1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.10
6 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
8 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
10 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
11 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
12 including advance SIMD instructions.
14 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
16 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
17 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
18 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
19 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
20 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
21 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
22 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
24 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
26 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
28 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
29 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
32 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
33 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
34 and may include things like its command line arguments.
36 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
37 is now available on all platforms.
39 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
40 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
41 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
42 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
43 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
44 backward compatibility.
46 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
47 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
48 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
49 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
51 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
52 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
53 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
54 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
57 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
59 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
61 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
62 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
63 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
64 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
65 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
66 See "New remote packets" below.
68 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
69 available register groups, including target specific groups.
71 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
72 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
73 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
74 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
79 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
83 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
84 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
85 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
86 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
87 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
88 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
89 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
90 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
91 "const" version of the value respectively.
95 maint print symbol-cache
96 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
98 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
99 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
101 maint flush-symbol-cache
102 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
106 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
109 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
113 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
116 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
117 Support for bound table investigation on Intel(R) MPX enabled applications.
121 Start branch trace recording using Intel(R) Processor Trace format.
124 Print information about branch tracing internals.
126 maint btrace packet-history
127 Print the raw branch tracing data.
129 maint btrace clear-packet-history
130 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
133 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
134 anew by the next "record" command.
139 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
141 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
144 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
145 show debug dwarf-read
146 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
148 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
149 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
150 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
151 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
153 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
154 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
155 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
156 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
159 show debug dwarf-line
160 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
164 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
165 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
166 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
167 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
169 set history remove-duplicates
170 show history remove-duplicates
171 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
173 maint set symbol-cache-size
174 maint show symbol-cache-size
175 Control the size of the symbol cache.
177 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
178 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
180 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
181 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
183 set debug linux-namespaces
184 show debug linux-namespaces
185 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
187 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
188 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
189 Intel(R) Processor Trace format.
190 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
191 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
193 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
194 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
197 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
198 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
200 * Python/Guile scripting
202 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
203 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
207 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
208 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
210 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
211 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
214 Enable Intel(R) Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
215 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
219 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel(R) Processor
223 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
224 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
225 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
229 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
230 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
233 Return information about files on the remote system.
236 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
237 create a process running on the remote system.
240 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
241 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
242 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
243 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
246 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
249 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
251 vforkdone stop reason
252 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
253 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
255 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
256 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
257 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
258 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
259 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
260 whether these features are enabled.
262 * Extended-remote fork events
264 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
265 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
266 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
267 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
269 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
270 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
271 the btrace record target.
272 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
274 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
275 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
277 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
280 * Removed command line options
282 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
284 * Removed targets and native configurations
286 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
287 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
289 * New configure options
292 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
293 Intel(R) Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
295 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
296 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
297 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
298 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
300 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
304 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
306 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
308 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
312 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
313 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
314 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
315 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
316 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
317 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
318 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
319 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
320 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
321 selecting a new file to debug.
322 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
323 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
325 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
328 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
329 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
330 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
331 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
333 * New Python-based convenience functions:
335 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
336 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
337 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
338 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
340 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
341 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
342 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
343 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
344 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
345 interface with this new feature are:
347 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
348 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
352 demangle [-l language] [--] name
353 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
354 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
355 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
356 as "maint demangler-warning".
358 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
359 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
361 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
362 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
365 maint print user-registers
366 List all currently available "user" registers.
368 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
369 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
370 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
372 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
373 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
374 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
377 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
378 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
379 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
380 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
383 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
384 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
385 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
386 switched threads meanwhile.
388 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
390 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
391 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
392 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
393 is now the default mode.
397 set debug symbol-lookup
398 show debug symbol-lookup
399 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
403 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
404 inferiors that have exited.
408 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
412 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
414 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
415 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
416 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
417 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
418 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
420 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
421 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
422 its alias "share", instead.
424 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
426 * New command line options
429 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
431 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
432 as specified in ISO C99.
434 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
435 with or without disassembly.
439 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
440 available is determined at configure time.
441 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
442 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
444 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
448 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
452 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
454 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
455 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
457 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
458 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
462 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
463 show print symbol-loading
464 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
465 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
466 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
469 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
470 show guile print-stack
471 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
473 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
474 show auto-load guile-scripts
475 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
477 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
478 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
479 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
480 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
481 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
482 usage of this option.
484 set auto-connect-native-target
486 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
487 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
488 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
490 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
491 show record btrace replay-memory-access
492 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
494 maint set target-async (on|off)
495 maint show target-async
496 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
497 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
498 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
499 occurring only in synchronous mode.
501 set mi-async (on|off)
503 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
504 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
506 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
507 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
509 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
510 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
511 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
512 "set target-async on" command.
514 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
516 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
517 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
518 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
519 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
520 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
522 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
523 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
524 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
526 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
527 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
528 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
529 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
530 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
531 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
532 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
534 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
535 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
537 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
538 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
539 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
541 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
542 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
545 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
547 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
548 remote. It now works with all targets.
550 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
551 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
552 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
553 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
554 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
555 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
556 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
557 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
558 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
561 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
562 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
563 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
565 * GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
567 * Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
568 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
569 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
573 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
574 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
575 branch trace incrementally.
579 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
580 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
582 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
583 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
584 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
585 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
586 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
589 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
591 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
592 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
593 its alias "share", instead.
595 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
596 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
601 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
602 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
603 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
604 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
605 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
606 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
607 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
608 commands and CLI execution commands.
610 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
612 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
613 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
614 recording has been added.
616 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
618 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
619 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
621 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
622 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
623 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
624 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
625 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
626 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
629 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
631 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
633 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
634 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
635 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
636 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
641 (gdb) info registers rax
644 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
645 "*value not available*".
647 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
652 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
653 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
654 ** Line tables representation has been added.
655 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
656 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
657 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
661 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
662 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
663 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
665 * Removed native configurations
667 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
668 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
670 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
671 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
672 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
673 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
674 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
675 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
676 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
680 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
682 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
684 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
686 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
689 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
691 maint set|show per-command
692 maint set|show per-command space
693 maint set|show per-command time
694 maint set|show per-command symtab
695 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
697 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
698 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
699 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
700 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
701 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
704 info exceptions REGEXP
705 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
706 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
711 set debug symfile off|on
713 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
714 symbol tables within those files
716 set print raw frame-arguments
717 show print raw frame-arguments
718 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
719 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
721 set remote trace-status-packet
722 show remote trace-status-packet
723 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
727 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
731 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
733 set startup-with-shell
734 show startup-with-shell
735 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
740 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
741 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
743 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
744 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
745 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
746 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
749 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
750 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
751 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
753 * New command-line options
755 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
757 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
758 buffer in Common Trace Format.
760 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
763 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
765 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
766 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
768 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
769 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
771 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
772 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
773 due to an uncaught signal.
777 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
778 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
779 command, which should contain "language-option".
781 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
782 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
784 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
785 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
786 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
787 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
788 "undefined-command-error-code".
790 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
793 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
795 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
796 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
799 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
800 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
802 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
803 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
804 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
806 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
807 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
808 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
809 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
810 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
811 "exec-run-start-option".
813 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
814 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
816 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
817 the new "info exceptions" command.
819 * New system-wide configuration scripts
820 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
821 configuration scripts for the following systems:
825 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
826 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
827 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
830 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
831 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
833 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
834 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
835 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
841 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
842 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
843 involvemement at each single-step.
845 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
846 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
847 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
848 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
849 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
850 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
853 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
855 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
856 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
858 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
859 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
860 trace state variables.
862 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
865 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
866 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
868 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
870 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
871 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
872 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
873 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
875 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
877 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
878 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
879 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
880 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
882 set|show record full insn-number-max
883 set|show record full stop-at-limit
884 set|show record full memory-query
886 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
887 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
888 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
889 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
890 This new recording method can be enabled using:
894 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
895 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
897 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
898 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
899 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
901 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
902 instruction granularity
904 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
907 * New native configurations
909 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
910 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
911 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
912 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
916 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
917 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
918 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
919 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
920 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
922 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
923 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
924 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
925 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
926 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
927 --data-directory command-line option.
929 * New command line options:
931 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
932 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
934 * Removed command line options
936 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
939 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
942 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
946 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
948 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
950 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
952 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
954 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
955 of architecture in the Python API.
957 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
958 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
960 * New Python-based convenience functions:
962 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
963 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
965 ** $_regex(str, regex)
967 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
970 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
971 default for GCC since November 2000.
973 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
975 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
976 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
978 * New configure options
980 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
981 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
982 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
983 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
984 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
985 options allow the user to override that default.
986 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
987 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
988 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
990 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
993 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
994 conditions to be attached.
997 List the BFDs known to GDB.
999 python-interactive [command]
1001 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1002 and print the result of expressions.
1005 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1007 enable type-printer [name]...
1008 disable type-printer [name]...
1009 Enable or disable type printers.
1013 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1014 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1019 set print type methods (on|off)
1020 show print type methods
1021 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1022 The default is to show them.
1024 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1025 show print type typedefs
1026 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1027 The default is to show them.
1029 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1030 show filename-display
1031 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1032 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1034 set trace-buffer-size
1035 show trace-buffer-size
1036 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1038 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1039 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1040 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1044 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1047 set debug coff-pe-read
1048 show debug coff-pe-read
1049 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1054 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1057 set debug notification
1058 show debug notification
1059 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1063 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1064 "=cmd-param-changed".
1065 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1066 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1067 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1068 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1069 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1070 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1071 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1072 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1074 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1075 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1076 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1077 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1078 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1079 library load/unload events.
1080 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1081 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1082 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1083 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1084 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1085 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1086 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1087 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1089 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1090 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1091 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1092 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1094 * New remote packets
1097 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1098 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1101 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1102 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1106 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1107 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1110 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1111 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1113 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1115 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1116 for more x32 ABI info.
1118 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1120 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1122 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1123 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1124 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1125 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1126 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1127 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1128 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1129 "info os msg" lists message queues
1130 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1132 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1133 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1134 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1135 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1136 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1137 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1139 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1140 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1141 record/replay support.
1143 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1147 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1150 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1152 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1153 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1155 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1157 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1158 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1160 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1161 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1162 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1165 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1166 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1168 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1169 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1170 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1172 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1173 object associated with a PC value.
1175 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1176 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1178 * Go language support.
1179 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1182 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1183 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1185 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1186 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1188 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1189 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1190 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1191 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1192 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1195 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1196 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1197 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1198 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1200 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1201 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1203 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1204 since December 2007.
1206 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1207 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1208 command does. For instance:
1210 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1212 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1213 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1214 created, using the "condition" command.
1216 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1217 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1219 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1221 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1222 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1223 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1224 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1225 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1226 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1227 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1228 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1230 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1231 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1232 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1233 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1234 the .gdb_index section.
1236 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1238 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1243 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1245 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1249 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1250 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1251 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1253 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1254 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1256 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1259 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1260 C++ and Java objects.
1262 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1263 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1264 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1265 configured with '--with-python'.
1267 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1268 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1269 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1270 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1271 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1272 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1273 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1275 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1276 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1277 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1278 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1280 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1281 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1282 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1283 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1285 ** "set print symbol"
1287 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1288 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1289 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1291 * Deprecated commands
1293 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1294 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1298 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1299 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1301 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1302 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1303 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1304 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1309 set mips compression
1310 show mips compression
1311 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1312 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1315 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1317 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1318 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1319 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1320 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1322 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1326 Disable auto-loading globally.
1329 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1331 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1332 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1333 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1335 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1336 show auto-load python-scripts
1337 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1339 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1340 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1341 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1343 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1344 show auto-load libthread-db
1345 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1347 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1348 show auto-load scripts-directory
1349 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1350 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1351 of the directories listed by this option.
1352 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1354 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1355 show auto-load safe-path
1356 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1357 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1359 set debug auto-load on|off
1360 show debug auto-load
1361 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1363 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1365 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1366 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1367 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1368 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1370 set dprintf-function <expr>
1371 show dprintf-function
1372 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1373 show dprintf-channel
1374 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1375 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1377 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1378 show disconnected-dprintf
1379 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1380 after GDB disconnects.
1382 * New configure options
1384 --with-auto-load-dir
1385 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1386 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1387 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1388 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1389 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1391 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1392 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1393 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1395 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1396 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1399 * New remote packets
1401 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1403 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1404 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1405 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1406 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1410 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1411 program without GDB involvement.
1413 * New command line options
1415 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1416 before loading inferior.
1417 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1418 execute it before loading inferior.
1420 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1422 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1423 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1424 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1425 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1428 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1429 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1431 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1432 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1433 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1434 target hardware watchpoint.
1436 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1437 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1438 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1439 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1443 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1444 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1447 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1448 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1449 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1450 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1451 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1454 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1457 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1458 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1459 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1460 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1461 corresponding value.
1463 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1464 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1465 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1468 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1469 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1470 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1471 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1473 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1475 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1478 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1479 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1480 available in the CLI.
1482 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1483 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1484 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1485 "some_type.items()".
1487 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1490 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1491 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1492 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1493 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1494 any anonymous fields.
1498 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1501 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1502 "=breakpoint-modified".
1504 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1506 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1507 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1508 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1511 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1512 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1513 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1514 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1515 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1517 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1518 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1520 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1521 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1522 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1523 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1524 use this option to specify where to find it.
1526 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1527 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1528 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1529 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1530 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1531 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1532 section in the user manual for more details.
1534 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1535 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1536 become available after that.
1538 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
1540 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1541 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1547 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1548 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1552 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1553 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1554 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1556 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1557 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1558 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1560 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1561 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1562 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1563 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1564 name starts with a hyphen.
1566 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1567 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1568 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1569 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1570 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1571 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1572 number of bytes that will be collected.
1575 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1576 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1577 setting the variable trace-notes.
1580 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1581 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1582 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1585 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1586 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1587 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1588 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1589 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1592 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1593 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1594 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1598 set debug dwarf2-read
1599 show debug dwarf2-read
1600 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1601 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1603 set debug symtab-create
1604 show debug symtab-create
1605 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1606 creation. The default is off.
1609 show extended-prompt
1610 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1611 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1612 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1613 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1614 prompt is displayed.
1616 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1617 show print entry-values
1618 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1619 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1620 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1622 set debug entry-values
1623 show debug entry-values
1624 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1625 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1627 set basenames-may-differ
1628 show basenames-may-differ
1629 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1630 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1631 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1632 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1633 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1634 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1635 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1636 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1642 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1643 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1644 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1645 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1647 set trace-stop-notes
1648 show trace-stop-notes
1649 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1650 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1651 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1652 started by someone else.
1654 * New remote packets
1658 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1662 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1666 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1670 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1674 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1677 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1678 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1682 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1686 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1688 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1690 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1692 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1694 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1695 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1696 matches the given regular expression.
1698 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1700 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1701 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1703 * New command line options
1705 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1706 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1708 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1709 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1711 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1712 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1713 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1715 * GDB now understands thread names.
1717 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1718 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1720 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1721 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1724 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1725 has been integrated into GDB.
1729 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1730 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1731 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1733 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1734 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1735 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1736 and allows for more dynamic content.
1738 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1739 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1740 have an is_valid method.
1742 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1743 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1744 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1746 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1748 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1749 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1750 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1751 that function like so:
1753 result = some_value (10,20)
1755 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1756 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1757 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1759 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1760 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1761 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1762 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1763 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1765 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1766 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1768 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1770 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1773 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1774 holds the thread's name.
1776 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1777 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1778 occurring in the process being debugged.
1779 The following events are currently supported:
1780 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1781 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1782 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1786 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1787 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1789 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1791 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1792 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1793 was added to GCC 4.5.
1795 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1796 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1797 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1798 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1799 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1800 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1802 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1803 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1804 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1805 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1806 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1808 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1809 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1810 execution to a label.
1812 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1813 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1814 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1815 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1817 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1818 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1819 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1822 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1824 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1825 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1826 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1827 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1828 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1829 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1832 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1834 While now you see this:
1837 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1839 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1842 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1843 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1844 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1845 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1847 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1848 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1849 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1850 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1851 section in the user manual for more details.
1853 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1855 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1856 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1858 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1860 * New native configurations
1862 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1866 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1868 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1869 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1870 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1871 in the GDB user manual.
1873 * Guile support was removed.
1875 * New features in the GNU simulator
1877 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1879 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1881 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1883 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1885 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1886 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1887 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1888 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1889 was always disabled for such configurations.
1893 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1895 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1896 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1906 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1907 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1908 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1910 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1912 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1913 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1914 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1915 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1917 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1918 mentioned flavors of operators.
1920 ** static const class members
1922 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1923 class definition has been fixed.
1925 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1927 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1928 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1929 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1930 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1931 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1932 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1934 * Static tracepoints
1936 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1937 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1938 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1939 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1940 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1941 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1942 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1943 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1944 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1945 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1946 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1947 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1948 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1949 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1950 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1951 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1952 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1953 the "New remote packets" section below.
1955 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1957 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1958 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1959 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1960 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1964 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1965 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1966 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1967 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1968 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1969 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1970 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1972 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1975 * New remote packets
1979 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1983 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1984 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1985 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1986 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1987 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1988 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1992 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1996 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1999 qXfer:statictrace:read
2001 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2002 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2003 to gdb's qSupported query.
2007 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2011 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2012 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2014 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2015 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2018 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2020 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2021 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2022 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2023 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2025 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2026 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2027 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2028 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2029 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2030 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2031 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2033 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2034 for static tracepoints support.
2036 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2038 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2039 it understands register description.
2041 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2043 * X86 general purpose registers
2045 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2046 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2047 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2048 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2049 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2051 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2052 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2053 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2054 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2055 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2056 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2058 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2059 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2060 in the specified file.
2062 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2063 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2064 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2065 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2066 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2067 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2068 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2069 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2070 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2071 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2075 eval template, expressions...
2076 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2077 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2079 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2080 show target-file-system-kind
2081 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2084 save breakpoints <filename>
2085 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2086 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2087 definitions, use the `source' command.
2089 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2092 info static-tracepoint-markers
2093 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2095 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2096 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2097 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2101 Enable and disable observer mode.
2103 set may-write-registers on|off
2104 set may-write-memory on|off
2105 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2106 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2107 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2108 set may-interrupt on|off
2109 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2110 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2111 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2112 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2113 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2114 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2115 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2117 set record memory-query on|off
2118 show record memory-query
2119 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2120 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2125 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2129 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2130 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2131 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2132 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2133 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2135 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2136 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2137 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2138 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2140 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2141 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2143 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2145 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2147 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2149 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2150 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2151 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2153 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2154 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2155 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2156 regular breakpoints.
2160 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2162 * D language support.
2163 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2166 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2167 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2168 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2169 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2170 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2172 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2173 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2174 conditions of the form:
2176 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2178 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2179 interface mentioned above.
2181 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2185 ** Namespace Support
2187 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2188 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2189 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2190 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2191 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2195 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2196 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2201 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2202 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2206 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2211 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2214 * Multi-program debugging.
2216 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2217 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2218 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2219 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2220 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2221 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2222 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2223 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2225 * New tracing features
2227 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2229 ** Trace state variables
2231 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2232 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2233 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2234 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2235 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2236 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2237 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2238 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2239 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2240 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2244 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2245 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2246 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2247 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2248 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2249 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2250 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2251 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2252 the regular trace command.
2254 ** Disconnected tracing
2256 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2257 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2258 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2259 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2260 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2264 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2265 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2266 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2267 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2268 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2269 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2272 ** Circular trace buffer
2274 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2275 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2276 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2277 not be available for all target agents.
2282 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2283 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2286 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2287 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2290 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2291 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2294 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2295 "set script-extension" (see below).
2297 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2299 record save [<FILENAME>]
2300 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2301 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2303 record restore <FILENAME>
2304 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2305 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2307 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2310 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2311 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2312 inferior has loaded.
2317 maint info program-spaces
2318 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2320 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2321 show remote interrupt-sequence
2322 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2323 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2324 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2325 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2326 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2328 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2329 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2330 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2331 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2334 set remotebreak [on | off]
2336 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2338 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2339 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2342 List trace state variables and their values.
2344 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2345 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2348 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2349 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2351 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2352 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2354 * New expression syntax
2356 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2357 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2361 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2362 show follow-exec-mode
2363 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2364 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2365 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2367 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2368 show default-collect
2369 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2370 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2371 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2373 set disconnected-tracing
2374 show disconnected-tracing
2375 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2376 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2379 set circular-trace-buffer
2380 show circular-trace-buffer
2381 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2382 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2383 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2384 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2386 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2387 show script-extension
2388 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2389 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2390 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2391 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2393 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2395 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2396 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2397 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2398 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2399 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2400 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2401 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2404 * Python API Improvements
2406 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2407 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2408 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2410 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2411 `is_base_class' attribute.
2413 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2415 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2416 evaluate an expression.
2418 * New remote packets
2421 Define a trace state variable.
2424 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2427 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2430 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2433 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2437 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2439 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2440 much more reliable. In particular:
2441 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2442 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2443 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2444 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2445 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2446 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2447 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2448 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2449 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2450 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2451 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2452 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2453 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2454 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2455 non-threaded programs.
2457 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2458 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2459 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2462 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2464 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2465 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2466 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2467 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2468 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2470 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2471 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2472 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2473 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2474 for tracepoint actions.
2476 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2477 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2478 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2480 * Process record and replay
2482 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2483 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2484 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2487 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2488 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2489 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2492 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2493 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2496 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2497 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2498 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2499 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2500 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2501 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2502 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2503 the installation instructions for more information.
2505 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2506 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2507 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2508 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2510 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2511 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2513 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2514 now complete on file names.
2516 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2517 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2518 For instance, consider:
2520 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2521 # struct example variable;
2524 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2525 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2527 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2528 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2530 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2531 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2534 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
2535 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2536 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2538 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2539 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2540 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2541 and simulator targets may also provide them.
2543 * New remote packets
2546 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2549 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2550 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2551 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2554 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2555 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2558 Obtains additional operating system information
2562 Read or write additional signal information.
2564 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2566 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2567 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2568 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2570 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
2571 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
2573 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
2574 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2575 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
2577 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2578 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2580 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2582 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2584 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2585 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2587 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
2588 list of section offsets.
2590 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2591 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2592 have also been fixed.
2594 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
2595 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2596 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
2598 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2601 template<typename T> class C { };
2604 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2606 ptype C<char const *>
2607 ptype C<char const*>
2608 ptype C<const char *>
2609 ptype C<const char*>
2611 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2613 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2614 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2616 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2617 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2618 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2620 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2621 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2623 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2626 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2627 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2629 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2630 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2635 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2636 available is determined at configure time.
2638 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2640 * Ada tasking support
2642 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2646 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2648 Print detailed information about task number N.
2650 Print the task number of the current task.
2652 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2654 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2655 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2657 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2659 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2660 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2661 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2662 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2663 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2664 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2667 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2668 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2671 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2672 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2673 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2674 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2677 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2679 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2680 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2681 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2682 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2683 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2685 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2686 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2687 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2688 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2689 --enable-targets configure option.
2691 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2693 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2694 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2695 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2696 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2697 section in the user manual for more information.
2699 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2700 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2701 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2702 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2703 extensions on linux targets.
2705 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2707 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2708 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2709 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2710 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2711 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2712 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2713 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2714 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2715 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2717 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2719 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2721 maint set python print-stack
2722 maint show python print-stack
2723 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2726 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2731 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2735 Show operating system information about processes.
2738 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2741 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2744 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2747 Kill inferior number NUM.
2751 set spu stop-on-load
2752 show spu stop-on-load
2753 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2755 set spu auto-flush-cache
2756 show spu auto-flush-cache
2757 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2758 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2760 set sh calling-convention
2761 show sh calling-convention
2762 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2765 show debug timestamp
2766 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2768 set disassemble-next-line
2769 show disassemble-next-line
2770 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2773 set remote noack-packet
2774 show remote noack-packet
2775 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2776 under "New remote packets."
2778 set remote query-attached-packet
2779 show remote query-attached-packet
2780 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2782 set remote read-siginfo-object
2783 show remote read-siginfo-object
2784 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2787 set remote write-siginfo-object
2788 show remote write-siginfo-object
2789 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2792 set remote reverse-continue
2793 show remote reverse-continue
2794 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2796 set remote reverse-step
2797 show remote reverse-step
2798 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2800 set displaced-stepping
2801 show displaced-stepping
2802 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2803 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2804 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2807 show debug displaced
2808 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2810 maint set internal-error
2811 maint show internal-error
2812 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2814 maint set internal-warning
2815 maint show internal-warning
2816 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2821 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2823 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2824 show multiple-symbols
2825 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2826 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2827 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2829 set breakpoint always-inserted
2830 show breakpoint always-inserted
2831 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2832 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2833 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2835 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2836 show arm fallback-mode
2837 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2839 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2840 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2841 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2842 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2844 set disable-randomization
2845 show disable-randomization
2846 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2847 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2848 multiple debugging sessions.
2852 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2857 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2858 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2859 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2860 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2862 set target-wide-charset
2863 show target-wide-charset
2864 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2865 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2867 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2869 set tcp connect-timeout
2870 show tcp connect-timeout
2871 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2872 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2873 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2875 set libthread-db-search-path
2876 show libthread-db-search-path
2877 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2880 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2881 show schedule-multiple
2882 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2883 the current process.
2887 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2888 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2889 affecting correctness.
2891 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2892 show interactive-mode
2893 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2894 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2895 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2896 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2897 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2902 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2903 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2904 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2908 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2909 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2910 alias for the `fork' command.
2913 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2914 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2915 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2918 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2919 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2920 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2924 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2925 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2926 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2929 * New native configurations
2931 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2933 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2937 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2938 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2939 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2942 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2943 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2949 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2951 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2953 * New native configurations
2955 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2956 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2960 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2961 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2963 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2965 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2966 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2967 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2968 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2970 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2971 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2973 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2976 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2977 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2978 and in inlined functions.
2980 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2981 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2982 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2984 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2986 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2987 registers on PowerPC targets.
2989 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2990 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2992 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2993 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2995 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2996 extended-remote mode.
2998 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2999 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3000 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3001 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3003 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3004 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3005 target architectures.
3007 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3008 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3009 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3010 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3012 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3015 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3016 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3018 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3019 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3020 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3021 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3023 - Improved command completion in Ada
3026 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3031 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3032 show print frame-arguments
3033 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3034 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3039 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3046 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3048 * New remote packets
3055 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3058 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3062 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3064 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3066 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3067 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3068 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3070 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3071 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3072 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3074 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3075 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3078 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3079 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3081 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3082 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3084 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3086 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3087 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3088 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3090 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3091 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3093 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3094 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3097 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3098 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3099 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3101 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3104 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3105 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3106 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3108 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3110 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3112 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3113 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3114 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3116 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3117 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3119 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3120 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3121 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3122 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3123 Windows and SymbianOS).
3125 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3126 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3128 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3129 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3135 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3136 when debugging using remote targets.
3138 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3139 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3140 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3141 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3142 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3143 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3144 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3146 set breakpoint auto-hw
3147 show breakpoint auto-hw
3148 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3149 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3150 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3151 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3152 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3153 including "next" and "finish".
3156 catch exception unhandled
3157 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3160 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3164 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3165 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3166 an alias to "set sysroot".
3169 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3170 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3173 * New native configurations
3175 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3178 unset tdesc filename
3180 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3181 not query the target for its built-in description.
3185 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3186 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3187 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3189 * New remote packets
3192 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3193 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3195 qXfer:features:read:
3196 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3201 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3202 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3204 qXfer:libraries:read:
3205 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3206 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3207 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3208 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3212 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3220 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3221 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3222 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3223 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3225 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3228 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3229 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3238 * Other removed features
3245 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3252 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3257 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3258 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3263 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3264 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3266 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3268 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3269 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3270 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3271 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3273 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3275 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3276 in debugging information.
3280 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3281 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3283 set mips stack-arg-size
3284 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3286 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3288 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3293 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3295 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3296 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3297 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3299 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3300 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3303 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3304 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3306 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3307 stub provides the required support.
3309 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3310 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3315 unset substitute-path
3316 show substitute-path
3317 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3318 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3319 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3320 between compilation and debugging.
3324 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3325 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3326 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3330 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3332 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3333 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3335 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3337 * New remote packets
3340 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3341 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3342 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3343 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3347 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3348 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3350 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3351 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3352 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3357 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3359 * Removed remote packets
3362 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3363 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3365 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3369 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3371 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3375 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3376 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3378 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3380 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3382 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3383 previously saved state.
3385 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3387 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3389 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3390 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3392 info forks List forks of the user program that
3393 are available to be debugged.
3395 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3396 forks of the user program that are
3397 available to be debugged.
3399 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3400 that are available to be debugged (and
3401 kill the forked process).
3403 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3404 that are available to be debugged (and
3405 allow the process to continue).
3409 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3411 * Improved Windows host support
3413 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3414 native console support, and remote communications using either
3415 network sockets or serial ports.
3417 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3419 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3420 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3421 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3422 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3423 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3424 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3428 The ARM rdi-share module.
3430 The Netware NLM debug server.
3432 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3434 * New native configurations
3436 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3437 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3441 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3443 * New command line options
3445 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3446 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3447 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3448 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3449 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3450 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3451 with the --command (-x) option.
3453 * Deprecated commands removed
3455 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3459 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3460 othernames set arm disassembler
3461 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3462 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3463 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3466 * New BSD user-level threads support
3468 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3469 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3472 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3473 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3474 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3476 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3477 are not yet supported.
3479 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3480 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3482 * REMOVED configurations and files
3484 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3485 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3486 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3488 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3490 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3491 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3494 * VAX floating point support
3496 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3498 * User-defined command support
3500 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3501 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3502 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3504 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3506 * New command line option
3508 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3511 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3513 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3514 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3515 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3516 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3517 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
3519 * Internationalization
3521 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3522 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3523 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3527 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3528 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3529 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3531 * New native configurations
3533 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3537 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3538 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3540 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3542 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3543 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3544 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3547 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3548 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3549 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3559 powerpc bdm protocol
3561 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3562 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3564 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3566 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3567 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3568 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3569 permanently REMOVED.
3578 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3580 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3582 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3583 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3586 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3588 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3589 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3590 IRIX long double values).
3594 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3595 command. This problem has been fixed.
3597 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
3599 * Fix for ``many threads''
3601 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3602 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3605 ptrace: No such process.
3606 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3608 This problem has been fixed.
3610 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3612 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3615 * New ``start'' command.
3617 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3619 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3621 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3622 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3623 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3625 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3626 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3627 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3628 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3629 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3630 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3631 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3632 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3633 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3635 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
3637 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3638 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3639 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3640 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3641 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3643 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3644 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3645 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3647 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3649 * New native configurations
3651 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3652 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3653 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3654 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3655 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3656 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3657 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3659 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3661 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3662 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3663 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3664 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3665 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3666 work, was also included.
3668 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3669 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3679 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3680 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3682 * REMOVED configurations and files
3684 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3685 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3686 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3687 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3688 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3689 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3690 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3691 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3692 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3693 sonymips mips-sony-*
3694 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3696 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3698 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3700 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3701 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3702 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3703 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3706 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3708 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3709 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3710 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3711 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3712 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3713 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3716 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3718 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3720 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3721 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3722 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3724 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3726 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3727 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3729 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3731 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3732 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3733 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3735 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3737 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3738 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3740 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3742 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3743 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3744 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3746 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3748 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3749 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3750 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3752 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3754 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3756 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3757 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3759 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3761 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3762 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3763 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3764 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3766 * Revised SPARC target
3768 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3769 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3770 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3771 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3772 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3776 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3777 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3778 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3781 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3783 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3784 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3787 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3789 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3790 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3791 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3792 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3793 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3794 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3795 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3796 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3797 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3799 * New native configurations
3801 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3802 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3803 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3804 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3805 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3807 * New debugging protocols
3809 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3811 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3813 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3814 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3815 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3817 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3819 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3820 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3821 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3822 permanently REMOVED.
3824 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3825 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3826 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3827 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3828 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3829 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3830 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3831 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3832 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3833 sonymips mips-sony-*
3834 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3836 * REMOVED configurations and files
3838 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3839 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3840 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3841 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3842 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3843 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3844 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3845 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3846 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3847 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3848 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3849 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3850 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3851 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3852 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3853 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3854 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3856 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3860 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3861 integrated into GDB.
3863 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3865 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3866 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3867 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3870 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3871 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3872 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3876 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3877 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3878 remote protocol documentation for details.
3880 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3882 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3883 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3884 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3887 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3889 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3890 per-thread variables.
3892 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3894 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3895 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3897 * Separate debug info.
3899 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3900 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3901 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3902 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3903 and optional debug files.
3905 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3907 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3908 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3911 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3912 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3916 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3917 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3918 considered "useable".
3920 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3922 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3923 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3926 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3928 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3929 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3931 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3933 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3934 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3937 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3939 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3940 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3944 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3945 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3946 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3947 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3948 data, for more informative profiling results.
3950 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3952 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3953 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3954 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3956 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3959 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3960 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3961 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3962 in a subsequent -var-update.
3964 * New native configurations.
3966 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3968 * Multi-arched targets.
3970 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3971 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3973 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3975 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3976 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3977 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3978 permanently REMOVED.
3980 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3981 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3982 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3983 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3984 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3985 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3986 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3987 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3988 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3989 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3990 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3991 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3993 * REMOVED configurations and files
3996 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3997 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3998 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3999 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4000 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4001 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4003 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4004 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4005 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4006 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4007 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4008 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4010 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4012 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4013 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4014 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4015 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4016 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4018 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4020 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4022 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4023 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4024 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4025 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4026 shared libs like mad''.
4028 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4030 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4031 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4032 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4033 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4035 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4037 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4038 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4041 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4042 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4044 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4045 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4047 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4048 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4049 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4050 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4052 * Multi-arched targets.
4054 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4055 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4057 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4058 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4059 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4063 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4066 * New native configurations
4068 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4069 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4070 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4071 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4073 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4075 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4076 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4077 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4078 permanently REMOVED.
4080 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4081 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4082 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4083 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4084 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4085 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4086 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4087 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4088 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4089 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4091 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4092 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4094 * OBSOLETE languages
4096 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4098 * REMOVED configurations and files
4100 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4101 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4102 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4103 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4104 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4106 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4108 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4110 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4111 commands. The default is 1024.
4113 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4115 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4117 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4119 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4120 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4121 from a file into memory (restore).
4123 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4125 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4126 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4127 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4129 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4137 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4138 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4139 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4141 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4142 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4143 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4145 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4146 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4147 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4149 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4150 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4151 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4153 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4155 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4157 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4158 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4159 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4160 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4161 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4162 (notably embedded) targets.
4164 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4166 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4167 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4168 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4169 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4171 * New command line option
4173 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4175 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4177 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4178 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4179 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4180 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4181 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4182 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4183 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4184 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4185 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4186 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4188 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4190 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4191 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4193 * New native configurations
4195 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4196 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4197 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4198 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4202 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4204 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4206 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4207 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4208 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4209 permanently REMOVED.
4211 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4212 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4213 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4214 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4215 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4217 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4219 * REMOVED configurations and files
4221 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4223 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4224 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4225 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4226 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4227 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4228 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4229 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4230 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4231 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4232 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4233 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4235 * Changes to command line processing
4237 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4238 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4240 * Changes to key bindings
4242 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4244 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4246 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4248 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4251 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4253 Numerous documentation fixes.
4255 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4257 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4259 * New native configurations
4261 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4262 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4263 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4264 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4265 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4266 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4270 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4272 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4274 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4276 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4277 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4278 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4279 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4280 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4282 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4283 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4284 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4285 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4286 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4287 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4288 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4289 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4291 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4292 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4294 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4295 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4296 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4297 permanently REMOVED.
4299 * REMOVED configurations and files
4301 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4302 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4304 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4308 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4310 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4311 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4316 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4318 * The MI enabled by default.
4320 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4321 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4322 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4323 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4324 which is now deprecated.
4326 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4328 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4329 main features are supported:
4331 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4333 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4336 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4338 - a Pascal expression parser.
4340 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4342 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4344 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4346 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4347 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4349 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4351 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4353 * Changes in completion.
4355 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4356 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4357 users expect at the shell prompt.
4359 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4360 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4361 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4362 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4363 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4364 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4365 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4367 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4369 * New platform-independent commands:
4371 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4372 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4373 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4375 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4377 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4378 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4379 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4381 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4383 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4384 multi-threaded programs though.
4386 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4388 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4390 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4391 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4394 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4396 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4397 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4398 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4399 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4400 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4403 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4404 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4405 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4407 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4409 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4410 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4412 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4413 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4416 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4417 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4418 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4419 a given linear address.
4421 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4422 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4423 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4425 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4427 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4429 * Changes in documentation.
4431 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4432 Documentation License.
4434 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4437 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4439 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4442 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4443 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4444 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4446 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4448 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4449 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4450 contents of this file.
4454 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4456 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4458 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4460 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4461 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4462 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4463 greater level of detail.
4465 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4467 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4468 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4469 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4472 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4474 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4475 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4476 machines ``out of the box''.
4478 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4479 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4480 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4481 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4482 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4484 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4485 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4486 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4487 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4488 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4490 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4491 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4494 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4497 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4498 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4499 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4500 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4502 * New native configurations
4504 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4505 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4509 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4510 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4511 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4512 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4514 * OBSOLETE configurations
4516 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4517 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4519 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4522 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4523 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4524 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4525 be permanently REMOVED.
4527 * Gould support removed
4529 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4531 * New features for SVR4
4533 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4534 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4535 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4537 * Many C++ enhancements
4539 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4540 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4542 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4544 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4545 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4546 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4547 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4549 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4550 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4552 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
4554 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4555 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4556 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4558 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4559 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4561 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4563 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4564 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4565 include ``set remote P-packet''.
4567 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4569 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4570 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4571 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4573 * ``apropos'' command added.
4575 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4576 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4577 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4581 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4582 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
4583 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4584 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4585 enabled by configuring with:
4587 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4589 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4591 * New native configurations
4593 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4594 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
4595 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
4599 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4600 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4601 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4603 * OBSOLETE configurations
4605 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4607 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4608 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4609 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4610 be permanently REMOVED.
4614 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4615 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4616 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4617 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4618 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4620 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4625 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4627 * set extension-language
4629 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4630 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4631 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4632 set extension-language .c c++
4633 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4634 and their associated languages.
4636 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4638 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4639 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4640 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4644 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4645 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4647 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4648 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4650 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4651 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4652 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4653 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4654 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4655 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4656 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4657 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4659 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4660 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4661 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4662 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4666 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4667 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4668 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4669 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4670 for xdb and dbx commands.
4674 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4675 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4676 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4678 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4679 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4680 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4682 * Debugging across forks
4684 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4689 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4690 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4691 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4693 * GDB remote protocol additions
4695 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4696 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4697 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4698 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4700 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4701 full 64-bit address. The command
4703 set remoteaddresssize 32
4705 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4706 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4709 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4710 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4712 maint packet heythere
4714 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4715 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4718 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4719 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4720 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4722 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4724 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4725 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4726 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4728 * mask-address variable for Mips
4730 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4731 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4732 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4734 * Higher serial baud rates
4736 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4737 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4738 to achieve all of these rates.)
4742 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4743 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4746 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4748 * New native configurations
4750 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4751 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4752 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4753 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4754 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4755 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4756 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4760 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4761 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4762 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4763 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4764 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4765 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4766 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4767 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4768 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4769 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4770 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4772 * New debugging protocols
4774 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4775 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4776 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4777 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4778 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4779 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4783 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4784 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4789 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4790 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4792 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4794 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4795 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4796 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4798 * Live range splitting
4800 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4801 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4802 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4806 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4807 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4811 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4812 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4813 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4818 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4823 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4824 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4825 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4826 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4827 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4828 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4832 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4833 the symbol at the specified address.
4837 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4838 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4839 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4840 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4841 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4845 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4846 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4847 of most MIPS variants.
4851 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4852 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4853 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4857 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4858 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4859 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4860 the possible architectures.
4862 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4864 * New native configurations
4866 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4867 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4868 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4869 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4870 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4871 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4875 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4876 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4877 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4878 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4879 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4881 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4885 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4886 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4887 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4888 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4889 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4893 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4895 * Windows 95/NT native
4897 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4898 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4899 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4900 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4901 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4903 * dont-repeat command
4905 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4906 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4907 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4908 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4910 * Send break instead of ^C
4912 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4913 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4914 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4916 * Remote protocol timeout
4918 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4919 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4920 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4922 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4924 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4925 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4926 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4927 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4928 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4930 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4931 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4932 automatically on hpux10.
4934 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4936 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4938 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4940 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4941 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4942 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4943 every character. The default value is 1050.
4945 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4947 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4948 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4949 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4950 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4951 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4952 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4954 * Speedups for remote debugging
4956 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4957 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4958 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4960 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4962 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4963 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4965 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4967 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4969 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4970 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4972 * Remote targets use caching
4974 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4975 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4976 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4977 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4978 off' turns the the data cache off.
4980 * Remote targets may have threads
4982 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4983 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4984 gdb/remote.c for details.
4988 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4989 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4990 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4991 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4992 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4993 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4994 sequence is something like
4996 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4998 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5002 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5003 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5004 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5005 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5006 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5007 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5008 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5009 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5013 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5014 but does simplify configuration and building.
5018 GDB now supports hpux10.
5020 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5022 * New native configurations
5024 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5025 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5026 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5027 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5031 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5032 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5033 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5034 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5037 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5039 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5040 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5041 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5042 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5043 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5045 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5047 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5048 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5051 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5053 To execute the command use:
5056 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5057 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5058 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5060 * New `if' and `while' commands
5062 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5063 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5064 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5065 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5066 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5067 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5068 if the expression is zero.
5070 * Fortran source language mode
5072 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5073 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5074 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5075 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5078 * Better HPUX support
5080 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5081 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5082 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5083 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5084 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5090 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5091 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5097 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5098 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5101 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5102 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5104 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5106 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5107 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5108 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5109 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5110 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5111 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5113 * New DOS host serial code
5115 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5116 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5119 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5121 * New "complete" command
5123 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5124 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5126 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5128 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5129 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5131 * Breakpoint hit counts
5133 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5134 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5135 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5136 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5137 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5140 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5142 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5143 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5144 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5146 * Shared library breakpoints
5148 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5149 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5151 * Hardware watchpoints
5153 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5154 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5156 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5160 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5161 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5163 * Improved Irix 5 support
5165 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5167 * Improved HPPA support
5169 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5171 * New native configurations
5173 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5174 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5175 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5176 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5180 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5181 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5184 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5186 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5187 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5191 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5192 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5194 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5196 * Irix 5 is now supported
5200 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5201 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5202 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5203 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5204 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5207 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5209 * User visible changes:
5213 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5214 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5215 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5216 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5217 debugging info for the mips target).
5219 * DEC Alpha native support
5221 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5222 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5223 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5224 Alpha-specific notes.
5226 * Preliminary thread implementation
5228 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5230 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5232 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5233 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5236 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5238 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5239 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5240 call methods, ...etc.
5242 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5244 * User visible changes:
5246 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5247 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5248 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5249 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5251 Filename completion now works.
5253 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5254 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5255 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5257 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5258 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5259 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5260 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5261 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5265 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5266 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5269 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5273 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5274 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5275 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5279 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5280 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5281 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5282 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5283 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5287 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5288 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5289 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5291 * New targets supported
5293 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5294 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5295 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5296 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5297 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5299 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5300 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5301 GO32 memory extender.
5303 * New remote protocols
5305 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5307 * New source languages supported
5309 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5310 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5311 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5314 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5316 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5318 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5319 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5320 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5321 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5322 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5323 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5325 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5327 * Faster and better demangling
5329 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5330 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5331 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5332 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5333 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5334 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5337 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5338 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5339 compiler does not actually implement.
5341 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5343 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5344 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5345 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5346 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5347 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5348 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5351 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5352 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5354 * Improved configure script
5356 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5357 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5358 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5359 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5361 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5362 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5363 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5364 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5365 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5366 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5368 * Documentation improvements
5370 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5371 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5372 before submitting changes.
5374 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5375 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5376 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5377 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5378 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5380 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5381 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5382 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5383 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5384 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5385 around this problem.
5389 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5390 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5391 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5394 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5395 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5397 * New native hosts supported
5399 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5400 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5402 * New targets supported
5404 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5406 * New file formats supported
5408 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5409 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5413 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5415 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5416 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5418 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5419 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5420 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5422 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5423 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5425 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5426 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5427 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5430 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5431 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5432 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5433 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5434 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5436 * Internal improvements
5438 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5439 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5441 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5442 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5443 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5444 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5445 shared code that handles any of them.
5447 * New command line options
5449 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5453 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5454 General Public License.
5456 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5458 * Host/native/target split
5460 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5461 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5462 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5463 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5464 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5466 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5467 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5468 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5469 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5470 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5471 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5472 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5474 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5475 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5476 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5478 * New hosts supported
5480 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5481 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5482 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5484 * New targets supported
5486 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5487 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5489 * New native hosts supported
5491 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5492 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5493 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5495 * New file formats supported
5497 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5498 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5499 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5503 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5504 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5505 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5507 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5509 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5510 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5511 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5512 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5516 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5517 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5518 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5520 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5524 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5525 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5528 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5529 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5531 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5532 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5533 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5534 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5535 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5536 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5538 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5539 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5540 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5541 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5545 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5546 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5547 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5548 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5549 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5551 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5552 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5553 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5554 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5558 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5559 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5560 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5561 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5562 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5563 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5564 each instruction being stepped through.
5566 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5567 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5569 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5570 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5571 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5572 processor with a serial port.
5576 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5577 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5578 supported, and what files each one uses.
5582 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5583 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5584 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5585 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5587 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5588 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5589 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5590 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5594 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5595 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5596 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5597 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5598 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5601 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5604 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5606 * Better support for C++ function names
5608 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5609 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5610 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5611 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5612 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5614 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5615 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5616 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5617 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5618 for the list of formats.
5620 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5622 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5623 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5624 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5625 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5626 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5627 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5630 * New 'maintenance' command
5632 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5633 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5634 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5636 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5637 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5638 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5639 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5640 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5641 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5643 The following commands are new:
5645 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5646 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5647 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5649 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5651 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5652 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5653 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5654 read after argv processing.
5656 * New hosts supported
5658 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5660 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5662 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5663 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5664 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5665 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5666 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5669 * New targets supported
5671 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5673 * More smarts about finding #include files
5675 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5676 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5677 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5678 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5679 the one that contains your sources.
5681 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5682 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5683 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5685 * Interesting infernals change
5687 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5688 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5689 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5690 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5692 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5694 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5695 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5696 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5698 See the ChangeLog for details.
5700 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5702 * New machines supported (host and target)
5704 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5706 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5708 * New malloc package
5710 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5711 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5712 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5713 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5714 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5715 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5719 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5720 'help info proc' for details.
5722 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5724 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5725 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5728 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5730 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5731 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5732 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5733 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5734 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5735 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5737 * Cross byte order fixes
5739 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5740 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5742 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5744 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5745 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5746 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5747 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5748 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5749 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5750 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5751 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5752 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5753 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5755 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5756 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5757 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5758 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5760 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5761 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5762 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5765 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5767 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5768 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5769 shared across multiple host platforms.
5771 * longjmp() handling
5773 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5774 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5775 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5776 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5780 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5781 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5786 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5787 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5788 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5790 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5792 * New machines supported (host and target)
5794 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5796 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5797 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5799 * New machines supported (target)
5801 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5805 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5806 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5807 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5809 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5810 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5811 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5812 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5813 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5816 * New features for SVR4
5818 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5819 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5820 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5822 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5823 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5824 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5826 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5829 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5831 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5832 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5833 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5834 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5835 same code linked statically.
5839 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5840 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5841 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5842 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5843 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5844 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5848 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5849 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5850 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5853 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5855 * New machines supported (host and target)
5857 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5858 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5859 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5861 * Almost SCO Unix support
5863 We had hoped to support:
5864 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5865 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5866 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5867 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5869 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5871 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5872 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5873 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5879 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5880 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5881 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5885 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5886 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5887 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5889 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5891 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5892 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5893 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5895 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5896 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5897 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5898 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5901 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5902 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5903 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5904 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5907 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5908 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5911 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5912 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5913 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5916 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5918 * Improved configuration
5920 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5921 Porting BFD is simpler.
5925 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5926 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5927 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5928 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5932 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5934 * New host supported (not target)
5936 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5939 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5941 * Multiple source language support
5943 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5944 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5945 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5946 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5947 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5948 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5952 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5953 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5954 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5955 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5957 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5958 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5959 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5961 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5962 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5966 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5967 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5968 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5969 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5972 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5974 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5975 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5976 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5977 examining core files.
5981 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5984 * New machines supported (host and target)
5986 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5987 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5988 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5990 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5992 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5994 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5996 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5997 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5998 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6000 * New remote interfaces
6006 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6010 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6012 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6013 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6014 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6015 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6016 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6017 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6018 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6019 stub on the target system.
6021 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6023 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6024 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6025 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6027 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6028 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6031 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6033 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6034 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6036 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6037 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6038 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6040 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6041 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6042 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6043 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6045 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6046 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6047 it is already running. Default is ON.
6049 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6050 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6051 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6052 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6055 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6056 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6057 or the value of the environment variable
6060 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6061 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6064 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6065 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6066 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6068 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6069 history expansion will be performed on
6070 command line input. The default is OFF.
6072 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6073 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6074 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6076 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6077 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6078 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6081 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6082 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6083 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6086 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6087 ``set width'' instead.
6089 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6090 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6091 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6092 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6094 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6097 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6100 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6103 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6106 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6108 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6109 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6110 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6114 * Support for Shared Libraries
6116 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6117 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6118 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6119 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6120 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6121 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6122 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6123 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6125 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6126 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6127 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6129 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6134 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6135 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6136 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6137 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6138 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6139 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6141 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6143 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6145 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6146 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6147 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6150 * C++ multiple inheritance
6152 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6155 * C++ exception handling
6157 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6158 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6159 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6162 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6163 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6164 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6166 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6167 current stack frame.
6170 * Minor command changes
6172 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6173 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6174 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6176 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6177 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6178 frames without printing.
6180 * New directory command
6182 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6183 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6184 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6185 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6186 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6188 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6190 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6193 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6194 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6195 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6196 where the program that you are debugging will run.