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.
10 set validate-build-id (on|off)
11 show validate-build-id
12 Inferior shared library and symbol file may contain unique build-id.
13 If both build-ids are present but they do not match then this setting
14 enables (off) or disables (on) loading of such symbol file.
16 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
18 ** library-list-svr4 contains also optional attribute 'build-id' for
19 each library. GDB does not load library with build-id that
20 does not match such attribute.
22 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
24 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
25 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
26 including advance SIMD instructions.
28 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
30 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
31 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
32 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
33 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
34 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
35 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
36 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
38 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
40 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
42 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
43 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
46 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
47 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
48 and may include things like its command line arguments.
50 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
51 is now available on all platforms.
53 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
54 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
55 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
56 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
57 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
58 backward compatibility.
60 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
61 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
62 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
63 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
65 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
66 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
67 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
68 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
71 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
73 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
75 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
76 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
77 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
78 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
79 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
80 See "New remote packets" below.
82 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
83 available register groups, including target specific groups.
85 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
86 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
87 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
88 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
93 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
97 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
98 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
99 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
100 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
101 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
102 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
103 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
104 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
105 "const" version of the value respectively.
109 maint print symbol-cache
110 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
112 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
113 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
115 maint flush-symbol-cache
116 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
120 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
123 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
127 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
130 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
131 Support for bound table investigation on Intel(R) MPX enabled applications.
135 Start branch trace recording using Intel(R) Processor Trace format.
138 Print information about branch tracing internals.
140 maint btrace packet-history
141 Print the raw branch tracing data.
143 maint btrace clear-packet-history
144 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
147 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
148 anew by the next "record" command.
153 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
155 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
158 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
159 show debug dwarf-read
160 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
162 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
163 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
164 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
165 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
167 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
168 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
169 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
170 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
173 show debug dwarf-line
174 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
178 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
179 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
180 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
181 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
183 set history remove-duplicates
184 show history remove-duplicates
185 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
187 maint set symbol-cache-size
188 maint show symbol-cache-size
189 Control the size of the symbol cache.
191 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
192 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
194 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
195 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
197 set debug linux-namespaces
198 show debug linux-namespaces
199 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
201 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
202 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
203 Intel(R) Processor Trace format.
204 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
205 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
207 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
208 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
211 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
212 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
214 * Python/Guile scripting
216 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
217 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
221 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
222 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
224 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
225 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
228 Enable Intel(R) Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
229 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
233 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel(R) Processor
237 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
238 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
239 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
243 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
244 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
247 Return information about files on the remote system.
250 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
251 create a process running on the remote system.
254 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
255 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
256 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
257 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
260 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
263 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
265 vforkdone stop reason
266 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
267 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
269 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
270 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
271 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
272 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
273 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
274 whether these features are enabled.
276 * Extended-remote fork events
278 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
279 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
280 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
281 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
283 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
284 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
285 the btrace record target.
286 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
288 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
289 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
291 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
294 * Removed command line options
296 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
298 * Removed targets and native configurations
300 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
301 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
303 * New configure options
306 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
307 Intel(R) Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
309 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
310 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
311 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
312 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
314 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
318 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
320 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
322 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
326 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
327 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
328 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
329 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
330 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
331 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
332 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
333 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
334 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
335 selecting a new file to debug.
336 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
337 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
339 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
342 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
343 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
344 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
345 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
347 * New Python-based convenience functions:
349 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
350 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
351 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
352 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
354 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
355 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
356 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
357 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
358 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
359 interface with this new feature are:
361 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
362 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
366 demangle [-l language] [--] name
367 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
368 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
369 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
370 as "maint demangler-warning".
372 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
373 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
375 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
376 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
379 maint print user-registers
380 List all currently available "user" registers.
382 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
383 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
384 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
386 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
387 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
388 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
391 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
392 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
393 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
394 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
397 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
398 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
399 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
400 switched threads meanwhile.
402 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
404 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
405 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
406 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
407 is now the default mode.
411 set debug symbol-lookup
412 show debug symbol-lookup
413 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
417 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
418 inferiors that have exited.
422 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
426 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
428 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
429 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
430 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
431 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
432 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
434 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
435 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
436 its alias "share", instead.
438 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
440 * New command line options
443 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
445 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
446 as specified in ISO C99.
448 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
449 with or without disassembly.
453 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
454 available is determined at configure time.
455 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
456 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
458 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
462 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
466 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
468 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
469 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
471 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
472 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
476 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
477 show print symbol-loading
478 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
479 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
480 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
483 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
484 show guile print-stack
485 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
487 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
488 show auto-load guile-scripts
489 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
491 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
492 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
493 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
494 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
495 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
496 usage of this option.
498 set auto-connect-native-target
500 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
501 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
502 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
504 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
505 show record btrace replay-memory-access
506 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
508 maint set target-async (on|off)
509 maint show target-async
510 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
511 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
512 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
513 occurring only in synchronous mode.
515 set mi-async (on|off)
517 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
518 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
520 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
521 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
523 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
524 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
525 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
526 "set target-async on" command.
528 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
530 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
531 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
532 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
533 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
534 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
536 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
537 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
538 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
540 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
541 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
542 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
543 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
544 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
545 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
546 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
548 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
549 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
551 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
552 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
553 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
555 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
556 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
559 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
561 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
562 remote. It now works with all targets.
564 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
565 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
566 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
567 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
568 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
569 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
570 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
571 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
572 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
575 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
576 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
577 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
579 * GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
581 * Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
582 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
583 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
587 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
588 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
589 branch trace incrementally.
593 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
594 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
596 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
597 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
598 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
599 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
600 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
603 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
605 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
606 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
607 its alias "share", instead.
609 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
610 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
615 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
616 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
617 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
618 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
619 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
620 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
621 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
622 commands and CLI execution commands.
624 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
626 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
627 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
628 recording has been added.
630 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
632 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
633 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
635 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
636 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
637 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
638 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
639 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
640 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
643 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
645 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
647 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
648 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
649 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
650 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
655 (gdb) info registers rax
658 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
659 "*value not available*".
661 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
666 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
667 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
668 ** Line tables representation has been added.
669 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
670 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
671 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
675 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
676 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
677 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
679 * Removed native configurations
681 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
682 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
684 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
685 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
686 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
687 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
688 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
689 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
690 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
694 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
696 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
698 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
700 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
703 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
705 maint set|show per-command
706 maint set|show per-command space
707 maint set|show per-command time
708 maint set|show per-command symtab
709 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
711 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
712 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
713 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
714 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
715 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
718 info exceptions REGEXP
719 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
720 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
725 set debug symfile off|on
727 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
728 symbol tables within those files
730 set print raw frame-arguments
731 show print raw frame-arguments
732 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
733 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
735 set remote trace-status-packet
736 show remote trace-status-packet
737 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
741 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
745 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
747 set startup-with-shell
748 show startup-with-shell
749 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
754 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
755 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
757 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
758 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
759 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
760 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
763 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
764 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
765 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
767 * New command-line options
769 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
771 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
772 buffer in Common Trace Format.
774 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
777 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
779 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
780 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
782 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
783 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
785 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
786 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
787 due to an uncaught signal.
791 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
792 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
793 command, which should contain "language-option".
795 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
796 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
798 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
799 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
800 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
801 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
802 "undefined-command-error-code".
804 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
807 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
809 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
810 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
813 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
814 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
816 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
817 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
818 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
820 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
821 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
822 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
823 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
824 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
825 "exec-run-start-option".
827 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
828 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
830 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
831 the new "info exceptions" command.
833 * New system-wide configuration scripts
834 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
835 configuration scripts for the following systems:
839 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
840 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
841 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
844 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
845 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
847 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
848 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
849 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
855 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
856 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
857 involvemement at each single-step.
859 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
860 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
861 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
862 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
863 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
864 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
867 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
869 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
870 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
872 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
873 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
874 trace state variables.
876 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
879 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
880 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
882 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
884 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
885 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
886 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
887 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
889 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
891 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
892 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
893 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
894 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
896 set|show record full insn-number-max
897 set|show record full stop-at-limit
898 set|show record full memory-query
900 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
901 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
902 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
903 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
904 This new recording method can be enabled using:
908 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
909 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
911 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
912 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
913 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
915 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
916 instruction granularity
918 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
921 * New native configurations
923 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
924 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
925 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
926 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
930 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
931 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
932 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
933 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
934 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
936 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
937 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
938 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
939 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
940 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
941 --data-directory command-line option.
943 * New command line options:
945 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
946 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
948 * Removed command line options
950 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
953 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
956 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
960 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
962 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
964 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
966 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
968 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
969 of architecture in the Python API.
971 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
972 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
974 * New Python-based convenience functions:
976 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
977 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
979 ** $_regex(str, regex)
981 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
984 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
985 default for GCC since November 2000.
987 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
989 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
990 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
992 * New configure options
994 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
995 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
996 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
997 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
998 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
999 options allow the user to override that default.
1000 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1001 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1002 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1004 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1007 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1008 conditions to be attached.
1011 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1013 python-interactive [command]
1015 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1016 and print the result of expressions.
1019 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1021 enable type-printer [name]...
1022 disable type-printer [name]...
1023 Enable or disable type printers.
1027 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1028 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1033 set print type methods (on|off)
1034 show print type methods
1035 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1036 The default is to show them.
1038 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1039 show print type typedefs
1040 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1041 The default is to show them.
1043 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1044 show filename-display
1045 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1046 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1048 set trace-buffer-size
1049 show trace-buffer-size
1050 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1052 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1053 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1054 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1058 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1061 set debug coff-pe-read
1062 show debug coff-pe-read
1063 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1068 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1071 set debug notification
1072 show debug notification
1073 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1077 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1078 "=cmd-param-changed".
1079 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1080 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1081 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1082 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1083 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1084 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1085 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1086 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1088 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1089 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1090 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1091 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1092 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1093 library load/unload events.
1094 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1095 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1096 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1097 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1098 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1099 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1100 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1101 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1103 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1104 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1105 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1106 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1108 * New remote packets
1111 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1112 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1115 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1116 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1120 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1121 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1124 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1125 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1127 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1129 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1130 for more x32 ABI info.
1132 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1134 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1136 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1137 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1138 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1139 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1140 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1141 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1142 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1143 "info os msg" lists message queues
1144 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1146 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1147 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1148 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1149 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1150 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1151 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1153 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1154 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1155 record/replay support.
1157 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1161 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1164 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1166 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1167 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1169 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1171 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1172 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1174 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1175 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1176 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1179 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1180 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1182 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1183 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1184 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1186 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1187 object associated with a PC value.
1189 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1190 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1192 * Go language support.
1193 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1196 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1197 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1199 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1200 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1202 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1203 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1204 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1205 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1206 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1209 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1210 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1211 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1212 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1214 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1215 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1217 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1218 since December 2007.
1220 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1221 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1222 command does. For instance:
1224 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1226 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1227 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1228 created, using the "condition" command.
1230 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1231 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1233 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1235 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1236 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1237 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1238 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1239 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1240 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1241 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1242 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1244 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1245 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1246 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1247 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1248 the .gdb_index section.
1250 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1252 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1257 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1259 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1263 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1264 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1265 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1267 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1268 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1270 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1273 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1274 C++ and Java objects.
1276 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1277 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1278 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1279 configured with '--with-python'.
1281 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1282 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1283 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1284 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1285 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1286 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1287 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1289 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1290 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1291 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1292 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1294 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1295 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1296 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1297 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1299 ** "set print symbol"
1301 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1302 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1303 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1305 * Deprecated commands
1307 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1308 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1312 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1313 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1315 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1316 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1317 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1318 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1323 set mips compression
1324 show mips compression
1325 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1326 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1329 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1331 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1332 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1333 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1334 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1336 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1340 Disable auto-loading globally.
1343 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1345 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1346 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1347 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1349 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1350 show auto-load python-scripts
1351 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1353 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1354 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1355 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1357 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1358 show auto-load libthread-db
1359 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1361 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1362 show auto-load scripts-directory
1363 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1364 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1365 of the directories listed by this option.
1366 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1368 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1369 show auto-load safe-path
1370 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1371 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1373 set debug auto-load on|off
1374 show debug auto-load
1375 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1377 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1379 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1380 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1381 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1382 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1384 set dprintf-function <expr>
1385 show dprintf-function
1386 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1387 show dprintf-channel
1388 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1389 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1391 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1392 show disconnected-dprintf
1393 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1394 after GDB disconnects.
1396 * New configure options
1398 --with-auto-load-dir
1399 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1400 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1401 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1402 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1403 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1405 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1406 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1407 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1409 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1410 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1413 * New remote packets
1415 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1417 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1418 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1419 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1420 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1424 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1425 program without GDB involvement.
1427 * New command line options
1429 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1430 before loading inferior.
1431 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1432 execute it before loading inferior.
1434 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1436 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1437 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1438 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1439 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1442 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1443 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1445 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1446 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1447 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1448 target hardware watchpoint.
1450 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1451 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1452 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1453 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1457 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1458 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1461 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1462 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1463 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1464 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1465 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1468 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1471 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1472 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1473 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1474 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1475 corresponding value.
1477 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1478 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1479 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1482 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1483 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1484 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1485 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1487 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1489 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1492 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1493 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1494 available in the CLI.
1496 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1497 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1498 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1499 "some_type.items()".
1501 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1504 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1505 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1506 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1507 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1508 any anonymous fields.
1512 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1515 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1516 "=breakpoint-modified".
1518 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1520 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1521 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1522 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1525 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1526 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1527 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1528 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1529 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1531 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1532 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1534 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1535 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1536 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1537 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1538 use this option to specify where to find it.
1540 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1541 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1542 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1543 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1544 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1545 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1546 section in the user manual for more details.
1548 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1549 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1550 become available after that.
1552 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
1554 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1555 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1561 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1562 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1566 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1567 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1568 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1570 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1571 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1572 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1574 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1575 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1576 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1577 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1578 name starts with a hyphen.
1580 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1581 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1582 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1583 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1584 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1585 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1586 number of bytes that will be collected.
1589 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1590 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1591 setting the variable trace-notes.
1594 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1595 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1596 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1599 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1600 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1601 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1602 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1603 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1606 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1607 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1608 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1612 set debug dwarf2-read
1613 show debug dwarf2-read
1614 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1615 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1617 set debug symtab-create
1618 show debug symtab-create
1619 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1620 creation. The default is off.
1623 show extended-prompt
1624 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1625 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1626 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1627 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1628 prompt is displayed.
1630 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1631 show print entry-values
1632 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1633 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1634 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1636 set debug entry-values
1637 show debug entry-values
1638 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1639 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1641 set basenames-may-differ
1642 show basenames-may-differ
1643 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1644 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1645 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1646 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1647 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1648 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1649 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1650 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1656 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1657 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1658 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1659 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1661 set trace-stop-notes
1662 show trace-stop-notes
1663 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1664 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1665 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1666 started by someone else.
1668 * New remote packets
1672 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1676 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1680 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1684 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1688 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1691 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1692 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1696 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1700 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1702 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1704 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1706 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1708 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1709 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1710 matches the given regular expression.
1712 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1714 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1715 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1717 * New command line options
1719 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1720 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1722 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1723 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1725 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1726 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1727 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1729 * GDB now understands thread names.
1731 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1732 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1734 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1735 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1738 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1739 has been integrated into GDB.
1743 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1744 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1745 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1747 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1748 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1749 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1750 and allows for more dynamic content.
1752 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1753 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1754 have an is_valid method.
1756 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1757 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1758 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1760 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1762 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1763 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1764 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1765 that function like so:
1767 result = some_value (10,20)
1769 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1770 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1771 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1773 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1774 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1775 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1776 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1777 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1779 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1780 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1782 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1784 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1787 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1788 holds the thread's name.
1790 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1791 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1792 occurring in the process being debugged.
1793 The following events are currently supported:
1794 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1795 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1796 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1800 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1801 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1803 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1805 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1806 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1807 was added to GCC 4.5.
1809 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1810 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1811 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1812 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1813 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1814 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1816 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1817 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1818 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1819 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1820 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1822 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1823 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1824 execution to a label.
1826 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1827 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1828 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1829 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1831 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1832 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1833 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1836 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1838 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1839 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1840 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1841 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1842 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1843 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1846 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1848 While now you see this:
1851 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1853 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1856 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1857 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1858 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1859 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1861 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1862 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1863 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1864 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1865 section in the user manual for more details.
1867 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1869 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1870 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1872 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1874 * New native configurations
1876 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1880 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1882 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1883 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1884 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1885 in the GDB user manual.
1887 * Guile support was removed.
1889 * New features in the GNU simulator
1891 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1893 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1895 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1897 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1899 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1900 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1901 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1902 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1903 was always disabled for such configurations.
1907 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1909 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1910 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1920 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1921 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1922 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1924 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1926 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1927 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1928 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1929 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1931 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1932 mentioned flavors of operators.
1934 ** static const class members
1936 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1937 class definition has been fixed.
1939 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1941 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1942 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1943 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1944 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1945 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1946 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1948 * Static tracepoints
1950 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1951 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1952 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1953 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1954 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1955 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1956 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1957 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1958 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1959 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1960 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1961 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1962 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1963 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1964 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1965 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1966 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1967 the "New remote packets" section below.
1969 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1971 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1972 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1973 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1974 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1978 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1979 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1980 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1981 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1982 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1983 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1984 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1986 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1989 * New remote packets
1993 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1997 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1998 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1999 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2000 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2001 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2002 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2006 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2010 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2013 qXfer:statictrace:read
2015 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2016 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2017 to gdb's qSupported query.
2021 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2025 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2026 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2028 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2029 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2032 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2034 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2035 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2036 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2037 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2039 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2040 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2041 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2042 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2043 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2044 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2045 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2047 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2048 for static tracepoints support.
2050 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2052 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2053 it understands register description.
2055 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2057 * X86 general purpose registers
2059 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2060 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2061 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2062 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2063 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2065 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2066 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2067 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2068 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2069 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2070 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2072 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2073 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2074 in the specified file.
2076 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2077 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2078 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2079 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2080 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2081 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2082 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2083 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2084 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2085 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2089 eval template, expressions...
2090 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2091 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2093 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2094 show target-file-system-kind
2095 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2098 save breakpoints <filename>
2099 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2100 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2101 definitions, use the `source' command.
2103 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2106 info static-tracepoint-markers
2107 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2109 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2110 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2111 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2115 Enable and disable observer mode.
2117 set may-write-registers on|off
2118 set may-write-memory on|off
2119 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2120 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2121 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2122 set may-interrupt on|off
2123 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2124 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2125 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2126 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2127 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2128 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2129 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2131 set record memory-query on|off
2132 show record memory-query
2133 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2134 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2139 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2143 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2144 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2145 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2146 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2147 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2149 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2150 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2151 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2152 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2154 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2155 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2157 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2159 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2161 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2163 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2164 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2165 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2167 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2168 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2169 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2170 regular breakpoints.
2174 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2176 * D language support.
2177 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2180 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2181 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2182 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2183 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2184 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2186 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2187 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2188 conditions of the form:
2190 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2192 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2193 interface mentioned above.
2195 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2199 ** Namespace Support
2201 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2202 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2203 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2204 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2205 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2209 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2210 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2215 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2216 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2220 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2225 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2228 * Multi-program debugging.
2230 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2231 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2232 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2233 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2234 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2235 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2236 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2237 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2239 * New tracing features
2241 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2243 ** Trace state variables
2245 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2246 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2247 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2248 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2249 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2250 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2251 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2252 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2253 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2254 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2258 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2259 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2260 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2261 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2262 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2263 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2264 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2265 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2266 the regular trace command.
2268 ** Disconnected tracing
2270 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2271 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2272 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2273 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2274 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2278 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2279 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2280 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2281 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2282 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2283 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2286 ** Circular trace buffer
2288 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2289 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2290 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2291 not be available for all target agents.
2296 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2297 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2300 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2301 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2304 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2305 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2308 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2309 "set script-extension" (see below).
2311 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2313 record save [<FILENAME>]
2314 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2315 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2317 record restore <FILENAME>
2318 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2319 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2321 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2324 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2325 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2326 inferior has loaded.
2331 maint info program-spaces
2332 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2334 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2335 show remote interrupt-sequence
2336 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2337 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2338 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2339 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2340 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2342 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2343 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2344 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2345 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2348 set remotebreak [on | off]
2350 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2352 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2353 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2356 List trace state variables and their values.
2358 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2359 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2362 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2363 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2365 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2366 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2368 * New expression syntax
2370 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2371 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2375 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2376 show follow-exec-mode
2377 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2378 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2379 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2381 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2382 show default-collect
2383 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2384 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2385 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2387 set disconnected-tracing
2388 show disconnected-tracing
2389 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2390 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2393 set circular-trace-buffer
2394 show circular-trace-buffer
2395 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2396 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2397 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2398 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2400 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2401 show script-extension
2402 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2403 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2404 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2405 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2407 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2409 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2410 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2411 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2412 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2413 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2414 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2415 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2418 * Python API Improvements
2420 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2421 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2422 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2424 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2425 `is_base_class' attribute.
2427 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2429 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2430 evaluate an expression.
2432 * New remote packets
2435 Define a trace state variable.
2438 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2441 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2444 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2447 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2451 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2453 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2454 much more reliable. In particular:
2455 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2456 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2457 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2458 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2459 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2460 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2461 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2462 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2463 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2464 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2465 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2466 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2467 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2468 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2469 non-threaded programs.
2471 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2472 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2473 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2476 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2478 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2479 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2480 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2481 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2482 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2484 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2485 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2486 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2487 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2488 for tracepoint actions.
2490 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2491 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2492 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2494 * Process record and replay
2496 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2497 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2498 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2501 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2502 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2503 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2506 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2507 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2510 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2511 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2512 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2513 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2514 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2515 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2516 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2517 the installation instructions for more information.
2519 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2520 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2521 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2522 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2524 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2525 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2527 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2528 now complete on file names.
2530 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2531 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2532 For instance, consider:
2534 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2535 # struct example variable;
2538 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2539 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2541 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2542 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2544 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2545 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2548 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
2549 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2550 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2552 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2553 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2554 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2555 and simulator targets may also provide them.
2557 * New remote packets
2560 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2563 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2564 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2565 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2568 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2569 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2572 Obtains additional operating system information
2576 Read or write additional signal information.
2578 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2580 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2581 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2582 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2584 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
2585 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
2587 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
2588 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2589 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
2591 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2592 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2594 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2596 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2598 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2599 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2601 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
2602 list of section offsets.
2604 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2605 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2606 have also been fixed.
2608 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
2609 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2610 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
2612 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2615 template<typename T> class C { };
2618 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2620 ptype C<char const *>
2621 ptype C<char const*>
2622 ptype C<const char *>
2623 ptype C<const char*>
2625 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2627 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2628 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2630 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2631 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2632 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2634 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2635 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2637 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2640 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2641 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2643 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2644 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2649 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2650 available is determined at configure time.
2652 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2654 * Ada tasking support
2656 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2660 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2662 Print detailed information about task number N.
2664 Print the task number of the current task.
2666 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2668 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2669 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2671 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2673 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2674 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2675 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2676 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2677 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2678 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2681 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2682 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2685 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2686 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2687 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2688 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2691 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2693 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2694 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2695 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2696 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2697 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2699 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2700 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2701 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2702 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2703 --enable-targets configure option.
2705 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2707 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2708 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2709 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2710 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2711 section in the user manual for more information.
2713 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2714 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2715 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2716 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2717 extensions on linux targets.
2719 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2721 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2722 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2723 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2724 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2725 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2726 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2727 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2728 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2729 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2731 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2733 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2735 maint set python print-stack
2736 maint show python print-stack
2737 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2740 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2745 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2749 Show operating system information about processes.
2752 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2755 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2758 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2761 Kill inferior number NUM.
2765 set spu stop-on-load
2766 show spu stop-on-load
2767 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2769 set spu auto-flush-cache
2770 show spu auto-flush-cache
2771 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2772 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2774 set sh calling-convention
2775 show sh calling-convention
2776 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2779 show debug timestamp
2780 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2782 set disassemble-next-line
2783 show disassemble-next-line
2784 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2787 set remote noack-packet
2788 show remote noack-packet
2789 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2790 under "New remote packets."
2792 set remote query-attached-packet
2793 show remote query-attached-packet
2794 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2796 set remote read-siginfo-object
2797 show remote read-siginfo-object
2798 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2801 set remote write-siginfo-object
2802 show remote write-siginfo-object
2803 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2806 set remote reverse-continue
2807 show remote reverse-continue
2808 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2810 set remote reverse-step
2811 show remote reverse-step
2812 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2814 set displaced-stepping
2815 show displaced-stepping
2816 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2817 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2818 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2821 show debug displaced
2822 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2824 maint set internal-error
2825 maint show internal-error
2826 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2828 maint set internal-warning
2829 maint show internal-warning
2830 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2835 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2837 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2838 show multiple-symbols
2839 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2840 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2841 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2843 set breakpoint always-inserted
2844 show breakpoint always-inserted
2845 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2846 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2847 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2849 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2850 show arm fallback-mode
2851 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2853 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2854 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2855 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2856 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2858 set disable-randomization
2859 show disable-randomization
2860 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2861 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2862 multiple debugging sessions.
2866 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2871 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2872 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2873 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2874 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2876 set target-wide-charset
2877 show target-wide-charset
2878 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2879 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2881 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2883 set tcp connect-timeout
2884 show tcp connect-timeout
2885 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2886 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2887 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2889 set libthread-db-search-path
2890 show libthread-db-search-path
2891 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2894 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2895 show schedule-multiple
2896 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2897 the current process.
2901 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2902 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2903 affecting correctness.
2905 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2906 show interactive-mode
2907 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2908 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2909 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2910 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2911 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2916 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2917 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2918 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2922 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2923 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2924 alias for the `fork' command.
2927 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2928 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2929 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2932 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2933 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2934 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2938 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2939 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2940 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2943 * New native configurations
2945 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2947 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2951 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2952 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2953 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2956 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2957 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2963 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2965 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2967 * New native configurations
2969 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2970 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2974 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2975 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2977 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2979 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2980 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2981 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2982 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2984 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2985 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2987 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2990 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2991 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2992 and in inlined functions.
2994 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2995 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2996 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2998 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3000 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3001 registers on PowerPC targets.
3003 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3004 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3006 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3007 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3009 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3010 extended-remote mode.
3012 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3013 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3014 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3015 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3017 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3018 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3019 target architectures.
3021 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3022 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3023 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3024 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3026 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3029 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3030 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3032 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3033 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3034 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3035 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3037 - Improved command completion in Ada
3040 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3045 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3046 show print frame-arguments
3047 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3048 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3053 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3060 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3062 * New remote packets
3069 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3072 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3076 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3078 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3080 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3081 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3082 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3084 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3085 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3086 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3088 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3089 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3092 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3093 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3095 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3096 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3098 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3100 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3101 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3102 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3104 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3105 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3107 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3108 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3111 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3112 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3113 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3115 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3118 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3119 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3120 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3122 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3124 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3126 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3127 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3128 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3130 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3131 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3133 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3134 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3135 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3136 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3137 Windows and SymbianOS).
3139 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3140 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3142 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3143 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3149 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3150 when debugging using remote targets.
3152 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3153 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3154 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3155 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3156 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3157 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3158 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3160 set breakpoint auto-hw
3161 show breakpoint auto-hw
3162 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3163 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3164 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3165 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3166 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3167 including "next" and "finish".
3170 catch exception unhandled
3171 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3174 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3178 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3179 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3180 an alias to "set sysroot".
3183 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3184 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3187 * New native configurations
3189 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3192 unset tdesc filename
3194 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3195 not query the target for its built-in description.
3199 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3200 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3201 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3203 * New remote packets
3206 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3207 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3209 qXfer:features:read:
3210 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3215 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3216 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3218 qXfer:libraries:read:
3219 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3220 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3221 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3222 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3226 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3234 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3235 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3236 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3237 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3239 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3242 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3243 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3252 * Other removed features
3259 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3266 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3271 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3272 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3277 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3278 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3280 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3282 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3283 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3284 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3285 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3287 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3289 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3290 in debugging information.
3294 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3295 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3297 set mips stack-arg-size
3298 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3300 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3302 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3307 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3309 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3310 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3311 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3313 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3314 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3317 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3318 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3320 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3321 stub provides the required support.
3323 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3324 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3329 unset substitute-path
3330 show substitute-path
3331 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3332 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3333 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3334 between compilation and debugging.
3338 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3339 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3340 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3344 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3346 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3347 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3349 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3351 * New remote packets
3354 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3355 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3356 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3357 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3361 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3362 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3364 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3365 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3366 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3371 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3373 * Removed remote packets
3376 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3377 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3379 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3383 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3385 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3389 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3390 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3392 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3394 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3396 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3397 previously saved state.
3399 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3401 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3403 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3404 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3406 info forks List forks of the user program that
3407 are available to be debugged.
3409 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3410 forks of the user program that are
3411 available to be debugged.
3413 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3414 that are available to be debugged (and
3415 kill the forked process).
3417 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3418 that are available to be debugged (and
3419 allow the process to continue).
3423 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3425 * Improved Windows host support
3427 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3428 native console support, and remote communications using either
3429 network sockets or serial ports.
3431 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3433 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3434 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3435 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3436 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3437 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3438 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3442 The ARM rdi-share module.
3444 The Netware NLM debug server.
3446 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3448 * New native configurations
3450 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3451 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3455 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3457 * New command line options
3459 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3460 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3461 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3462 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3463 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3464 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3465 with the --command (-x) option.
3467 * Deprecated commands removed
3469 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3473 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3474 othernames set arm disassembler
3475 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3476 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3477 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3480 * New BSD user-level threads support
3482 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3483 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3486 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3487 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3488 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3490 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3491 are not yet supported.
3493 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3494 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3496 * REMOVED configurations and files
3498 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3499 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3500 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3502 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3504 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3505 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3508 * VAX floating point support
3510 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3512 * User-defined command support
3514 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3515 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3516 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3518 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3520 * New command line option
3522 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3525 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3527 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3528 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3529 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3530 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3531 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
3533 * Internationalization
3535 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3536 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3537 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3541 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3542 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3543 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3545 * New native configurations
3547 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3551 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3552 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3554 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3556 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3557 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3558 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3561 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3562 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3563 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3573 powerpc bdm protocol
3575 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3576 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3578 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3580 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3581 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3582 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3583 permanently REMOVED.
3592 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3594 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3596 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3597 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3600 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3602 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3603 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3604 IRIX long double values).
3608 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3609 command. This problem has been fixed.
3611 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
3613 * Fix for ``many threads''
3615 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3616 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3619 ptrace: No such process.
3620 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3622 This problem has been fixed.
3624 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3626 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3629 * New ``start'' command.
3631 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3633 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3635 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3636 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3637 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3639 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3640 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3641 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3642 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3643 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3644 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3645 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3646 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3647 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3649 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
3651 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3652 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3653 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3654 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3655 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3657 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3658 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3659 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3661 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3663 * New native configurations
3665 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3666 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3667 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3668 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3669 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3670 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3671 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3673 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3675 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3676 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3677 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3678 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3679 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3680 work, was also included.
3682 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3683 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3693 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3694 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3696 * REMOVED configurations and files
3698 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3699 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3700 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3701 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3702 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3703 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3704 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3705 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3706 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3707 sonymips mips-sony-*
3708 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3710 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3712 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3714 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3715 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3716 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3717 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3720 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3722 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3723 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3724 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3725 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3726 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3727 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3730 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3732 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3734 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3735 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3736 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3738 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3740 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3741 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3743 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3745 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3746 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3747 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3749 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3751 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3752 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3754 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3756 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3757 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3758 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3760 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3762 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3763 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3764 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3766 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3768 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3770 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3771 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3773 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3775 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3776 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3777 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3778 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3780 * Revised SPARC target
3782 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3783 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3784 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3785 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3786 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3790 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3791 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3792 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3795 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3797 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3798 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3801 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3803 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3804 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3805 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3806 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3807 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3808 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3809 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3810 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3811 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3813 * New native configurations
3815 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3816 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3817 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3818 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3819 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3821 * New debugging protocols
3823 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3825 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3827 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3828 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3829 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3831 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3833 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3834 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3835 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3836 permanently REMOVED.
3838 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3839 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3840 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3841 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3842 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3843 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3844 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3845 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3846 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3847 sonymips mips-sony-*
3848 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3850 * REMOVED configurations and files
3852 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3853 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3854 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3855 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3856 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3857 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3858 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3859 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3860 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3861 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3862 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3863 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3864 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3865 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3866 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3867 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3868 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3870 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3874 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3875 integrated into GDB.
3877 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3879 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3880 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3881 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3884 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3885 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3886 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3890 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3891 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3892 remote protocol documentation for details.
3894 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3896 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3897 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3898 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3901 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3903 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3904 per-thread variables.
3906 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3908 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3909 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3911 * Separate debug info.
3913 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3914 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3915 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3916 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3917 and optional debug files.
3919 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3921 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3922 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3925 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3926 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3930 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3931 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3932 considered "useable".
3934 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3936 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3937 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3940 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3942 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3943 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3945 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3947 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3948 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3951 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3953 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3954 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3958 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3959 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3960 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3961 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3962 data, for more informative profiling results.
3964 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3966 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3967 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3968 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3970 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3973 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3974 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3975 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3976 in a subsequent -var-update.
3978 * New native configurations.
3980 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3982 * Multi-arched targets.
3984 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3985 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3987 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3989 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3990 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3991 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3992 permanently REMOVED.
3994 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3995 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3996 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3997 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3998 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3999 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4000 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4001 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4002 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4003 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4004 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4005 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4007 * REMOVED configurations and files
4010 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4011 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4012 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4013 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4014 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4015 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4017 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4018 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4019 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4020 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4021 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4022 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4024 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4026 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4027 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4028 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4029 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4030 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4032 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4034 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4036 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4037 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4038 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4039 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4040 shared libs like mad''.
4042 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4044 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4045 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4046 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4047 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4049 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4051 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4052 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4055 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4056 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4058 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4059 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4061 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4062 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4063 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4064 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4066 * Multi-arched targets.
4068 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4069 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4071 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4072 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4073 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4077 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4080 * New native configurations
4082 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4083 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4084 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4085 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4087 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4089 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4090 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4091 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4092 permanently REMOVED.
4094 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4095 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4096 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4097 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4098 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4099 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4100 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4101 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4102 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4103 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4105 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4106 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4108 * OBSOLETE languages
4110 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4112 * REMOVED configurations and files
4114 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4115 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4116 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4117 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4118 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4120 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4122 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4124 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4125 commands. The default is 1024.
4127 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4129 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4131 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4133 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4134 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4135 from a file into memory (restore).
4137 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4139 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4140 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4141 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4143 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4151 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4152 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4153 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4155 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4156 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4157 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4159 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4160 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4161 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4163 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4164 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4165 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4167 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4169 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4171 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4172 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4173 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4174 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4175 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4176 (notably embedded) targets.
4178 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4180 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4181 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4182 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4183 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4185 * New command line option
4187 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4189 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4191 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4192 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4193 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4194 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4195 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4196 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4197 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4198 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4199 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4200 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4202 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4204 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4205 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4207 * New native configurations
4209 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4210 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4211 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4212 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4216 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4218 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4220 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4221 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4222 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4223 permanently REMOVED.
4225 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4226 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4227 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4228 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4229 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4231 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4233 * REMOVED configurations and files
4235 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4237 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4238 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4239 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4240 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4241 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4242 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4243 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4244 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4245 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4246 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4247 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4249 * Changes to command line processing
4251 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4252 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4254 * Changes to key bindings
4256 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4258 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4260 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4262 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4265 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4267 Numerous documentation fixes.
4269 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4271 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4273 * New native configurations
4275 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4276 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4277 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4278 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4279 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4280 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4284 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4286 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4288 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4290 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4291 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4292 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4293 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4294 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4296 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4297 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4298 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4299 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4300 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4301 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4302 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4303 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4305 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4306 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4308 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4309 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4310 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4311 permanently REMOVED.
4313 * REMOVED configurations and files
4315 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4316 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4318 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4322 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4324 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4325 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4330 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4332 * The MI enabled by default.
4334 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4335 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4336 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4337 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4338 which is now deprecated.
4340 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4342 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4343 main features are supported:
4345 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4347 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4350 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4352 - a Pascal expression parser.
4354 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4356 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4358 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4360 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4361 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4363 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4365 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4367 * Changes in completion.
4369 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4370 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4371 users expect at the shell prompt.
4373 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4374 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4375 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4376 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4377 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4378 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4379 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4381 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4383 * New platform-independent commands:
4385 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4386 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4387 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4389 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4391 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4392 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4393 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4395 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4397 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4398 multi-threaded programs though.
4400 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4402 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4404 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4405 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4408 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4410 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4411 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4412 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4413 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4414 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4417 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4418 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4419 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4421 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4423 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4424 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4426 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4427 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4430 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4431 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4432 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4433 a given linear address.
4435 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4436 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4437 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4439 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4441 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4443 * Changes in documentation.
4445 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4446 Documentation License.
4448 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4451 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4453 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4456 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4457 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4458 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4460 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4462 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4463 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4464 contents of this file.
4468 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4470 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4472 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4474 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4475 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4476 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4477 greater level of detail.
4479 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4481 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4482 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4483 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4486 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4488 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4489 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4490 machines ``out of the box''.
4492 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4493 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4494 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4495 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4496 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4498 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4499 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4500 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4501 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4502 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4504 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4505 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4508 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4511 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4512 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4513 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4514 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4516 * New native configurations
4518 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4519 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4523 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4524 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4525 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4526 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4528 * OBSOLETE configurations
4530 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4531 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4533 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4536 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4537 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4538 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4539 be permanently REMOVED.
4541 * Gould support removed
4543 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4545 * New features for SVR4
4547 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4548 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4549 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4551 * Many C++ enhancements
4553 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4554 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4556 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4558 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4559 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4560 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4561 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4563 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4564 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4566 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
4568 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4569 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4570 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4572 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4573 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4575 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4577 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4578 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4579 include ``set remote P-packet''.
4581 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4583 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4584 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4585 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4587 * ``apropos'' command added.
4589 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4590 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4591 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4595 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4596 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
4597 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4598 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4599 enabled by configuring with:
4601 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4603 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4605 * New native configurations
4607 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4608 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
4609 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
4613 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4614 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4615 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4617 * OBSOLETE configurations
4619 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4621 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4622 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4623 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4624 be permanently REMOVED.
4628 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4629 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4630 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4631 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4632 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4634 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4639 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4641 * set extension-language
4643 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4644 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4645 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4646 set extension-language .c c++
4647 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4648 and their associated languages.
4650 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4652 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4653 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4654 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4658 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4659 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4661 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4662 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4664 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4665 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4666 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4667 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4668 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4669 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4670 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4671 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4673 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4674 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4675 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4676 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4680 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4681 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4682 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4683 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4684 for xdb and dbx commands.
4688 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4689 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4690 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4692 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4693 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4694 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4696 * Debugging across forks
4698 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4703 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4704 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4705 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4707 * GDB remote protocol additions
4709 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4710 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4711 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4712 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4714 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4715 full 64-bit address. The command
4717 set remoteaddresssize 32
4719 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4720 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4723 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4724 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4726 maint packet heythere
4728 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4729 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4732 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4733 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4734 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4736 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4738 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4739 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4740 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4742 * mask-address variable for Mips
4744 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4745 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4746 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4748 * Higher serial baud rates
4750 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4751 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4752 to achieve all of these rates.)
4756 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4757 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4760 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4762 * New native configurations
4764 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4765 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4766 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4767 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4768 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4769 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4770 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4774 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4775 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4776 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4777 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4778 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4779 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4780 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4781 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4782 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4783 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4784 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4786 * New debugging protocols
4788 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4789 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4790 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4791 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4792 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4793 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4797 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4798 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4803 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4804 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4806 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4808 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4809 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4810 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4812 * Live range splitting
4814 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4815 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4816 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4820 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4821 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4825 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4826 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4827 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4832 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4837 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4838 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4839 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4840 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4841 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4842 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4846 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4847 the symbol at the specified address.
4851 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4852 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4853 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4854 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4855 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4859 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4860 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4861 of most MIPS variants.
4865 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4866 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4867 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4871 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4872 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4873 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4874 the possible architectures.
4876 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4878 * New native configurations
4880 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4881 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4882 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4883 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4884 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4885 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4889 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4890 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4891 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4892 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4893 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4895 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4899 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4900 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4901 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4902 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4903 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4907 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4909 * Windows 95/NT native
4911 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4912 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4913 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4914 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4915 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4917 * dont-repeat command
4919 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4920 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4921 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4922 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4924 * Send break instead of ^C
4926 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4927 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4928 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4930 * Remote protocol timeout
4932 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4933 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4934 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4936 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4938 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4939 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4940 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4941 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4942 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4944 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4945 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4946 automatically on hpux10.
4948 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4950 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4952 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4954 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4955 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4956 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4957 every character. The default value is 1050.
4959 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4961 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4962 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4963 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4964 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4965 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4966 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4968 * Speedups for remote debugging
4970 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4971 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4972 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4974 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4976 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4977 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4979 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4981 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4983 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4984 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4986 * Remote targets use caching
4988 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4989 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4990 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4991 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4992 off' turns the the data cache off.
4994 * Remote targets may have threads
4996 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4997 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4998 gdb/remote.c for details.
5002 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5003 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5004 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5005 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5006 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5007 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5008 sequence is something like
5010 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5012 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5016 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5017 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5018 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5019 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5020 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5021 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5022 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5023 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5027 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5028 but does simplify configuration and building.
5032 GDB now supports hpux10.
5034 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5036 * New native configurations
5038 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5039 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5040 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5041 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5045 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5046 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5047 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5048 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5051 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5053 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5054 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5055 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5056 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5057 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5059 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5061 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5062 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5065 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5067 To execute the command use:
5070 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5071 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5072 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5074 * New `if' and `while' commands
5076 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5077 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5078 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5079 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5080 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5081 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5082 if the expression is zero.
5084 * Fortran source language mode
5086 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5087 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5088 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5089 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5092 * Better HPUX support
5094 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5095 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5096 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5097 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5098 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5104 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5105 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5111 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5112 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5115 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5116 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5118 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5120 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5121 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5122 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5123 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5124 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5125 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5127 * New DOS host serial code
5129 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5130 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5133 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5135 * New "complete" command
5137 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5138 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5140 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5142 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5143 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5145 * Breakpoint hit counts
5147 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5148 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5149 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5150 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5151 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5154 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5156 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5157 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5158 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5160 * Shared library breakpoints
5162 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5163 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5165 * Hardware watchpoints
5167 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5168 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5170 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5174 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5175 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5177 * Improved Irix 5 support
5179 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5181 * Improved HPPA support
5183 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5185 * New native configurations
5187 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5188 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5189 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5190 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5194 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5195 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5198 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5200 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5201 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5205 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5206 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5208 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5210 * Irix 5 is now supported
5214 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5215 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5216 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5217 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5218 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5221 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5223 * User visible changes:
5227 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5228 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5229 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5230 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5231 debugging info for the mips target).
5233 * DEC Alpha native support
5235 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5236 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5237 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5238 Alpha-specific notes.
5240 * Preliminary thread implementation
5242 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5244 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5246 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5247 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5250 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5252 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5253 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5254 call methods, ...etc.
5256 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5258 * User visible changes:
5260 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5261 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5262 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5263 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5265 Filename completion now works.
5267 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5268 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5269 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5271 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5272 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5273 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5274 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5275 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5279 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5280 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5283 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5287 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5288 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5289 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5293 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5294 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5295 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5296 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5297 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5301 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5302 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5303 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5305 * New targets supported
5307 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5308 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5309 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5310 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5311 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5313 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5314 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5315 GO32 memory extender.
5317 * New remote protocols
5319 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5321 * New source languages supported
5323 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5324 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5325 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5328 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5330 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5332 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5333 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5334 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5335 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5336 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5337 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5339 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5341 * Faster and better demangling
5343 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5344 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5345 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5346 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5347 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5348 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5351 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5352 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5353 compiler does not actually implement.
5355 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5357 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5358 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5359 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5360 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5361 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5362 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5365 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5366 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5368 * Improved configure script
5370 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5371 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5372 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5373 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5375 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5376 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5377 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5378 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5379 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5380 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5382 * Documentation improvements
5384 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5385 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5386 before submitting changes.
5388 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5389 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5390 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5391 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5392 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5394 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5395 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5396 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5397 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5398 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5399 around this problem.
5403 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5404 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5405 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5408 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5409 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5411 * New native hosts supported
5413 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5414 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5416 * New targets supported
5418 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5420 * New file formats supported
5422 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5423 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5427 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5429 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5430 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5432 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5433 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5434 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5436 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5437 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5439 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5440 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5441 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5444 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5445 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5446 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5447 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5448 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5450 * Internal improvements
5452 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5453 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5455 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5456 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5457 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5458 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5459 shared code that handles any of them.
5461 * New command line options
5463 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5467 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5468 General Public License.
5470 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5472 * Host/native/target split
5474 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5475 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5476 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5477 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5478 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5480 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5481 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5482 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5483 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5484 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5485 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5486 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5488 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5489 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5490 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5492 * New hosts supported
5494 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5495 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5496 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5498 * New targets supported
5500 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5501 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5503 * New native hosts supported
5505 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5506 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5507 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5509 * New file formats supported
5511 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5512 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5513 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5517 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5518 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5519 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5521 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5523 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5524 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5525 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5526 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5530 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5531 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5532 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5534 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5538 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5539 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5542 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5543 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5545 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5546 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5547 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5548 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5549 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5550 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5552 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5553 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5554 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5555 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5559 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5560 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5561 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5562 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5563 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5565 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5566 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5567 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5568 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5572 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5573 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5574 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5575 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5576 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5577 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5578 each instruction being stepped through.
5580 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5581 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5583 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5584 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5585 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5586 processor with a serial port.
5590 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5591 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5592 supported, and what files each one uses.
5596 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5597 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5598 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5599 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5601 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5602 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5603 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5604 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5608 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5609 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5610 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5611 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5612 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5615 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5618 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5620 * Better support for C++ function names
5622 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5623 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5624 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5625 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5626 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5628 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5629 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5630 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5631 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5632 for the list of formats.
5634 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5636 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5637 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5638 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5639 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5640 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5641 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5644 * New 'maintenance' command
5646 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5647 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5648 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5650 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5651 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5652 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5653 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5654 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5655 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5657 The following commands are new:
5659 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5660 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5661 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5663 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5665 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5666 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5667 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5668 read after argv processing.
5670 * New hosts supported
5672 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5674 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5676 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5677 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5678 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5679 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5680 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5683 * New targets supported
5685 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5687 * More smarts about finding #include files
5689 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5690 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5691 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5692 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5693 the one that contains your sources.
5695 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5696 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5697 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5699 * Interesting infernals change
5701 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5702 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5703 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5704 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5706 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5708 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5709 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5710 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5712 See the ChangeLog for details.
5714 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5716 * New machines supported (host and target)
5718 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5720 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5722 * New malloc package
5724 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5725 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5726 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5727 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5728 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5729 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5733 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5734 'help info proc' for details.
5736 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5738 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5739 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5742 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5744 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5745 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5746 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5747 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5748 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5749 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5751 * Cross byte order fixes
5753 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5754 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5756 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5758 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5759 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5760 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5761 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5762 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5763 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5764 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5765 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5766 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5767 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5769 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5770 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5771 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5772 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5774 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5775 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5776 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5779 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5781 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5782 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5783 shared across multiple host platforms.
5785 * longjmp() handling
5787 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5788 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5789 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5790 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5794 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5795 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5800 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5801 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5802 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5804 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5806 * New machines supported (host and target)
5808 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5810 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5811 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5813 * New machines supported (target)
5815 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5819 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5820 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5821 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5823 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5824 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5825 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5826 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5827 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5830 * New features for SVR4
5832 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5833 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5834 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5836 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5837 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5838 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5840 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5843 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5845 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5846 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5847 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5848 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5849 same code linked statically.
5853 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5854 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5855 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5856 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5857 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5858 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5862 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5863 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5864 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5867 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5869 * New machines supported (host and target)
5871 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5872 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5873 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5875 * Almost SCO Unix support
5877 We had hoped to support:
5878 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5879 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5880 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5881 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5883 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5885 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5886 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5887 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5893 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5894 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5895 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5899 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5900 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5901 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5903 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5905 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5906 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5907 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5909 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5910 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5911 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5912 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5915 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5916 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5917 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5918 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5921 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5922 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5925 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5926 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5927 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5930 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5932 * Improved configuration
5934 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5935 Porting BFD is simpler.
5939 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5940 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5941 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5942 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5946 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5948 * New host supported (not target)
5950 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5953 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5955 * Multiple source language support
5957 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5958 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5959 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5960 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5961 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5962 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5966 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5967 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5968 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5969 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5971 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5972 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5973 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5975 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5976 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5980 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5981 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5982 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5983 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5986 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5988 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5989 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5990 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5991 examining core files.
5995 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5998 * New machines supported (host and target)
6000 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6001 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6002 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6004 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6006 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6008 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6010 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6011 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6012 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6014 * New remote interfaces
6020 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6024 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6026 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6027 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6028 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6029 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6030 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6031 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6032 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6033 stub on the target system.
6035 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6037 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6038 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6039 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6041 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6042 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6045 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6047 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6048 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6050 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6051 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6052 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6054 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6055 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6056 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6057 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6059 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6060 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6061 it is already running. Default is ON.
6063 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6064 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6065 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6066 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6069 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6070 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6071 or the value of the environment variable
6074 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6075 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6078 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6079 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6080 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6082 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6083 history expansion will be performed on
6084 command line input. The default is OFF.
6086 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6087 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6088 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6090 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6091 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6092 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6095 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6096 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6097 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6100 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6101 ``set width'' instead.
6103 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6104 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6105 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6106 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6108 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6111 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6114 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6117 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6120 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6122 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6123 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6124 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6128 * Support for Shared Libraries
6130 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6131 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6132 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6133 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6134 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6135 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6136 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6137 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6139 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6140 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6141 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6143 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6148 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6149 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6150 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6151 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6152 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6153 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6155 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6157 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6159 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6160 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6161 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6164 * C++ multiple inheritance
6166 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6169 * C++ exception handling
6171 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6172 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6173 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6176 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6177 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6178 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6180 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6181 current stack frame.
6184 * Minor command changes
6186 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6187 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6188 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6190 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6191 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6192 frames without printing.
6194 * New directory command
6196 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6197 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6198 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6199 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6200 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6202 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6204 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6207 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6208 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6209 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6210 where the program that you are debugging will run.