 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
6507 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
6509 * GDB remote protocol additions
6511 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
6512 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
6513 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
6514 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
6516 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
6517 full 64-bit address. The command
6519 set remoteaddresssize 32
6521 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
6522 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
6525 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
6526 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
6528 maint packet heythere
6530 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
6531 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
6534 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
6535 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
6536 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
6538 * Tracing can collect general expressions
6540 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
6541 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
6542 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
6544 * mask-address variable for Mips
6546 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
6547 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
6548 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
6550 * Higher serial baud rates
6552 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
6553 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
6554 to achieve all of these rates.)
6558 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
6559 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
6562 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
6564 * New native configurations
6566 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
6567 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
6568 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6569 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6570 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6571 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
6572 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
6576 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6577 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
6578 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
6579 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
6580 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
6581 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
6582 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
6583 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
6584 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6585 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6586 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
6588 * New debugging protocols
6590 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
6591 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
6592 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
6593 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6594 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6595 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6599 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
6600 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
6605 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
6606 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
6608 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
6610 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
6611 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
6612 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
6614 * Live range splitting
6616 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
6617 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
6618 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
6622 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
6623 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
6627 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
6628 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
6629 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
6634 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
6639 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
6640 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
6641 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
6642 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
6643 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
6644 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
6648 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
6649 the symbol at the specified address.
6653 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
6654 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
6655 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
6656 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
6657 file tracepoint.c for more details.
6661 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
6662 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
6663 of most MIPS variants.
6667 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
6668 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
6669 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
6673 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
6674 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
6675 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
6676 the possible architectures.
6678 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
6680 * New native configurations
6682 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
6683 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
6684 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
6685 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
6686 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6687 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
6691 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
6692 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6693 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
6694 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
6695 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
6697 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6701 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
6702 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
6703 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
6704 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
6705 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6709 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6711 * Windows 95/NT native
6713 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6714 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6715 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6716 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6717 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6719 * dont-repeat command
6721 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6722 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6723 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6724 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6726 * Send break instead of ^C
6728 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6729 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6730 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6732 * Remote protocol timeout
6734 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6735 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6736 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6738 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6740 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6741 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6742 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6743 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6744 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6746 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6747 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6748 automatically on hpux10.
6750 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6752 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6754 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6756 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6757 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6758 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6759 every character. The default value is 1050.
6761 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6763 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6764 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6765 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6766 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6767 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6768 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6770 * Speedups for remote debugging
6772 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6773 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6774 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6776 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
6778 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
6779 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
6781 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
6783 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
6785 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
6786 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
6788 * Remote targets use caching
6790 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
6791 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
6792 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
6793 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
6794 off' turns the data cache off.
6796 * Remote targets may have threads
6798 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
6799 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
6800 gdb/remote.c for details.
6804 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
6805 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
6806 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
6807 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
6808 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
6809 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
6810 sequence is something like
6812 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
6814 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
6818 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
6819 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
6820 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
6821 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
6822 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
6823 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
6824 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
6825 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
6829 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
6830 but does simplify configuration and building.
6834 GDB now supports hpux10.
6836 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
6838 * New native configurations
6840 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
6841 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
6842 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
6843 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
6847 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6848 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
6849 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
6850 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
6853 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
6855 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
6856 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
6857 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
6858 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
6859 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
6861 * Arguments to user-defined commands
6863 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
6864 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
6867 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
6869 To execute the command use:
6872 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
6873 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
6874 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
6876 * New `if' and `while' commands
6878 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
6879 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
6880 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
6881 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
6882 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
6883 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
6884 if the expression is zero.
6886 * Fortran source language mode
6888 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
6889 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
6890 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
6891 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
6894 * Better HPUX support
6896 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
6897 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
6898 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
6899 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
6900 that behavior do the following before running the program:
6906 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
6907 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
6913 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
6914 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
6917 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
6918 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
6920 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
6922 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
6923 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
6924 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
6925 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
6926 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
6927 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
6929 * New DOS host serial code
6931 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
6932 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
6935 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
6937 * New "complete" command
6939 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
6940 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
6942 * Trailing space optional in prompt
6944 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
6945 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
6947 * Breakpoint hit counts
6949 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
6950 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
6951 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
6952 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
6953 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
6956 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
6958 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
6959 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
6960 arrays actually contain only short strings.
6962 * Shared library breakpoints
6964 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
6965 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
6967 * Hardware watchpoints
6969 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
6970 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
6972 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
6976 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
6977 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
6979 * Improved Irix 5 support
6981 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
6983 * Improved HPPA support
6985 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
6987 * New native configurations
6989 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
6990 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
6991 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
6992 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
6996 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6997 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
7000 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
7002 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
7003 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
7007 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
7008 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
7010 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
7012 * Irix 5 is now supported
7016 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
7017 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
7018 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
7019 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
7020 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
7023 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
7025 * User visible changes:
7029 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
7030 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
7031 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
7032 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
7033 debugging info for the mips target).
7035 * DEC Alpha native support
7037 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
7038 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
7039 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
7040 Alpha-specific notes.
7042 * Preliminary thread implementation
7044 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
7046 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
7048 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
7049 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
7052 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
7054 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
7055 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
7056 call methods, ...etc.
7058 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
7060 * User visible changes:
7062 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
7063 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
7064 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
7065 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
7067 Filename completion now works.
7069 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
7070 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
7071 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
7073 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
7074 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
7075 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
7076 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
7077 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
7081 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
7082 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
7085 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
7089 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
7090 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
7091 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
7095 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
7096 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
7097 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
7098 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
7099 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
7103 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
7104 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
7105 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
7107 * New targets supported
7109 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7110 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
7111 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
7112 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
7113 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
7115 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
7116 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
7117 GO32 memory extender.
7119 * New remote protocols
7121 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
7123 * New source languages supported
7125 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
7126 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
7127 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
7130 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
7132 * HP Precision Architecture supported
7134 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
7135 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
7136 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
7137 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
7138 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
7139 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
7141 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
7143 * Faster and better demangling
7145 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
7146 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
7147 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
7148 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
7149 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
7150 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
7153 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
7154 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
7155 compiler does not actually implement.
7157 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
7159 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
7160 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
7161 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
7162 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
7163 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
7164 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
7167 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
7168 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
7170 * Improved configure script
7172 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
7173 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
7174 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
7175 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
7177 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
7178 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
7179 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
7180 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
7181 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
7182 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
7184 * Documentation improvements
7186 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
7187 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
7188 before submitting changes.
7190 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
7191 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
7192 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
7193 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
7194 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
7196 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
7197 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
7198 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
7199 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
7200 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
7201 around this problem.
7205 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
7206 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
7207 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
7210 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
7211 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
7213 * New native hosts supported
7215 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
7216 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
7218 * New targets supported
7220 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
7222 * New file formats supported
7224 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
7225 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
7229 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
7231 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
7232 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
7234 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
7235 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
7236 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
7238 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
7239 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
7241 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
7242 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
7243 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
7246 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
7247 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
7248 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
7249 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
7250 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
7252 * Internal improvements
7254 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
7255 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
7257 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
7258 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
7259 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
7260 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
7261 shared code that handles any of them.
7263 * New command line options
7265 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
7269 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
7270 General Public License.
7272 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
7274 * Host/native/target split
7276 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
7277 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
7278 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
7279 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
7280 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
7282 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
7283 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
7284 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
7285 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
7286 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
7287 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
7288 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
7290 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
7291 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
7292 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
7294 * New hosts supported
7296 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
7297 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
7298 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
7300 * New targets supported
7302 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
7303 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
7305 * New native hosts supported
7307 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
7308 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
7309 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
7311 * New file formats supported
7313 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
7314 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
7315 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
7319 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
7320 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
7321 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
7323 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
7325 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
7326 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
7327 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
7328 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
7332 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
7333 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
7334 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
7336 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
7340 The crash that occurred when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
7341 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
7344 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
7345 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
7347 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
7348 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
7349 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
7350 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
7351 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
7352 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
7354 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
7355 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
7356 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
7357 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
7361 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
7362 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
7363 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
7364 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
7365 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
7367 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
7368 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
7369 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
7370 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
7374 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
7375 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
7376 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
7377 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
7378 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
7379 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
7380 each instruction being stepped through.
7382 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
7383 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
7385 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
7386 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
7387 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
7388 processor with a serial port.
7392 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
7393 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
7394 supported, and what files each one uses.
7398 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
7399 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
7400 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
7401 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
7403 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
7404 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
7405 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
7406 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
7410 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
7411 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
7412 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
7413 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
7414 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
7417 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
7420 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
7422 * Better support for C++ function names
7424 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
7425 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
7426 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
7427 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
7428 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
7430 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
7431 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
7432 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
7433 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
7434 for the list of formats.
7436 * G++ symbol mangling problem
7438 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
7439 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
7440 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
7441 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compiling gdb/symtab.c. The
7442 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
7443 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
7446 * New 'maintenance' command
7448 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
7449 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
7450 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
7452 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
7453 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
7454 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
7455 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
7456 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
7457 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
7459 The following commands are new:
7461 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
7462 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
7463 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
7465 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
7467 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
7468 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
7469 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
7470 read after argv processing.
7472 * New hosts supported
7474 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
7476 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
7478 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
7479 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
7480 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
7481 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
7482 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
7485 * New targets supported
7487 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7489 * More smarts about finding #include files
7491 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
7492 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
7493 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
7494 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
7495 the one that contains your sources.
7497 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
7498 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
7499 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
7501 * Interesting infernals change
7503 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
7504 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
7505 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
7506 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
7508 * Bug fixes (of course!)
7510 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
7511 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
7512 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
7514 See the ChangeLog for details.
7516 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
7518 * New machines supported (host and target)
7520 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
7522 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
7524 * New malloc package
7526 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
7527 Mmalloc is capable of handling multiple heaps of memory. It is also
7528 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
7529 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
7530 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
7531 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
7535 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
7536 'help info proc' for details.
7538 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
7540 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
7541 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
7544 * File name changes for MS-DOS
7546 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
7547 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
7548 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
7549 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
7550 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
7551 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
7553 * Cross byte order fixes
7555 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
7556 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
7558 * New -mapped and -readnow options
7560 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
7561 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
7562 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
7563 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
7564 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
7565 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
7566 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
7567 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
7568 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
7569 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
7571 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
7572 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
7573 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
7574 slower, but makes future operations faster.
7576 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
7577 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
7578 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
7581 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
7583 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
7584 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
7585 shared across multiple host platforms.
7587 * longjmp() handling
7589 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
7590 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
7591 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
7592 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
7596 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
7597 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
7602 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
7603 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
7604 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
7606 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
7608 * New machines supported (host and target)
7610 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7612 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
7613 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
7615 * New machines supported (target)
7617 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
7621 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
7622 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
7623 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
7625 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
7626 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
7627 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
7628 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
7629 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
7632 * New features for SVR4
7634 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
7635 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
7636 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
7638 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
7639 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
7640 it prints the address mappings of the process.
7642 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
7645 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
7647 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
7648 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
7649 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
7650 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
7651 same code linked statically.
7655 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
7656 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
7657 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
7658 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
7659 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
7660 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
7664 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7665 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7666 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7669 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
7671 * New machines supported (host and target)
7673 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
7674 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
7675 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7677 * Almost SCO Unix support
7679 We had hoped to support:
7680 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7681 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
7682 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
7683 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
7685 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
7687 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
7688 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
7689 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
7695 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
7696 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
7697 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
7701 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7702 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7703 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7705 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7707 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7708 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7709 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7711 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7712 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7713 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7714 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7717 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7718 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7719 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7720 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7723 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7724 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7727 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7728 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7729 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7732 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7734 * Improved configuration
7736 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7737 Porting BFD is simpler.
7741 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7742 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7743 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7744 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7748 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7750 * New host supported (not target)
7752 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7755 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7757 * Multiple source language support
7759 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7760 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7761 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7762 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7763 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7764 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7768 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7769 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7770 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7771 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7773 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7774 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7775 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
7777 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
7778 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
7782 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
7783 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
7784 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
7785 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
7788 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
7790 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
7791 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
7792 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
7793 examining core files.
7797 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
7800 * New machines supported (host and target)
7802 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7803 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
7804 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
7806 * New hosts supported (not targets)
7808 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
7810 * New targets supported (not hosts)
7812 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7813 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7814 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
7816 * New remote interfaces
7822 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
7826 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
7828 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
7829 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
7830 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
7831 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
7832 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
7833 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
7834 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
7835 stub on the target system.
7837 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
7839 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
7840 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
7841 object file types such as a.out and coff.
7843 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
7844 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
7847 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
7849 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
7850 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
7852 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
7853 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
7854 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
7856 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
7857 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
7858 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
7859 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
7861 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
7862 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
7863 it is already running. Default is ON.
7865 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
7866 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
7867 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
7868 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
7871 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
7872 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
7873 or the value of the environment variable
7876 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
7877 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
7880 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
7881 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
7882 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
7884 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
7885 history expansion will be performed on
7886 command line input. The default is OFF.
7888 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
7889 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
7890 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
7892 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
7893 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
7894 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7897 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
7898 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
7899 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7902 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
7903 ``set width'' instead.
7905 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
7906 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
7907 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
7908 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
7910 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
7913 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
7916 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
7919 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
7922 * Support for Epoch Environment.
7924 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
7925 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
7926 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
7930 * Support for Shared Libraries
7932 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
7933 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
7934 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
7935 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
7936 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
7937 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
7938 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
7939 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
7941 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
7942 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
7943 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
7945 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
7950 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
7951 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
7952 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
7953 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
7954 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
7955 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
7957 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
7959 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
7961 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7962 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7963 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7966 * C++ multiple inheritance
7968 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
7971 * C++ exception handling
7973 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
7974 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
7975 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
7978 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
7979 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
7980 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
7982 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
7983 current stack frame.
7986 * Minor command changes
7988 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
7989 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
7990 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
7992 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
7993 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
7994 frames without printing.
7996 * New directory command
7998 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
7999 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
8000 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
8001 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
8002 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
8004 * Configuring GDB for compilation
8006 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
8009 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
8010 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
8011 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
8012 where the program that you are debugging will run.