1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 11
8 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
11 * GDB now supports general memory tagging functionality if the underlying
12 architecture supports the proper primitives and hooks. Currently this is
13 enabled only for AArch64 MTE.
17 - Additional information when the inferior crashes with a SIGSEGV caused by
18 a memory tag violation.
20 - A new modifier 'm' for the "x" command, which displays allocation tags for a
21 particular memory range.
23 - Display of memory tag mismatches by "print", for addresses and
24 pointers, if memory tagging is supported by the architecture.
26 * Building GDB now requires GMP (The GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic
31 ** '-break-insert --qualified' and '-dprintf-insert --qualified'
33 The MI -break-insert and -dprintf-insert commands now support a
34 new "--qualified" option that makes GDB interpret a specified
35 function name as a complete fully-qualified name. This is the
36 equivalent of the CLI's "break -qualified" and "dprintf
39 ** '-break-insert --force-condition' and '-dprintf-insert --force-condition'
41 The MI -break-insert and -dprintf-insert commands now support a
42 '--force-condition' flag to forcibly define a condition even when
43 the condition is invalid at all locations of the breakpoint. This
44 is equivalent to the '-force-condition' flag of the CLI's "break"
47 ** '-break-condition --force'
49 The MI -break-condition command now supports a '--force' flag to
50 forcibly define a condition even when the condition is invalid at
51 all locations of the selected breakpoint. This is equivalent to
52 the '-force' flag of the CLI's "cond" command.
54 ** '-file-list-exec-source-files [--group-by-objfile]
55 [--basename | --dirname]
58 The existing -file-list-exec-source-files command now takes an
59 optional REGEXP which is used to filter the source files that are
60 included in the results.
62 By default REGEXP is matched against the full filename of the
63 source file. When one of --basename or --dirname is given then
64 REGEXP is only matched against the specified part of the full
67 When the optional --group-by-objfile flag is used the output
68 format is changed, the results are now a list of object files
69 (executable and libraries) with the source files that are
70 associated with each object file.
72 The results from -file-list-exec-source-files now include a
73 'debug-fully-read' field which takes the value 'true' or 'false'.
74 A 'true' value indicates the source file is from a compilation
75 unit that has had its debug information fully read in by GDB, a
76 value of 'false' indicates GDB has only performed a partial scan
77 of the debug information so far.
79 * GDB now supports core file debugging for x86_64 Cygwin programs.
81 * GDB will now look for the .gdbinit file in a config directory before
82 looking for ~/.gdbinit. The file is searched for in the following
83 locations: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gdb/gdbinit, $HOME/.config/gdb/gdbinit,
84 $HOME/.gdbinit. On Apple hosts the search order is instead:
85 $HOME/Library/Preferences/gdb/gdbinit, $HOME/.gdbinit.
87 * GDB now supports fixed point types which are described in DWARF
88 as base types with a fixed-point encoding. Additionally, support
89 for the DW_AT_GNU_numerator and DW_AT_GNU_denominator has also
92 For Ada, this allows support for fixed point types without requiring
93 the use of the GNAT encoding (based on information added to the type's
94 name following a GNAT-specific format).
96 * GDB will now load and process commands from ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit
97 or ~/.gdbearlyinit if these files are present. These files are
98 processed earlier than any of the other initialization files and
99 can affect parts of GDB's startup that previously had already been
100 completed before the initialization files were read, for example
101 styling of the initial GDB greeting.
103 * GDB now has two new options "--early-init-command" and
104 "--early-init-eval-command" with corresponding short options "-eix"
105 and "-eiex" that allow options (that would normally appear in a
106 gdbearlyinit file) to be passed on the command line.
108 * For RISC-V targets, the target feature "org.gnu.gdb.riscv.vector" is
109 now understood by GDB, and can be used to describe the vector
110 registers of a target. The precise requirements of this register
111 feature are documented in the GDB manual.
115 ** TUI windows now support mouse actions. The mouse wheel scrolls
116 the appropriate window.
118 ** Key combinations that do not have a specific action on the
119 focused window are passed to GDB. For example, you now can use
120 Ctrl-Left/Ctrl-Right to move between words in the command window
121 regardless of which window is in focus. Previously you would
122 need to focus on the command window for such key combinations to
128 show debug event-loop
129 Control the display of debug output about GDB's event loop.
131 set print memory-tag-violations
132 show print memory-tag-violations
133 Control whether to display additional information about memory tag violations
134 when printing pointers and addresses. Architecture support for memory
135 tagging is required for this option to have an effect.
137 maintenance flush symbol-cache
138 maintenance flush register-cache
139 These new commands are equivalent to the already existing commands
140 'maintenance flush-symbol-cache' and 'flushregs' respectively.
142 maintenance flush dcache
143 A new command to flush the dcache.
145 maintenance info target-sections
146 Print GDB's internal target sections table.
148 memory-tag show-logical-tag POINTER
149 Print the logical tag for POINTER.
150 memory-tag with-logical-tag POINTER TAG
151 Print POINTER with logical tag TAG.
152 memory-tag show-allocation-tag ADDRESS
153 Print the allocation tag for ADDRESS.
154 memory-tag set-allocation-tag ADDRESS LENGTH TAGS
155 Set the allocation tag for [ADDRESS, ADDRESS + LENGTH) to TAGS.
156 memory-tag check POINTER
157 Validate that POINTER's logical tag matches the allocation tag.
159 set startup-quietly on|off
161 When 'on', this causes GDB to act as if "-silent" were passed on the
162 command line. This command needs to be added to an early
163 initialization file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in order to
166 set print type hex on|off
168 When 'on', the 'ptype' command uses hexadecimal notation to print sizes
169 and offsets of struct members. When 'off', decimal notation is used.
171 set python ignore-environment on|off
172 show python ignore-environment
173 When 'on', this causes GDB's builtin Python to ignore any
174 environment variables that would otherwise affect how Python
175 behaves. This command needs to be added to an early initialization
176 file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in order to affect GDB.
178 set python dont-write-bytecode auto|on|off
179 show python dont-write-bytecode
180 When 'on', this causes GDB's builtin Python to not write any
181 byte-code (.pyc files) to disk. This command needs to be added to
182 an early initialization file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in
183 order to affect GDB. When 'off' byte-code will always be written.
184 When set to 'auto' (the default) Python will check the
185 PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE environment variable.
189 break [PROBE_MODIFIER] [LOCATION] [thread THREADNUM]
190 [-force-condition] [if CONDITION]
191 This command would previously refuse setting a breakpoint if the
192 CONDITION expression is invalid at a location. It now accepts and
193 defines the breakpoint if there is at least one location at which
194 the CONDITION is valid. The locations for which the CONDITION is
195 invalid, are automatically disabled. If CONDITION is invalid at all
196 of the locations, setting the breakpoint is still rejected. However,
197 the '-force-condition' flag can be used in this case for forcing GDB to
198 define the breakpoint, making all the current locations automatically
199 disabled. This may be useful if the user knows the condition will
200 become meaningful at a future location, e.g. due to a shared library
203 condition [-force] N COND
204 The behavior of this command is changed the same way for the 'break'
205 command as explained above. The '-force' flag can be used to force
206 GDB into defining the condition even when COND is invalid for all the
207 current locations of breakpoint N.
210 maintenance flush-symbol-cache
211 These commands are deprecated in favor of the new commands
212 'maintenance flush register-cache' and 'maintenance flush
213 symbol-cache' respectively.
215 set style version foreground COLOR
216 set style version background COLOR
217 set style version intensity VALUE
218 Control the styling of GDB's version number text.
221 When the ID parameter is omitted, then this command prints information
222 about the current inferior. When the ID parameter is present, the
223 behavior of the command is unchanged and have the inferior ID become
224 the current inferior.
226 maintenance info sections
227 The ALLOBJ keyword has been replaced with an -all-objects command
228 line flag. It is now possible to filter which sections are printed
229 even when -all-objects is passed.
231 ptype[/FLAGS] TYPE | EXPRESSION
232 The 'ptype' command has two new flags. When '/x' is set, hexadecimal
233 notation is used when printing sizes and offsets of struct members.
234 When '/d' is set, decimal notation is used when printing sizes and
235 offsets of struct members. Default behavior is given by 'show print
239 The info sources command output has been restructured. The results
240 are now based around a list of objfiles (executable and libraries),
241 and for each objfile the source files that are part of that objfile
244 * Removed targets and native configurations
246 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
251 Request the remote to send allocation tags for a particular memory range.
253 Request the remote to store the specified allocation tags to the requested
258 ** Improved support for rvalue reference values:
259 TYPE_CODE_RVALUE_REF is now exported as part of the API and the
260 value-referenced-value procedure now handles rvalue reference
263 ** New procedures for obtaining value variants:
264 value-reference-value, value-rvalue-reference-value and
269 ** Inferior objects now contain a read-only 'connection_num' attribute that
270 gives the connection number as seen in 'info connections' and
273 ** New method gdb.Frame.level() which returns the stack level of the
276 ** New method gdb.PendingFrame.level() which returns the stack level
279 ** When hitting a catchpoint, the Python API will now emit a
280 gdb.BreakpointEvent rather than a gdb.StopEvent. The
281 gdb.Breakpoint attached to the event will have type BP_CATCHPOINT.
283 ** Python TUI windows can now receive mouse click events. If the
284 Window object implements the click method, it is called for each
285 mouse click event in this window.
287 *** Changes in GDB 10
289 * There are new feature names for ARC targets: "org.gnu.gdb.arc.core"
290 and "org.gnu.gdb.arc.aux". The old names are still supported but
291 must be considered obsolete. They will be deprecated after some
294 * Help and apropos commands will now show the documentation of a
295 command only once, even if that command has one or more aliases.
296 These commands now show the command name, then all of its aliases,
297 and finally the description of the command.
299 * 'help aliases' now shows only the user defined aliases. GDB predefined
300 aliases are shown together with their aliased command.
302 * GDB now supports debuginfod, an HTTP server for distributing ELF/DWARF
303 debugging information as well as source code.
305 When built with debuginfod, GDB can automatically query debuginfod
306 servers for the separate debug files and source code of the executable
309 To build GDB with debuginfod, pass --with-debuginfod to configure (this
310 requires libdebuginfod, the debuginfod client library).
312 debuginfod is distributed with elfutils, starting with version 0.178.
314 You can get the latest version from https://sourceware.org/elfutils.
316 * Multi-target debugging support
318 GDB now supports debugging multiple target connections
319 simultaneously. For example, you can now have each inferior
320 connected to different remote servers running in different machines,
321 or have one inferior debugging a local native process, an inferior
322 debugging a core dump, etc.
324 This support is experimental and comes with some limitations -- you
325 can only resume multiple targets simultaneously if all targets
326 support non-stop mode, and all remote stubs or servers must support
327 the same set of remote protocol features exactly. See also "info
328 connections" and "add-inferior -no-connection" below, and "maint set
329 target-non-stop" in the user manual.
331 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
333 ** GDBserver is now supported on ARC GNU/Linux.
335 ** GDBserver is now supported on RISC-V GNU/Linux.
337 ** GDBserver no longer supports these host triplets:
348 i[34567]86-*-mingw32ce*
350 * Debugging MS-Windows processes now sets $_exitsignal when the
351 inferior is terminated by a signal, instead of setting $_exitcode.
353 * Multithreaded symbol loading has now been enabled by default on systems
354 that support it (see entry for GDB 9, below), providing faster
355 performance for programs with many symbols.
357 * The $_siginfo convenience variable now also works on Windows targets,
358 and will display the EXCEPTION_RECORD of the last handled exception.
360 * TUI windows can now be arranged horizontally.
362 * The command history filename can now be set to the empty string
363 either using 'set history filename' or by setting 'GDBHISTFILE=' in
364 the environment. The effect of setting this filename to the empty
365 string is that GDB will not try to load any previous command
368 * On Windows targets, it is now possible to debug 32-bit programs with a
373 set exec-file-mismatch -- Set exec-file-mismatch handling (ask|warn|off).
374 show exec-file-mismatch -- Show exec-file-mismatch handling (ask|warn|off).
375 Set or show the option 'exec-file-mismatch'. When GDB attaches to a
376 running process, this new option indicates whether to detect
377 a mismatch between the current executable file loaded by GDB and the
378 executable file used to start the process. If 'ask', the default,
379 display a warning and ask the user whether to load the process
380 executable file; if 'warn', just display a warning; if 'off', don't
381 attempt to detect a mismatch.
383 tui new-layout NAME WINDOW WEIGHT [WINDOW WEIGHT]...
384 Define a new TUI layout, specifying its name and the windows that
387 maintenance print xml-tdesc [FILE]
388 Prints the current target description as an XML document. If the
389 optional FILE is provided (which is an XML target description) then
390 the target description is read from FILE into GDB, and then
393 maintenance print core-file-backed-mappings
394 Prints file-backed mappings loaded from a core file's note section.
395 Output is expected to be similar to that of "info proc mappings".
397 set debug fortran-array-slicing on|off
398 show debug fortran-array-slicing
399 Print debugging when taking slices of Fortran arrays.
401 set fortran repack-array-slices on|off
402 show fortran repack-array-slices
403 When taking slices from Fortran arrays and strings, if the slice is
404 non-contiguous within the original value then, when this option is
405 on, the new value will be repacked into a single contiguous value.
406 When this option is off, then the value returned will consist of a
407 descriptor that describes the slice within the memory of the
408 original parent value.
412 alias [-a] [--] ALIAS = COMMAND [DEFAULT-ARGS...]
413 The alias command can now specify default args for an alias.
414 GDB automatically prepends the alias default args to the argument list
415 provided explicitly by the user.
416 For example, to have a backtrace with full details, you can define
418 'alias bt_ALL = backtrace -entry-values both -frame-arg all
419 -past-main -past-entry -full'.
420 Alias default arguments can also use a set of nested 'with' commands,
421 e.g. 'alias pp10 = with print pretty -- with print elem 10 -- print'
422 defines the alias pp10 that will pretty print a maximum of 10 elements
423 of the given expression (if the expression is an array).
427 GNU/Linux/RISC-V (gdbserver) riscv*-*-linux*
432 ** gdb.register_window_type can be used to implement new TUI windows
435 ** Dynamic types can now be queried. gdb.Type has a new attribute,
436 "dynamic", and gdb.Type.sizeof can be None for a dynamic type. A
437 field of a dynamic type may have None for its "bitpos" attribute
440 ** Commands written in Python can be in the "TUI" help class by
441 registering with the new constant gdb.COMMAND_TUI.
443 ** New method gdb.PendingFrame.architecture () to retrieve the
444 architecture of the pending frame.
446 ** New gdb.Architecture.registers method that returns a
447 gdb.RegisterDescriptorIterator object, an iterator that returns
448 gdb.RegisterDescriptor objects. The new RegisterDescriptor is a
449 way to query the registers available for an architecture.
451 ** New gdb.Architecture.register_groups method that returns a
452 gdb.RegisterGroupIterator object, an iterator that returns
453 gdb.RegisterGroup objects. The new RegisterGroup is a way to
454 discover the available register groups.
458 ** GDB can now be built with GNU Guile 3.0 and 2.2 in addition to 2.0.
460 ** Procedures 'memory-port-read-buffer-size',
461 'set-memory-port-read-buffer-size!', 'memory-port-write-buffer-size',
462 and 'set-memory-port-write-buffer-size!' are deprecated. When
463 using Guile 2.2 and later, users who need to control the size of
464 a memory port's internal buffer can use the 'setvbuf' procedure.
468 * 'thread-exited' event is now available in the annotations interface.
470 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
471 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
472 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
473 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
474 such as in system-wide init files.
476 * New built-in convenience functions $_gdb_setting, $_gdb_setting_str,
477 $_gdb_maint_setting and $_gdb_maint_setting_str provide access to values
478 of the GDB settings and the GDB maintenance settings. They are handy
479 for changing the logic of user defined commands depending on the
480 current GDB settings.
482 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
483 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
484 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
485 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
487 * Support for Pointer Authentication (PAC) on AArch64 Linux. Return
488 addresses that required unmasking are shown in the backtrace with the
491 * Two new convenience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
492 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
494 * New built-in convenience variables $_shell_exitcode and $_shell_exitsignal
495 provide the exitcode or exit status of the shell commands launched by
496 GDB commands such as "shell", "pipe" and "make".
498 * The command define-prefix can now define user defined prefix commands.
499 User defined commands can now be defined using these user defined prefix
502 * Command names can now use the . character.
504 * The RX port now supports XML target descriptions.
506 * GDB now shows the Ada task names at more places, e.g. in task switching
509 * GDB can now be compiled with Python 3 on Windows.
511 * New convenience variable $_ada_exception holds the address of the
512 Ada exception being thrown. This is set by Ada-related catchpoints.
514 * GDB can now place breakpoints on nested functions and subroutines in
515 Fortran code. The '::' operator can be used between parent and
516 child scopes when placing breakpoints, for example:
518 (gdb) break outer_function::inner_function
520 The 'outer_function::' prefix is only needed if 'inner_function' is
521 not visible in the current scope.
523 * In addition to the system-wide gdbinit file, if configured with
524 --with-system-gdbinit-dir, GDB will now also load files in that directory
525 as system gdbinit files, unless the -nx or -n flag is provided. Files
526 with extensions .gdb, .py and .scm are supported as long as GDB was
527 compiled with support for that language.
529 * GDB now supports multithreaded symbol loading for higher performance.
530 This feature is still in testing, so it is disabled by default. You
531 can turn it on using 'maint set worker-threads unlimited'.
535 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
536 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
537 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
538 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
539 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
541 ** gdb.Type has a new property 'objfile' which returns the objfile the
544 ** The frame information printed by the python frame filtering code
545 is now consistent with what the 'backtrace' command prints when
546 there are no filters, or when the 'backtrace' '-no-filters' option
549 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbol can be used to look up
550 symbols with static linkage.
552 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbols can be used to look up
553 all static symbols with static linkage.
555 ** gdb.Objfile has new methods 'lookup_global_symbol' and
556 'lookup_static_symbol' to lookup a symbol from this objfile only.
558 ** gdb.Block now supports the dictionary syntax for accessing symbols in
559 this block (e.g. block['local_variable']).
563 | [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
564 | -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
565 pipe [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
566 pipe -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
567 Executes COMMAND and sends its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
568 With no COMMAND, repeat the last executed command
569 and send its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
571 define-prefix COMMAND
572 Define or mark a command as a user-defined prefix command.
574 with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
575 w SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
576 Temporarily set SETTING, run COMMAND, and restore SETTING.
577 Usage: with SETTING -- COMMAND
578 With no COMMAND, repeats the last executed command.
579 SETTING is any GDB setting you can change with the "set"
580 subcommands. For example, 'with language c -- print someobj'
581 temporarily switches to the C language in order to print someobj.
582 Settings can be combined: 'w lang c -- w print elements unlimited --
583 usercmd' switches to the C language and runs usercmd with no limit
584 of array elements to print.
586 maint with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
587 Like "with", but works with "maintenance set" settings.
589 set may-call-functions [on|off]
590 show may-call-functions
591 This controls whether GDB will attempt to call functions in
592 the program, such as with expressions in the print command. It
593 defaults to on. Calling functions in the program being debugged
594 can have undesired side effects. It is now possible to forbid
595 such function calls. If function calls are forbidden, GDB will throw
596 an error when a command (such as print expression) calls a function
599 set print finish [on|off]
601 This controls whether the `finish' command will display the value
602 that is returned by the current function. When `off', the value is
603 still entered into the value history, but it is not printed. The
608 Allows deeply nested structures to be simplified when printing by
609 replacing deeply nested parts (beyond the max-depth) with ellipses.
610 The default max-depth is 20, but this can be set to unlimited to get
611 the old behavior back.
613 set print raw-values [on|off]
614 show print raw-values
615 By default, GDB applies the enabled pretty printers when printing a
616 value. This allows to ignore the enabled pretty printers for a series
617 of commands. The default is 'off'.
619 set logging debugredirect [on|off]
620 By default, GDB debug output will go to both the terminal and the logfile.
621 Set if you want debug output to go only to the log file.
623 set style title foreground COLOR
624 set style title background COLOR
625 set style title intensity VALUE
626 Control the styling of titles.
628 set style highlight foreground COLOR
629 set style highlight background COLOR
630 set style highlight intensity VALUE
631 Control the styling of highlightings.
633 maint set worker-threads
634 maint show worker-threads
635 Control the number of worker threads that can be used by GDB. The
636 default is 0. "unlimited" lets GDB choose a number that is
637 reasonable. Currently worker threads are only used when demangling
638 the names of linker symbols.
640 set style tui-border foreground COLOR
641 set style tui-border background COLOR
642 Control the styling of TUI borders.
644 set style tui-active-border foreground COLOR
645 set style tui-active-border background COLOR
646 Control the styling of the active TUI border.
648 maint set test-settings KIND
649 maint show test-settings KIND
650 A set of commands used by the testsuite for exercising the settings
653 maint set tui-resize-message [on|off]
654 maint show tui-resize-message
655 Control whether GDB prints a message each time the terminal is
656 resized when in TUI mode. This is primarily useful for testing the
659 set print frame-info [short-location|location|location-and-address
660 |source-and-location|source-line|auto]
661 show print frame-info
662 This controls what frame information is printed by the commands printing
663 a frame. This setting will e.g. influence the behaviour of 'backtrace',
664 'frame', 'stepi'. The python frame filtering also respect this setting.
665 The 'backtrace' '-frame-info' option can override this global setting.
667 set tui compact-source
668 show tui compact-source
670 Enable the "compact" display mode for the TUI source window. The
671 compact display uses only as much space as is needed for the line
672 numbers in the current file, and only a single space to separate the
673 line numbers from the source.
675 info modules [-q] [REGEXP]
676 Return a list of Fortran modules matching REGEXP, or all modules if
679 info module functions [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
680 Return a list of functions within all modules, grouped by module.
681 The list of functions can be restricted with the optional regular
682 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
683 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the function type signature, and REGEXP
684 matches against the function name.
686 info module variables [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
687 Return a list of variables within all modules, grouped by module.
688 The list of variables can be restricted with the optional regular
689 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
690 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the variable type, and REGEXP matches
691 against the variable name.
693 set debug remote-packet-max-chars
694 show debug remote-packet-max-chars
695 Controls the number of characters to output in a remote packet when using
697 The default is 512 bytes.
700 Lists the target connections currently in use.
705 The "help" command uses the title style to enhance the
706 readibility of its output by styling the classes and
710 Similarly to "help", the "apropos" command also uses the
711 title style for the command names. "apropos" accepts now
712 a flag "-v" (verbose) to show the full documentation
713 of matching commands and to use the highlight style to mark
714 the documentation parts matching REGEXP.
718 The GDB printf and eval commands can now print C-style and Ada-style
719 string convenience variables without calling functions in the program.
720 This allows to do formatted printing of strings without having
721 a running inferior, or when debugging a core dump.
723 info sources [-dirname | -basename] [--] [REGEXP]
724 This command has now optional arguments to only print the files
725 whose names match REGEXP. The arguments -dirname and -basename
726 allow to restrict matching respectively to the dirname and basename
730 The "show style" and its subcommands are now styling
731 a style name in their output using its own style, to help
732 the user visualize the different styles.
734 set print frame-arguments
735 The new value 'presence' indicates to only indicate the presence of
736 arguments using ..., instead of printing argument names and values.
738 set print raw-frame-arguments
739 show print raw-frame-arguments
741 These commands replace the similarly-named "set/show print raw
742 frame-arguments" commands (now with a dash instead of a space). The
743 old commands are now deprecated and may be removed in a future
746 add-inferior [-no-connection]
747 The add-inferior command now supports a "-no-connection" flag that
748 makes the new inferior start with no target connection associated.
749 By default, the new inferior inherits the target connection of the
750 current inferior. See also "info connections".
753 This command's output now includes a new "Connection" column
754 indicating which target connection an inferior is bound to. See
755 "info connections" above.
757 maint test-options require-delimiter
758 maint test-options unknown-is-error
759 maint test-options unknown-is-operand
760 maint show test-options-completion-result
761 Commands used by the testsuite to validate the command options
764 focus, winheight, +, -, >, <
765 These commands are now case-sensitive.
767 * New command options, command completion
769 GDB now has a standard infrastructure to support dash-style command
770 options ('-OPT'). One benefit is that commands that use it can
771 easily support completion of command line arguments. Try "CMD
772 -[TAB]" or "help CMD" to find options supported by a command. Over
773 time, we intend to migrate most commands to this infrastructure. A
774 number of commands got support for new command options in this
777 ** The "print" and "compile print" commands now support a number of
778 options that allow overriding relevant global print settings as
779 set by "set print" subcommands:
783 -array-indexes [on|off]
784 -elements NUMBER|unlimited
789 -repeats NUMBER|unlimited
790 -static-members [on|off]
795 Note that because the "print"/"compile print" commands accept
796 arbitrary expressions which may look like options (including
797 abbreviations), if you specify any command option, then you must
798 use a double dash ("--") to mark the end of argument processing.
800 ** The "backtrace" command now supports a number of options that
801 allow overriding relevant global print settings as set by "set
802 backtrace" and "set print" subcommands:
804 -entry-values no|only|preferred|if-needed|both|compact|default
805 -frame-arguments all|scalars|none
806 -raw-frame-arguments [on|off]
807 -frame-info auto|source-line|location|source-and-location
808 |location-and-address|short-location
812 In addition, the full/no-filters/hide qualifiers are now also
813 exposed as command options too:
819 ** The "frame apply", "tfaas" and "faas" commands similarly now
820 support the following options:
825 ** The new "info sources" options -dirname and -basename options
826 are using the standard '-OPT' infrastructure.
828 All options above can also be abbreviated. The argument of boolean
829 (on/off) options can be 0/1 too, and also the argument is assumed
830 "on" if omitted. This allows writing compact command invocations,
833 (gdb) p -ra -p -o 0 -- *myptr
835 The above is equivalent to:
837 (gdb) print -raw-values -pretty -object off -- *myptr
839 ** The "info types" command now supports the '-q' flag to disable
840 printing of some header information in a similar fashion to "info
841 variables" and "info functions".
843 ** The "info variables", "info functions", and "whereis" commands
844 now take a '-n' flag that excludes non-debug symbols (symbols
845 from the symbol table, not from the debug info such as DWARF)
848 * Completion improvements
850 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "thread apply all" and
851 "taas" commands, and their "-ascending" option can now be
854 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "info threads", "info
855 functions", "info variables", "info locals", and "info args"
858 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "compile file" and
859 "compile code" commands. The "compile file" command now
860 completes on filenames.
862 ** GDB can now complete the backtrace command's
863 "full/no-filters/hide" qualifiers.
865 * In settings, you can now abbreviate "unlimited".
867 E.g., "set print elements u" is now equivalent to "set print
873 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
874 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by MI
875 frontends in cases when separate CLI and MI channels cannot be used.
877 -catch-throw, -catch-rethrow, and -catch-catch
878 These can be used to catch C++ exceptions in a similar fashion to
879 the CLI commands 'catch throw', 'catch rethrow', and 'catch catch'.
881 -symbol-info-functions, -symbol-info-types, and -symbol-info-variables
882 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
883 functions', 'info types', and 'info variables' respectively.
885 -symbol-info-modules, this is the MI equivalent of the CLI 'info
888 -symbol-info-module-functions and -symbol-info-module-variables.
889 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
890 module functions' and 'info module variables'.
894 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
896 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
897 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
898 the following commands and events:
902 - =breakpoint-created
903 - =breakpoint-modified
905 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
906 this behavior with previous MI versions.
908 ** Backtraces and frames include a new optional field addr_flags which is
909 given after the addr field. On AArch64 this contains PAC if the address
910 has been masked in the frame. On all other targets the field is not
915 The testsuite now creates the files gdb.cmd (containing the arguments
916 used to launch GDB) and gdb.in (containing all the commands sent to
917 GDB) in the output directory for each test script. Multiple invocations
918 are appended with .1, .2, .3 etc.
920 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.82.
922 Using another implementation of the make program or an earlier version of
923 GNU make to build GDB or GDBserver is not supported.
925 * Building GDB now requires GNU readline >= 7.0.
927 GDB now bundles GNU readline 8.0, but if you choose to use
928 --with-system-readline, only readline >= 7.0 can be used.
930 * The TUI SingleKey keymap is now named "SingleKey". This can be used
931 from .inputrc to bind keys in this keymap. This feature is only
932 available when gdb is built against GNU readline 8.0 or later.
934 * Removed targets and native configurations
936 GDB no longer supports debugging the Cell Broadband Engine. This includes
937 both debugging standalone Cell/B.E. SPU applications and integrated debugging
938 of Cell/B.E. applications that use both the PPU and SPU architectures.
944 * Removed targets and native configurations
946 Solaris 10 i?86-*-solaris2.10, x86_64-*-solaris2.10,
949 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
951 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
952 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
955 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
956 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
957 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
960 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
963 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
964 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
965 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
967 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
968 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
970 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
971 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
972 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
973 in the GDB user manual.
975 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
978 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
980 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
981 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
982 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
983 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
984 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
985 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
986 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
987 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
988 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
989 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
990 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
991 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
993 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
994 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
995 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
998 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
1003 set debug compile-cplus-types
1004 show debug compile-cplus-types
1005 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
1006 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiling
1007 for other languages.
1011 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
1014 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
1015 Apply a command to some frames.
1016 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
1017 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
1020 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
1021 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
1024 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
1025 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
1028 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
1030 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
1032 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
1033 maint show dwarf unwinders
1034 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
1037 Display a list of open files for a process.
1041 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
1042 These commands all now take a frame specification which
1043 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
1044 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
1045 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
1046 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
1047 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
1049 target remote FILENAME
1050 target extended-remote FILENAME
1051 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
1052 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
1054 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
1055 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
1056 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
1057 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
1058 These commands can now print only the searched entities
1059 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
1060 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
1061 printing headers or informations messages.
1067 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
1068 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
1069 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
1072 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
1073 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
1074 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
1075 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
1077 set tui tab-width NCHARS
1078 show tui tab-width NCHARS
1079 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
1081 set style enabled [on|off]
1083 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
1084 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
1086 set style sources [on|off]
1088 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
1089 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
1090 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
1092 set style filename foreground COLOR
1093 set style filename background COLOR
1094 set style filename intensity VALUE
1095 Control the styling of file names.
1097 set style function foreground COLOR
1098 set style function background COLOR
1099 set style function intensity VALUE
1100 Control the styling of function names.
1102 set style variable foreground COLOR
1103 set style variable background COLOR
1104 set style variable intensity VALUE
1105 Control the styling of variable names.
1107 set style address foreground COLOR
1108 set style address background COLOR
1109 set style address intensity VALUE
1110 Control the styling of addresses.
1114 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
1115 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
1116 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
1117 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
1118 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
1120 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
1121 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
1123 * New native configurations
1125 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
1126 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
1130 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
1131 CSKY ELF csky*-*-elf
1132 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
1133 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
1135 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
1139 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
1144 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
1146 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
1147 space associated to that inferior.
1149 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
1150 of objfiles associated to that program space.
1152 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
1153 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
1156 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
1157 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
1158 correct and did not work properly.
1160 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
1161 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
1167 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
1168 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
1169 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
1170 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
1171 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
1173 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
1175 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
1176 for the MIPS target.
1178 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
1179 offset to all sections.
1181 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
1182 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
1183 address of individual sections using '-s'.
1185 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
1186 (address of the text section).
1188 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
1189 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
1190 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
1191 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
1194 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
1195 for the rest of the current command.
1197 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
1198 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
1200 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
1201 files created on FreeBSD systems.
1203 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
1206 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
1207 the vector length while the process is running.
1213 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
1215 set|show varsize-limit
1216 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
1217 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
1218 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
1220 set|show record btrace cpu
1221 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
1222 branch trace decode.
1224 maint check libthread-db
1225 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
1228 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
1229 maint show check-libthread-db
1230 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
1231 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
1232 perform such checks.
1236 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
1238 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
1239 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
1241 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
1243 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
1244 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
1245 of convenience variables.
1247 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
1248 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
1249 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
1253 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
1255 * Removed targets and native configurations
1257 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
1258 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
1259 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
1260 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
1262 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
1264 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
1265 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
1266 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
1267 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
1268 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
1269 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
1274 --enable-codesign=CERT
1275 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
1276 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
1277 gdb to work properly.
1279 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
1280 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
1282 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
1284 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
1285 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
1286 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
1288 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
1289 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
1291 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
1292 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
1293 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
1294 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
1295 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
1297 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
1298 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
1299 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
1300 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
1302 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
1303 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
1305 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
1306 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
1307 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
1309 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
1310 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
1311 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
1313 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
1314 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
1315 environment" command.
1317 * Completion improvements
1319 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
1320 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
1321 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
1322 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
1325 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
1326 (gdb) b function(int)
1328 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
1329 C++ anonymous namespaces:
1332 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
1333 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
1334 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
1336 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
1337 completion support, that better understands what you're
1338 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
1339 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
1340 setting a breakpoint.
1342 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
1344 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
1346 * New command line options (gcore)
1349 Dump all memory mappings.
1351 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
1353 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
1354 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
1355 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
1357 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
1362 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
1365 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
1366 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
1367 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
1368 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
1369 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
1370 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
1371 a breakpoint from Python.
1373 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
1375 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
1376 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
1377 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
1379 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
1381 function[abi:cxx11](int)
1384 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
1387 (gdb) b function(int)
1389 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
1391 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
1393 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
1397 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
1398 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
1399 description of these.
1401 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
1402 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
1403 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
1405 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
1406 manual for a further description of this feature.
1409 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1411 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
1412 specified initial working directory.
1414 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
1415 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
1417 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
1418 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
1420 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
1421 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
1423 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
1424 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
1425 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
1426 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
1427 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
1429 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
1430 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
1431 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
1433 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
1434 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
1435 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
1436 in the *stopped notification.
1438 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
1439 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
1441 * New remote packets
1443 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
1444 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
1445 the inferior when starting it.
1448 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
1449 before starting the remote inferior.
1452 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
1453 user-set environment variables should be unset).
1456 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
1459 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
1462 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
1463 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
1465 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
1466 filter the tests to be run.
1468 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
1469 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
1474 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
1476 set|show compile-gcc
1477 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
1478 with the 'compile' commands.
1480 set debug separate-debug-file
1481 show debug separate-debug-file
1482 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
1484 set dump-excluded-mappings
1485 show dump-excluded-mappings
1486 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
1487 dumped when generating a core file.
1489 maint info selftests
1490 List the registered selftests.
1493 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
1496 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
1498 set|show print type nested-type-limit
1499 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
1500 type printer will show.
1502 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
1505 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
1507 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
1510 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
1511 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
1512 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
1513 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
1515 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
1516 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
1517 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
1518 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
1519 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
1520 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
1522 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
1523 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
1524 unless you tell it the variable's type:
1527 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
1531 * New native configurations
1533 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
1534 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
1538 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
1539 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
1540 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
1542 * Removed targets and native configurations
1544 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
1546 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
1548 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
1549 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
1550 available in future Intel CPUs.
1552 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
1556 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
1557 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
1559 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
1562 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
1564 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
1566 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
1567 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
1570 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
1572 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
1573 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
1575 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
1577 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
1578 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
1579 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
1580 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
1583 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
1585 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
1586 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
1589 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
1591 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
1592 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
1594 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
1596 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
1601 eval "print $arg%d", $i
1606 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
1608 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
1609 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
1611 * New native configurations
1613 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1617 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
1618 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1620 * Removed targets and native configurations
1622 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1623 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
1628 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
1630 maint print arc arc-instruction address
1631 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
1635 set disassembler-options
1636 show disassembler-options
1637 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
1638 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
1639 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
1640 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
1641 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
1646 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
1647 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
1649 -file-list-shared-libraries
1650 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
1651 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
1654 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
1655 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
1657 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
1659 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
1661 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
1662 default. One must now explicitly configure with
1663 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
1664 option will be removed in a future release.
1666 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
1669 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
1670 memory backward from the given address. For example:
1673 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
1674 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
1675 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
1676 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
1677 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
1678 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
1679 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
1680 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
1681 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
1683 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
1684 arrays of dynamic types.
1686 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
1687 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1688 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1689 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1690 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1691 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
1693 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
1696 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
1697 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
1698 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
1700 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
1702 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
1703 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
1704 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
1705 signal received and code location.
1709 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
1710 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
1711 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
1712 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
1714 * Rust language support.
1715 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
1716 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
1719 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
1721 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
1722 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
1723 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
1724 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
1725 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
1726 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
1727 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
1728 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
1729 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
1730 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
1733 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
1735 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
1736 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
1741 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
1742 skip -function function
1743 skip -rfunction regular-expression
1744 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
1745 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
1746 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
1748 maint info line-table REGEXP
1749 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data structure.
1752 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
1755 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
1756 using the TTY file for input/output.
1760 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
1761 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
1762 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
1763 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
1764 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
1766 signal-event EVENTID
1767 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
1768 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
1769 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
1770 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
1771 signalling an event.
1773 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
1774 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
1775 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
1777 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
1780 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
1781 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
1782 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
1783 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
1784 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
1785 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
1787 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
1788 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
1789 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
1790 bytecode into native code.
1792 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
1793 recording. For example:
1795 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
1797 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
1799 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
1803 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
1805 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
1807 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
1809 * Per-inferior thread numbers
1811 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
1812 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
1813 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
1817 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
1818 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
1819 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
1820 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
1822 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
1823 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
1824 are no longer unique between inferiors.
1826 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
1827 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
1828 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
1830 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
1833 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
1834 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
1837 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
1840 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
1841 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
1842 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
1843 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
1846 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
1849 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
1852 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
1855 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
1856 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
1859 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
1860 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
1862 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
1864 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
1866 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
1867 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
1869 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
1870 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
1873 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1874 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
1877 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
1878 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
1881 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1883 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
1884 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
1885 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
1887 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
1888 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
1892 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
1893 maint show target-non-stop
1894 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
1895 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
1896 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
1898 maint set bfd-sharing
1899 maint show bfd-sharing
1900 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
1903 show debug bfd-cache
1904 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
1908 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
1910 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1911 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1912 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
1914 set remote thread-events
1915 show remote thread-events
1916 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
1918 set ada print-signatures on|off
1919 show ada print-signatures"
1920 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
1921 selection menus. It is activated (@code{on}) by default.
1925 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
1926 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
1927 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1929 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1930 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1931 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1932 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1933 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1934 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1936 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1937 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1939 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1940 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1942 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1944 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1945 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1946 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1947 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1948 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1949 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1951 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1952 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1955 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1957 * New remote packets
1960 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1962 exec-events feature in qSupported
1963 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1964 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1965 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1966 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1969 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1972 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1973 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1975 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1976 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1979 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1980 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1981 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1982 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1983 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1984 stop for that same thread.
1987 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1988 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1989 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1992 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1993 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1995 syscall_entry stop reason
1996 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1998 syscall_return stop reason
1999 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
2001 * Extended-remote exec events
2003 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
2004 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
2005 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
2007 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
2008 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
2009 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
2011 * Thread names in remote protocol
2013 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
2016 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
2018 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
2019 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
2020 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
2021 fork and exec catchpoints.
2023 * Remote syscall events
2025 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
2026 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
2028 set remote catch-syscall-packet
2029 show remote catch-syscall-packet
2030 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
2034 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
2035 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
2040 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
2041 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
2042 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
2043 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
2044 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
2045 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
2047 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
2049 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
2050 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
2051 including advance SIMD instructions.
2053 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
2055 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
2056 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
2057 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
2058 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
2059 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
2060 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
2061 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
2063 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2065 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
2067 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
2068 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
2071 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
2072 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
2073 and may include things like its command line arguments.
2075 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
2076 is now available on all platforms.
2078 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
2079 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
2080 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
2081 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
2082 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
2083 backward compatibility.
2085 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
2086 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
2087 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
2088 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
2090 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
2091 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
2092 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
2093 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
2096 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
2098 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
2100 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
2101 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
2102 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
2103 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
2104 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
2105 See "New remote packets" below.
2107 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
2108 available register groups, including target specific groups.
2110 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
2111 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
2112 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
2113 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
2118 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
2122 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
2123 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
2124 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
2125 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
2126 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
2127 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
2128 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
2129 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
2130 "const" version of the value respectively.
2134 maint print symbol-cache
2135 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
2137 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
2138 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
2140 maint flush-symbol-cache
2141 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
2145 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
2148 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
2152 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
2155 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
2156 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
2160 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
2163 Print information about branch tracing internals.
2165 maint btrace packet-history
2166 Print the raw branch tracing data.
2168 maint btrace clear-packet-history
2169 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
2172 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
2173 anew by the next "record" command.
2178 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
2179 show debug dwarf-die
2180 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
2182 set debug dwarf-read
2183 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
2184 show debug dwarf-read
2185 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
2187 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
2188 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
2189 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
2190 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
2192 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
2193 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
2194 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
2195 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
2197 set debug dwarf-line
2198 show debug dwarf-line
2199 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
2202 show max-completions
2203 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
2204 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
2205 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
2206 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
2208 set history remove-duplicates
2209 show history remove-duplicates
2210 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
2212 maint set symbol-cache-size
2213 maint show symbol-cache-size
2214 Control the size of the symbol cache.
2216 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
2217 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
2219 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
2220 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
2222 set debug linux-namespaces
2223 show debug linux-namespaces
2224 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
2226 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
2227 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
2228 Intel Processor Trace format.
2229 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
2230 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
2232 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
2233 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
2236 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
2237 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
2239 * Python/Guile scripting
2241 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
2242 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
2244 * New remote packets
2246 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
2247 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
2249 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
2250 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
2253 Enable Intel Processor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
2254 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
2257 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
2258 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
2262 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
2263 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
2264 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
2268 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
2269 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
2272 Return information about files on the remote system.
2274 qXfer:exec-file:read
2275 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
2276 create a process running on the remote system.
2279 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
2280 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
2281 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
2282 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
2285 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
2288 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
2290 vforkdone stop reason
2291 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
2292 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
2294 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
2295 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
2296 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
2297 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
2298 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
2299 whether these features are enabled.
2301 * Extended-remote fork events
2303 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
2304 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
2305 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
2306 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
2308 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
2309 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
2310 the btrace record target.
2311 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
2313 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
2314 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
2316 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
2319 * Removed command line options
2321 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
2323 * Removed targets and native configurations
2325 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
2326 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2328 * New configure options
2331 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
2332 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
2334 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
2335 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
2336 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
2337 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
2339 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
2343 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
2345 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
2347 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
2351 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
2352 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
2353 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
2354 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
2355 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
2356 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
2357 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
2358 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
2359 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
2360 selecting a new file to debug.
2361 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
2362 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
2364 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
2367 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
2368 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
2369 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
2370 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
2372 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2374 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
2375 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
2376 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
2377 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
2379 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
2380 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
2381 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
2382 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
2383 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
2384 interface with this new feature are:
2386 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
2387 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
2391 demangle [-l language] [--] name
2392 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
2393 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
2394 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
2395 as "maint demangler-warning".
2397 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
2398 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
2400 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
2401 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
2404 maint print user-registers
2405 List all currently available "user" registers.
2407 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
2408 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
2409 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
2411 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
2412 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
2413 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
2416 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
2417 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
2418 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
2419 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
2422 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
2423 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
2424 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
2425 switched threads meanwhile.
2427 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
2429 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
2430 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
2431 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
2432 is now the default mode.
2436 set debug symbol-lookup
2437 show debug symbol-lookup
2438 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
2442 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
2443 inferiors that have exited.
2447 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
2451 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2453 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
2454 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
2455 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
2456 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
2457 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
2459 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2460 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2461 its alias "share", instead.
2463 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
2465 * New command line options
2468 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
2470 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
2471 as specified in ISO C99.
2473 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
2474 with or without disassembly.
2478 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
2479 available is determined at configure time.
2480 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
2481 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
2483 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2487 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
2491 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
2493 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
2494 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
2496 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
2497 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
2501 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
2502 show print symbol-loading
2503 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
2504 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
2505 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
2506 becomes less useful.
2508 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
2509 show guile print-stack
2510 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
2512 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
2513 show auto-load guile-scripts
2514 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
2516 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
2517 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
2518 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
2519 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
2520 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
2521 usage of this option.
2523 set auto-connect-native-target
2525 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
2526 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
2527 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
2529 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
2530 show record btrace replay-memory-access
2531 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
2533 maint set target-async (on|off)
2534 maint show target-async
2535 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
2536 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
2537 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
2538 occurring only in synchronous mode.
2540 set mi-async (on|off)
2542 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
2543 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
2545 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
2546 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
2548 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
2549 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
2550 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
2551 "set target-async on" command.
2553 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2555 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
2556 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
2557 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
2558 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
2559 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
2561 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
2562 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
2563 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
2565 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
2566 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
2567 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
2568 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
2569 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
2570 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
2571 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
2573 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
2574 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
2576 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
2577 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
2578 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
2580 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
2581 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
2582 memory or registers.
2584 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
2586 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
2587 remote. It now works with all targets.
2589 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
2590 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
2591 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
2592 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
2593 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
2594 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
2595 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
2596 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
2597 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
2600 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
2601 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
2602 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
2604 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
2606 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
2607 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
2608 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
2610 * New remote packets
2612 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
2613 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
2614 branch trace incrementally.
2618 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
2619 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
2621 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
2622 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
2623 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
2624 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
2625 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
2628 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
2630 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2631 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2632 its alias "share", instead.
2634 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
2635 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
2640 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
2641 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
2642 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
2643 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
2644 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
2645 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
2646 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
2647 commands and CLI execution commands.
2649 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
2651 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
2652 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
2653 recording has been added.
2655 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
2657 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
2658 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
2660 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
2661 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
2662 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
2663 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
2664 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
2665 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
2668 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
2670 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
2672 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
2673 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
2674 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
2675 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
2680 (gdb) info registers rax
2683 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
2684 "*value not available*".
2686 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
2691 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
2692 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
2693 ** Line tables representation has been added.
2694 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
2695 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
2696 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
2700 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
2701 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
2702 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
2704 * Removed native configurations
2706 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
2707 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
2709 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2710 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2711 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
2712 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
2713 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2714 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2715 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2719 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
2720 maint check-psymtabs
2721 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
2723 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
2724 maint expand-symtabs
2725 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
2728 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2730 maint set|show per-command
2731 maint set|show per-command space
2732 maint set|show per-command time
2733 maint set|show per-command symtab
2734 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
2736 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
2737 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
2738 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
2739 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
2740 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
2743 info exceptions REGEXP
2744 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
2745 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
2750 set debug symfile off|on
2752 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
2753 symbol tables within those files
2755 set print raw frame-arguments
2756 show print raw frame-arguments
2757 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
2758 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
2760 set remote trace-status-packet
2761 show remote trace-status-packet
2762 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
2766 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
2770 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
2772 set startup-with-shell
2773 show startup-with-shell
2774 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
2779 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
2780 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
2782 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
2783 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
2784 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
2785 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
2788 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
2789 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
2790 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
2792 * New command-line options
2794 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2796 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
2797 buffer in Common Trace Format.
2799 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
2802 * GDB now implements the C++ 'typeid' operator.
2804 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
2805 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
2807 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
2808 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
2810 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
2811 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
2812 due to an uncaught signal.
2816 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
2817 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
2818 command, which should contain "language-option".
2820 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
2821 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
2823 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
2824 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
2825 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
2826 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2827 "undefined-command-error-code".
2829 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
2832 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
2834 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
2835 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
2838 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
2839 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
2841 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
2842 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
2843 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
2845 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
2846 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
2847 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
2848 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
2849 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2850 "exec-run-start-option".
2852 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
2853 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
2855 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
2856 the new "info exceptions" command.
2858 * New system-wide configuration scripts
2859 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
2860 configuration scripts for the following systems:
2864 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
2865 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
2866 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
2869 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
2870 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
2872 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
2873 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
2874 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
2876 * New remote packets
2880 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
2881 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
2882 involvemement at each single-step.
2884 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
2885 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
2886 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
2887 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
2888 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
2889 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
2892 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2894 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
2895 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
2897 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
2898 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
2899 trace state variables.
2901 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
2904 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
2905 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
2907 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
2909 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
2910 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
2911 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
2912 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2914 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
2916 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
2917 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
2918 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
2919 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
2921 set|show record full insn-number-max
2922 set|show record full stop-at-limit
2923 set|show record full memory-query
2925 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
2926 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
2927 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
2928 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2929 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2933 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2934 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2936 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2937 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2938 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2940 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2941 instruction granularity
2943 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2944 function granularity
2946 * New native configurations
2948 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2949 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2950 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2951 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2955 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2956 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2957 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2958 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2959 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2961 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2962 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2963 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2964 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2965 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2966 --data-directory command-line option.
2968 * New command line options:
2970 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2971 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2973 * Removed command line options
2975 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2978 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2981 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2985 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2987 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2989 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2991 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2993 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2994 of architecture in the Python API.
2996 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2997 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2999 * New Python-based convenience functions:
3001 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
3002 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
3004 ** $_regex(str, regex)
3006 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
3009 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
3010 default for GCC since November 2000.
3012 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
3014 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
3015 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
3017 * New configure options
3019 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
3020 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
3021 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
3022 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
3023 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
3024 options allow the user to override that default.
3025 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
3026 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
3027 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
3029 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3032 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
3033 conditions to be attached.
3036 List the BFDs known to GDB.
3038 python-interactive [command]
3040 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
3041 and print the result of expressions.
3044 "py" is a new alias for "python".
3046 enable type-printer [name]...
3047 disable type-printer [name]...
3048 Enable or disable type printers.
3052 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
3053 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
3058 set print type methods (on|off)
3059 show print type methods
3060 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
3061 The default is to show them.
3063 set print type typedefs (on|off)
3064 show print type typedefs
3065 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
3066 The default is to show them.
3068 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
3069 show filename-display
3070 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
3071 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
3073 set trace-buffer-size
3074 show trace-buffer-size
3075 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
3077 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
3078 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
3079 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
3083 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
3086 set debug coff-pe-read
3087 show debug coff-pe-read
3088 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
3093 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
3096 set debug notification
3097 show debug notification
3098 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
3102 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
3103 "=cmd-param-changed".
3104 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
3105 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
3106 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
3107 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
3108 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
3109 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
3110 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
3111 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
3113 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
3114 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
3115 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
3116 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
3117 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
3118 library load/unload events.
3119 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
3120 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
3121 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
3122 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
3123 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
3124 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
3125 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
3126 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
3128 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
3129 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
3130 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
3131 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
3133 * New remote packets
3136 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
3137 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
3140 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
3141 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
3145 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
3146 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
3149 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
3150 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
3152 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
3154 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
3155 for more x32 ABI info.
3157 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
3159 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
3161 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
3162 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
3163 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
3164 "info os files" lists file descriptors
3165 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
3166 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
3167 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
3168 "info os msg" lists message queues
3169 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
3171 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
3172 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
3173 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
3174 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
3175 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
3176 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
3178 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
3179 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
3180 record/replay support.
3182 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
3186 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
3189 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
3191 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
3192 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
3194 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
3196 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
3197 the source at which the symbol was defined.
3199 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
3200 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
3201 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
3204 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
3205 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
3207 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
3208 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
3209 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
3211 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
3212 object associated with a PC value.
3214 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
3215 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
3217 * Go language support.
3218 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
3221 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
3222 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
3224 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
3225 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
3227 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
3228 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
3229 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
3230 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
3231 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
3234 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
3235 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
3236 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
3237 build/libcpp/expr.c.
3239 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
3240 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
3242 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
3243 since December 2007.
3245 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
3246 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
3247 command does. For instance:
3249 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
3251 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
3252 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
3253 created, using the "condition" command.
3255 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
3256 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
3258 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
3260 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
3261 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
3262 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
3263 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
3264 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
3265 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
3266 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
3267 files with older .gdb_index sections.
3269 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
3270 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
3271 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
3272 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
3273 the .gdb_index section.
3275 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
3277 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
3282 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
3284 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
3288 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
3289 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
3290 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
3292 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
3293 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
3295 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
3298 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
3299 C++ and Java objects.
3301 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
3302 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
3303 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
3304 configured with '--with-python'.
3306 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
3307 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
3308 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
3309 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
3310 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
3311 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
3312 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
3314 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
3315 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
3316 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
3317 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
3319 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
3320 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
3321 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
3322 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
3324 ** "set print symbol"
3326 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
3327 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
3328 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
3330 * Deprecated commands
3332 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
3333 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
3337 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3338 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
3340 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
3341 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
3342 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
3343 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
3348 set mips compression
3349 show mips compression
3350 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
3351 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
3354 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
3356 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
3357 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
3358 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
3359 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
3361 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
3365 Disable auto-loading globally.
3368 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
3370 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
3371 show auto-load gdb-scripts
3372 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
3374 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
3375 show auto-load python-scripts
3376 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
3378 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
3379 show auto-load local-gdbinit
3380 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
3382 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
3383 show auto-load libthread-db
3384 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
3386 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
3387 show auto-load scripts-directory
3388 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
3389 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
3390 of the directories listed by this option.
3391 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
3393 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
3394 show auto-load safe-path
3395 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
3396 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
3398 set debug auto-load on|off
3399 show debug auto-load
3400 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
3402 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
3404 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
3405 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
3406 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
3407 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
3409 set dprintf-function <expr>
3410 show dprintf-function
3411 set dprintf-channel <expr>
3412 show dprintf-channel
3413 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
3414 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
3416 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
3417 show disconnected-dprintf
3418 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
3419 after GDB disconnects.
3421 * New configure options
3423 --with-auto-load-dir
3424 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
3425 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
3426 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
3427 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
3428 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
3430 --with-auto-load-safe-path
3431 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
3432 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
3434 --without-auto-load-safe-path
3435 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
3438 * New remote packets
3440 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
3442 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
3443 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
3444 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
3445 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
3449 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
3450 program without GDB involvement.
3452 * New command line options
3454 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
3455 before loading inferior.
3456 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
3457 execute it before loading inferior.
3459 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
3461 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
3462 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
3463 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
3464 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
3467 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
3468 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
3470 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
3471 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
3472 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
3473 target hardware watchpoint.
3475 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
3476 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
3477 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
3478 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
3482 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
3483 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
3486 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
3487 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
3488 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
3489 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
3490 now "message", which just prints the error message without
3493 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3496 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
3497 modules library. This module provides functionality for
3498 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
3499 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
3500 corresponding value.
3502 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
3503 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
3504 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
3507 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
3508 static_block will return the global and static blocks
3509 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
3510 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
3512 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
3514 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
3517 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
3518 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
3519 available in the CLI.
3521 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
3522 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
3523 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
3524 "some_type.items()".
3526 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
3529 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
3530 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
3531 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
3532 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
3533 any anonymous fields.
3537 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
3540 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
3541 "=breakpoint-modified".
3543 ** New command -ada-task-info.
3545 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
3546 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
3547 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
3550 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
3551 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
3552 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
3553 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
3554 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
3556 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
3557 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
3559 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
3560 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
3561 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
3562 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
3563 use this option to specify where to find it.
3565 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3566 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
3567 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
3568 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
3569 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
3570 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3571 section in the user manual for more details.
3573 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
3574 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
3575 become available after that.
3577 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
3579 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
3580 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
3586 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
3587 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
3591 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
3592 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
3593 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
3595 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
3596 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
3597 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
3599 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
3600 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
3601 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
3602 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
3603 name starts with a hyphen.
3605 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
3606 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
3607 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
3608 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
3609 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
3610 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
3611 number of bytes that will be collected.
3614 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
3615 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
3616 setting the variable trace-notes.
3619 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
3620 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
3621 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
3624 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
3625 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
3626 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
3627 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
3628 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
3631 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
3632 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
3633 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
3637 set debug dwarf2-read
3638 show debug dwarf2-read
3639 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
3640 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
3642 set debug symtab-create
3643 show debug symtab-create
3644 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
3645 creation. The default is off.
3648 show extended-prompt
3649 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
3650 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
3651 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
3652 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
3653 prompt is displayed.
3655 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
3656 show print entry-values
3657 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
3658 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
3659 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
3661 set debug entry-values
3662 show debug entry-values
3663 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
3664 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
3666 set basenames-may-differ
3667 show basenames-may-differ
3668 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
3669 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
3670 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
3671 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
3672 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
3673 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
3674 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
3675 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
3681 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
3682 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
3683 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
3684 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
3686 set trace-stop-notes
3687 show trace-stop-notes
3688 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
3689 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
3690 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
3691 started by someone else.
3693 * New remote packets
3697 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3701 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3705 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
3709 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
3713 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
3716 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
3717 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
3721 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
3725 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3727 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
3729 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
3731 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
3733 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
3734 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
3735 matches the given regular expression.
3737 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
3739 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
3740 dumping the instruction opcodes.
3742 * New command line options
3744 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
3745 This is mostly for testing purposes.
3747 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
3748 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
3750 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
3751 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
3752 source path list instead of augmenting it.
3754 * GDB now understands thread names.
3756 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
3757 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
3759 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
3760 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
3763 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
3764 has been integrated into GDB.
3768 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
3769 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
3770 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
3772 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3773 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
3774 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
3775 and allows for more dynamic content.
3777 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
3778 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
3779 have an is_valid method.
3781 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3782 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
3783 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
3785 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
3787 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
3788 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
3789 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
3790 that function like so:
3792 result = some_value (10,20)
3794 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
3795 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
3796 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
3798 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
3799 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
3800 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
3801 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
3802 New function: register_pretty_printer.
3804 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
3805 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
3807 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
3809 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
3812 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
3813 holds the thread's name.
3815 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
3816 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
3817 occurring in the process being debugged.
3818 The following events are currently supported:
3819 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
3820 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
3821 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
3825 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
3826 instantiation. For example, if you have:
3828 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
3830 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
3831 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
3832 was added to GCC 4.5.
3834 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
3835 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
3836 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
3837 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
3838 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
3839 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
3841 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
3842 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
3843 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
3844 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
3845 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
3847 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
3848 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
3849 execution to a label.
3851 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
3852 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
3853 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
3854 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
3856 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
3857 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
3858 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
3861 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
3863 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
3864 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
3865 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
3866 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
3867 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
3868 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
3871 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
3873 While now you see this:
3876 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
3878 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
3881 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
3882 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
3883 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
3884 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
3886 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3887 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
3888 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
3889 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3890 section in the user manual for more details.
3892 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3894 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
3895 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
3897 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
3899 * New native configurations
3901 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
3905 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
3907 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
3908 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
3909 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
3910 in the GDB user manual.
3912 * Guile support was removed.
3914 * New features in the GNU simulator
3916 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
3918 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
3920 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
3922 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
3924 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
3925 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
3926 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
3927 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
3928 was always disabled for such configurations.
3932 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3934 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3935 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3945 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3946 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3947 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3949 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3951 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3952 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3953 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3954 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3956 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3957 mentioned flavors of operators.
3959 ** static const class members
3961 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3962 class definition has been fixed.
3964 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3966 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3967 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3968 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3969 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3970 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3971 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3973 * Static tracepoints
3975 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3976 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3977 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3978 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3979 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3980 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3981 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3982 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3983 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3984 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3985 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3986 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3987 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3988 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3989 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3990 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3991 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3992 the "New remote packets" section below.
3994 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3996 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3997 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3998 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3999 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
4003 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
4004 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
4005 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
4006 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
4007 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
4008 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
4009 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
4011 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
4014 * New remote packets
4018 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
4022 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
4023 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
4024 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
4025 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
4026 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
4027 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
4031 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
4035 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
4038 qXfer:statictrace:read
4040 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
4041 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
4042 to gdb's qSupported query.
4046 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
4050 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
4051 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
4053 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
4054 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
4057 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
4059 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
4060 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
4061 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
4062 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
4064 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
4065 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
4066 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
4067 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
4068 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
4069 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
4070 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
4072 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
4073 for static tracepoints support.
4075 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
4077 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
4078 it understands register description.
4080 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
4082 * X86 general purpose registers
4084 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
4085 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
4086 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
4087 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
4088 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
4090 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
4091 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
4092 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
4093 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
4094 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
4095 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
4097 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
4098 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
4099 in the specified file.
4101 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
4102 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
4103 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
4104 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
4105 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
4106 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
4107 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
4108 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
4109 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
4110 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
4114 eval template, expressions...
4115 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
4116 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
4118 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
4119 show target-file-system-kind
4120 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
4123 save breakpoints <filename>
4124 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
4125 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
4126 definitions, use the `source' command.
4128 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
4131 info static-tracepoint-markers
4132 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
4134 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
4135 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
4136 function, line, address, or marker ID.
4140 Enable and disable observer mode.
4142 set may-write-registers on|off
4143 set may-write-memory on|off
4144 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
4145 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
4146 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
4147 set may-interrupt on|off
4148 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
4149 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
4150 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
4151 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
4152 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
4153 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
4154 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
4156 set record memory-query on|off
4157 show record memory-query
4158 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
4159 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
4164 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
4168 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
4169 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
4170 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
4171 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
4172 GDB using Python' in the manual.
4174 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
4175 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
4176 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
4177 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
4179 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
4180 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
4182 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
4184 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
4186 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
4188 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
4189 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
4190 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
4192 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
4193 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
4194 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
4195 regular breakpoints.
4199 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
4201 * D language support.
4202 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
4205 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
4206 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
4207 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
4208 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
4209 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
4211 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
4212 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
4213 conditions of the form:
4215 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
4217 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
4218 interface mentioned above.
4220 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
4224 ** Namespace Support
4226 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
4227 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
4228 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
4229 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
4230 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
4234 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
4235 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
4240 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
4241 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
4245 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
4250 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
4253 * Multi-program debugging.
4255 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
4256 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
4257 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
4258 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
4259 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
4260 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
4261 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
4262 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
4264 * New tracing features
4266 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
4268 ** Trace state variables
4270 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
4271 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
4272 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
4273 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
4274 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
4275 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
4276 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
4277 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
4278 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
4279 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
4283 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
4284 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
4285 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
4286 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
4287 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
4288 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
4289 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
4290 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
4291 the regular trace command.
4293 ** Disconnected tracing
4295 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
4296 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
4297 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
4298 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
4299 connection is lost unexpectedly.
4303 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
4304 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
4305 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
4306 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
4307 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
4308 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
4311 ** Circular trace buffer
4313 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
4314 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
4315 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
4316 not be available for all target agents.
4321 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
4322 the arguments to be comma-separated.
4325 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
4326 which only declare a variable are not shown.
4329 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
4330 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
4333 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
4334 "set script-extension" (see below).
4336 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4338 record save [<FILENAME>]
4339 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
4340 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
4342 record restore <FILENAME>
4343 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
4344 earlier time, for replay debugging.
4346 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
4349 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
4350 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
4351 inferior has loaded.
4356 maint info program-spaces
4357 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
4359 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
4360 show remote interrupt-sequence
4361 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
4362 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
4363 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
4364 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
4365 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
4367 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
4368 show remote interrupt-on-connect
4369 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
4370 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
4373 set remotebreak [on | off]
4375 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
4377 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
4378 Create or modify a trace state variable.
4381 List trace state variables and their values.
4383 delete tvariable $NAME ...
4384 Delete one or more trace state variables.
4387 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
4388 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
4390 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
4391 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
4393 * New expression syntax
4395 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
4396 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
4400 set follow-exec-mode new|same
4401 show follow-exec-mode
4402 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
4403 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
4404 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
4406 set default-collect EXPR, ...
4407 show default-collect
4408 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
4409 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
4410 such as registers or a critical global variable.
4412 set disconnected-tracing
4413 show disconnected-tracing
4414 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
4415 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
4418 set circular-trace-buffer
4419 show circular-trace-buffer
4420 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
4421 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
4422 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
4423 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
4425 set script-extension off|soft|strict
4426 show script-extension
4427 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
4428 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
4429 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
4430 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
4432 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
4434 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
4435 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
4436 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
4437 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
4438 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
4439 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
4440 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
4443 * Python API Improvements
4445 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
4446 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
4447 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
4449 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
4450 `is_base_class' attribute.
4452 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
4454 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
4455 evaluate an expression.
4457 * New remote packets
4460 Define a trace state variable.
4463 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
4466 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
4469 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
4472 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
4476 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
4478 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
4479 much more reliable. In particular:
4480 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
4481 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
4482 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
4483 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
4484 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
4485 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
4486 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
4487 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
4488 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
4489 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
4490 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
4491 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
4492 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
4493 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
4494 non-threaded programs.
4496 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
4497 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
4498 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
4501 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
4503 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
4504 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
4505 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
4506 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
4507 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
4509 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
4510 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
4511 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
4512 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
4513 for tracepoint actions.
4515 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
4516 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
4517 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
4519 * Process record and replay
4521 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
4522 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
4523 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
4526 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
4527 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
4528 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
4531 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
4532 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
4535 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
4536 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
4537 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
4538 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
4539 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
4540 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
4541 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
4542 the installation instructions for more information.
4544 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
4545 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
4546 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
4547 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
4549 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
4550 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
4552 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
4553 now complete on file names.
4555 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
4556 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
4557 For instance, consider:
4559 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
4560 # struct example variable;
4563 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
4564 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
4566 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
4567 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
4569 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
4570 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
4573 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
4574 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
4575 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
4577 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
4578 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
4579 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
4580 and simulator targets may also provide them.
4582 * New remote packets
4585 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4588 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
4589 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
4590 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
4593 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
4594 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
4597 Obtains additional operating system information
4601 Read or write additional signal information.
4603 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
4605 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
4606 packet that permitted the stub to pass a process id was removed.
4607 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
4609 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
4610 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
4612 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
4613 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
4614 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
4616 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
4617 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
4619 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
4621 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
4623 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
4624 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
4626 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote protocol packet now allows passing a
4627 list of section offsets.
4629 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
4630 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
4631 have also been fixed.
4633 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
4634 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
4635 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
4637 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
4640 template<typename T> class C { };
4643 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
4645 ptype C<char const *>
4646 ptype C<char const*>
4647 ptype C<const char *>
4648 ptype C<const char*>
4650 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
4652 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
4653 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4655 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
4656 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4657 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
4659 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
4660 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
4662 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
4665 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
4666 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4668 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
4669 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
4674 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
4675 available is determined at configure time.
4677 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
4679 * Ada tasking support
4681 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
4685 Print the list of Ada tasks.
4687 Print detailed information about task number N.
4689 Print the task number of the current task.
4691 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
4693 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
4694 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
4696 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
4698 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
4699 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
4700 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
4701 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
4702 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
4703 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
4706 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
4707 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
4710 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
4711 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
4712 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
4713 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
4716 * Multi-architecture debugging.
4718 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
4719 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
4720 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
4721 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
4722 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
4724 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
4725 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
4726 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
4727 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
4728 --enable-targets configure option.
4730 * Non-stop mode debugging.
4732 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
4733 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
4734 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
4735 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
4736 section in the user manual for more information.
4738 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
4739 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
4740 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
4741 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
4742 extensions on linux targets.
4744 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4746 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
4747 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
4748 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
4749 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
4750 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
4751 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
4752 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
4753 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
4754 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
4756 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
4758 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4760 maint set python print-stack
4761 maint show python print-stack
4762 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
4765 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
4770 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
4774 Show operating system information about processes.
4777 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
4780 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
4783 Detach from inferior number NUM.
4786 Kill inferior number NUM.
4790 set spu stop-on-load
4791 show spu stop-on-load
4792 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4794 set spu auto-flush-cache
4795 show spu auto-flush-cache
4796 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
4797 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4799 set sh calling-convention
4800 show sh calling-convention
4801 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
4804 show debug timestamp
4805 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
4807 set disassemble-next-line
4808 show disassemble-next-line
4809 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
4812 set remote noack-packet
4813 show remote noack-packet
4814 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
4815 under "New remote packets."
4817 set remote query-attached-packet
4818 show remote query-attached-packet
4819 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
4821 set remote read-siginfo-object
4822 show remote read-siginfo-object
4823 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
4826 set remote write-siginfo-object
4827 show remote write-siginfo-object
4828 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
4831 set remote reverse-continue
4832 show remote reverse-continue
4833 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
4835 set remote reverse-step
4836 show remote reverse-step
4837 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
4839 set displaced-stepping
4840 show displaced-stepping
4841 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
4842 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
4843 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
4846 show debug displaced
4847 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
4849 maint set internal-error
4850 maint show internal-error
4851 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
4853 maint set internal-warning
4854 maint show internal-warning
4855 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
4860 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4862 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
4863 show multiple-symbols
4864 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
4865 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
4866 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
4868 set breakpoint always-inserted
4869 show breakpoint always-inserted
4870 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
4871 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
4872 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
4874 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4875 show arm fallback-mode
4876 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4878 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
4879 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
4880 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
4881 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
4883 set disable-randomization
4884 show disable-randomization
4885 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
4886 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
4887 multiple debugging sessions.
4891 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
4896 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
4897 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
4898 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
4899 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
4901 set target-wide-charset
4902 show target-wide-charset
4903 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
4904 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
4906 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
4908 set tcp connect-timeout
4909 show tcp connect-timeout
4910 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
4911 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
4912 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
4914 set libthread-db-search-path
4915 show libthread-db-search-path
4916 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
4919 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
4920 show schedule-multiple
4921 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
4922 the current process.
4926 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
4927 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
4928 affecting correctness.
4930 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4931 show interactive-mode
4932 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4933 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4934 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4935 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4936 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4941 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4942 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4943 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4947 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4948 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4949 alias for the `fork' command.
4952 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4953 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4954 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4957 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4958 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4959 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4963 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4964 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4965 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4968 * New native configurations
4970 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4972 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4976 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4977 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4978 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4981 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4982 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4988 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4990 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4992 * New native configurations
4994 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4995 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4999 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
5000 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
5002 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
5004 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
5005 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
5006 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
5007 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
5009 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
5010 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
5012 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
5015 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
5016 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
5017 and in inlined functions.
5019 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
5020 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
5021 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
5023 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
5025 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
5026 registers on PowerPC targets.
5028 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
5029 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
5031 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
5032 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
5034 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
5035 extended-remote mode.
5037 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
5038 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
5039 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
5040 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
5042 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
5043 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
5044 target architectures.
5046 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
5047 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
5048 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
5049 stored in two consecutive float registers.
5051 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
5054 * Improved support for debugging Ada
5055 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
5057 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
5058 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
5059 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
5060 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
5062 - Improved command completion in Ada
5065 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
5070 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
5071 show print frame-arguments
5072 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
5073 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
5078 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
5085 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
5087 * New remote packets
5094 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
5097 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
5101 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
5103 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
5105 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
5106 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
5107 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
5109 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
5110 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
5111 -Bsymbolic linker option.
5113 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
5114 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
5117 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
5118 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
5120 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
5121 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
5123 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
5125 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
5126 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
5127 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
5129 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
5130 automatically displayed as character or string data.
5132 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
5133 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
5136 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
5137 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
5138 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
5140 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
5143 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
5144 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
5145 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
5147 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
5149 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
5151 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
5152 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
5153 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
5155 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
5156 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
5158 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
5159 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
5160 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
5161 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
5162 Windows and SymbianOS).
5164 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
5165 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
5167 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
5168 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
5174 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
5175 when debugging using remote targets.
5177 set mem inaccessible-by-default
5178 show mem inaccessible-by-default
5179 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
5180 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
5181 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
5182 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
5183 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
5185 set breakpoint auto-hw
5186 show breakpoint auto-hw
5187 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
5188 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
5189 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
5190 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
5191 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
5192 including "next" and "finish".
5195 catch exception unhandled
5196 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
5199 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
5203 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
5204 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
5205 an alias to "set sysroot".
5208 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
5209 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
5212 * New native configurations
5214 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
5217 unset tdesc filename
5219 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
5220 not query the target for its built-in description.
5224 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
5225 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
5226 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
5228 * New remote packets
5231 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
5232 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
5234 qXfer:features:read:
5235 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
5240 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
5241 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
5243 qXfer:libraries:read:
5244 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
5245 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
5246 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
5247 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
5251 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
5259 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
5260 i[34567]86-*-netware*
5261 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
5262 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
5264 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
5267 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
5268 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
5277 * Other removed features
5284 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
5291 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
5296 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
5297 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
5302 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
5303 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
5305 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
5307 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
5308 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
5309 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
5310 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
5312 MIPS ".pdr" sections
5314 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
5315 in debugging information.
5319 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
5320 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
5322 set mips stack-arg-size
5323 set mips saved-gpreg-size
5325 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
5327 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
5332 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
5334 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
5335 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
5336 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
5338 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
5339 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
5342 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
5343 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
5345 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
5346 stub provides the required support.
5348 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
5349 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
5354 unset substitute-path
5355 show substitute-path
5356 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
5357 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
5358 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
5359 between compilation and debugging.
5363 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
5364 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
5365 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
5369 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
5371 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
5372 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
5374 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
5376 * New remote packets
5379 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
5380 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
5381 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
5382 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
5386 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
5387 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
5389 qXfer:memory-map:read:
5390 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
5391 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
5396 Erase and program a flash memory device.
5398 * Removed remote packets
5401 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
5402 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
5404 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
5408 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
5410 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
5414 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
5415 only if it doesn't already have a value.
5417 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
5419 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
5421 restart <n> Return the program state to a
5422 previously saved state.
5424 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
5426 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
5428 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
5429 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
5431 info forks List forks of the user program that
5432 are available to be debugged.
5434 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
5435 forks of the user program that are
5436 available to be debugged.
5438 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
5439 that are available to be debugged (and
5440 kill the forked process).
5442 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
5443 that are available to be debugged (and
5444 allow the process to continue).
5448 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
5450 * Improved Windows host support
5452 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
5453 native console support, and remote communications using either
5454 network sockets or serial ports.
5456 * Improved Modula-2 language support
5458 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
5459 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
5460 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
5461 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
5462 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
5463 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
5467 The ARM rdi-share module.
5469 The Netware NLM debug server.
5471 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
5473 * New native configurations
5475 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
5476 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
5480 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
5482 * New command line options
5484 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
5485 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
5486 the child (debugged) program exited with.
5487 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
5488 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
5489 specified multiple times and in conjunction
5490 with the --command (-x) option.
5492 * Deprecated commands removed
5494 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
5498 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
5499 othernames set arm disassembler
5500 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
5501 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
5502 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
5505 * New BSD user-level threads support
5507 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
5508 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
5511 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5512 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
5513 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
5515 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
5516 are not yet supported.
5518 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
5519 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
5521 * REMOVED configurations and files
5523 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
5524 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5525 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
5527 * New "set print array-indexes" command
5529 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
5530 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
5533 * VAX floating point support
5535 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
5537 * User-defined command support
5539 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
5540 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
5541 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
5543 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
5545 * New command line option
5547 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
5550 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
5552 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
5553 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
5554 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
5555 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
5556 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
5558 * Internationalization
5560 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
5561 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
5562 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
5566 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
5567 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
5568 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
5570 * New native configurations
5572 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
5576 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
5577 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
5579 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
5581 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5582 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
5583 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
5586 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the registers[]
5587 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
5588 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
5598 powerpc bdm protocol
5600 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5601 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
5603 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5605 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5606 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5607 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5608 permanently REMOVED.
5617 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
5619 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
5621 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
5622 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
5625 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
5627 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
5628 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
5629 IRIX long double values).
5633 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
5634 command. This problem has been fixed.
5636 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
5638 * Fix for ``many threads''
5640 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
5641 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
5644 ptrace: No such process.
5645 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
5647 This problem has been fixed.
5649 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
5651 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
5654 * New ``start'' command.
5656 This command runs the program until the beginning of the main procedure.
5658 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
5660 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
5661 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
5662 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
5664 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5665 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
5666 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
5667 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
5668 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
5669 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5670 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
5671 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
5672 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5674 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
5676 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
5677 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
5678 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
5679 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
5680 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
5682 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
5683 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
5684 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
5686 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
5688 * New native configurations
5690 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
5691 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
5692 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
5693 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
5694 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
5695 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
5696 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
5698 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
5700 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5701 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
5702 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
5703 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
5704 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
5705 work, was also included.
5707 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
5708 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
5718 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5719 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
5721 * REMOVED configurations and files
5723 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5724 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5725 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5726 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5727 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5728 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5729 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5730 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5731 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5732 sonymips mips-sony-*
5733 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5735 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
5737 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
5739 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
5740 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
5741 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
5742 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
5745 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
5747 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
5748 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
5749 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
5750 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
5751 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
5752 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
5755 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
5757 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
5759 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
5760 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
5761 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
5763 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
5765 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
5766 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
5768 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
5770 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
5771 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
5772 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
5774 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
5776 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
5777 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
5779 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
5781 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
5782 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
5783 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
5785 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
5787 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
5788 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
5789 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
5791 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
5793 * Removed --with-mmalloc
5795 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
5796 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
5798 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
5800 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
5801 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
5802 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
5803 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
5805 * Revised SPARC target
5807 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
5808 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
5809 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
5810 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
5811 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
5815 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
5816 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
5817 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
5820 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5822 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
5823 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
5826 * C++ nested types and namespaces
5828 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
5829 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
5830 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
5831 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
5832 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
5833 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
5834 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
5835 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
5836 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
5838 * New native configurations
5840 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
5841 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5842 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
5843 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5844 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
5846 * New debugging protocols
5848 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
5850 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
5852 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
5853 and its very obscure effect on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
5854 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
5856 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5858 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5859 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5860 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5861 permanently REMOVED.
5863 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5864 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5865 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5866 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5867 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5868 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5869 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5870 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5871 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5872 sonymips mips-sony-*
5873 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5875 * REMOVED configurations and files
5877 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5878 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5879 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5880 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5881 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5882 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5883 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5884 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5885 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5886 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
5887 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5888 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5889 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5890 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
5891 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
5892 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5893 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5895 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
5899 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
5900 integrated into GDB.
5902 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
5904 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
5905 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
5906 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
5909 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
5910 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
5911 DWARF 2 CFI support.
5915 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
5916 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
5917 remote protocol documentation for details.
5919 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
5921 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
5922 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
5923 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
5926 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
5928 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5929 per-thread variables.
5931 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5933 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5934 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5936 * Separate debug info.
5938 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5939 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5940 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5941 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5942 and optional debug files.
5944 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5946 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5947 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5950 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5951 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5955 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5956 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5957 considered "useable".
5959 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5961 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5962 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5965 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5967 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5968 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5970 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5972 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5973 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5976 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5978 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5979 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5983 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5984 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5985 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5986 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5987 data, for more informative profiling results.
5989 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5991 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5992 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5993 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5995 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5998 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5999 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
6000 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
6001 in a subsequent -var-update.
6003 * New native configurations.
6005 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
6007 * Multi-arched targets.
6009 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
6010 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6012 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6014 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6015 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6016 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6017 permanently REMOVED.
6019 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6020 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
6021 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6022 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
6023 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
6024 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
6025 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
6026 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
6027 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
6028 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
6029 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6030 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6032 * REMOVED configurations and files
6035 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6036 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
6037 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
6038 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
6039 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
6040 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
6042 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
6043 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6044 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6045 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6046 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6047 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6049 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
6051 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
6052 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
6053 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
6054 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
6055 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
6057 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
6059 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
6061 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
6062 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
6063 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
6064 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
6065 shared libs like mad''.
6067 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6069 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
6070 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
6071 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
6072 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6074 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
6076 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
6077 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
6080 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
6081 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
6083 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
6084 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
6086 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
6087 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
6088 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
6089 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
6091 * Multi-arched targets.
6093 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
6094 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
6096 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
6097 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
6098 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
6102 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
6105 * New native configurations
6107 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
6108 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
6109 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
6110 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
6112 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6114 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6115 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6116 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6117 permanently REMOVED.
6119 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6120 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6121 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
6122 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6123 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6124 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6125 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
6126 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
6127 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
6128 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
6130 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
6131 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6133 * OBSOLETE languages
6135 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
6137 * REMOVED configurations and files
6139 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
6140 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6141 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6142 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6143 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6145 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
6147 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
6149 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
6150 commands. The default is 1024.
6152 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
6154 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
6156 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
6158 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
6159 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
6160 from a file into memory (restore).
6162 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
6164 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
6165 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
6166 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
6168 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
6176 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
6177 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
6178 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
6180 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
6181 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
6182 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
6184 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
6185 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
6186 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
6188 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
6189 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
6190 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
6192 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
6194 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
6196 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
6197 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
6198 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
6199 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
6200 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
6201 (notably embedded) targets.
6203 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
6205 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
6206 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
6207 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
6208 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
6210 * New command line option
6212 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
6214 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
6216 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
6217 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
6218 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
6219 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
6220 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
6221 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
6222 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
6223 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
6224 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
6225 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
6227 * Changes in ARM configurations.
6229 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
6230 configuration is fully multi-arch.
6232 * New native configurations
6234 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
6235 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
6236 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
6237 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
6241 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
6243 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6245 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6246 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6247 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6248 permanently REMOVED.
6250 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
6251 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6252 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6253 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6254 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6256 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
6258 * REMOVED configurations and files
6260 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6262 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6263 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6264 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
6265 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
6266 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
6267 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
6268 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
6269 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
6270 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
6271 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
6272 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
6274 * Changes to command line processing
6276 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
6277 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
6279 * Changes to key bindings
6281 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
6283 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
6285 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
6287 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
6290 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
6292 Numerous documentation fixes.
6294 Numerous testsuite fixes.
6296 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
6298 * New native configurations
6300 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
6301 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
6302 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
6303 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6304 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
6305 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
6309 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
6311 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
6313 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
6315 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
6316 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
6317 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
6318 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
6319 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6321 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
6322 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6323 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6324 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
6325 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
6326 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
6327 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
6328 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
6330 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
6331 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
6333 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
6334 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
6335 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
6336 permanently REMOVED.
6338 * REMOVED configurations and files
6340 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
6341 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
6343 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
6347 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
6349 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
6350 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
6355 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
6357 * The MI enabled by default.
6359 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
6360 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
6361 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
6362 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
6363 which is now deprecated.
6365 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
6367 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
6368 main features are supported:
6370 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
6372 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
6375 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
6377 - a Pascal expression parser.
6379 However, some important features are not yet supported.
6381 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
6383 - there are some problems with boolean types;
6385 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
6386 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
6388 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
6390 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
6392 * Changes in completion.
6394 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
6395 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
6396 users expect at the shell prompt.
6398 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
6399 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
6400 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
6401 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
6402 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
6403 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
6404 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
6406 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
6408 * New platform-independent commands:
6410 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
6411 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
6412 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
6414 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
6416 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
6417 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
6418 many threads as your system allows you to have.
6420 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
6422 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
6423 multi-threaded programs though.
6425 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
6427 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
6429 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
6430 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
6433 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
6435 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
6436 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
6437 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
6438 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
6439 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
6442 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
6443 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
6444 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
6446 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
6448 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
6449 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
6451 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
6452 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
6455 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
6456 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
6457 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
6458 a given linear address.
6460 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
6461 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
6462 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
6464 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
6466 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
6468 * Changes in documentation.
6470 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
6471 Documentation License.
6473 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
6476 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
6478 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
6481 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
6482 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
6483 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
6485 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
6487 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
6488 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
6489 contents of this file.
6493 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
6495 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
6497 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
6499 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
6500 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
6501 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
6502 greater level of detail.
6504 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
6506 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
6507 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
6508 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
6511 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
6513 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
6514 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
6515 machines ``out of the box''.
6517 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
6518 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
6519 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
6520 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
6521 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
6523 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
6524 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
6525 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
6526 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
6527 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
6529 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
6530 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
6533 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
6536 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
6537 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
6538 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
6539 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
6541 * New native configurations
6543 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
6544 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6548 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
6549 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
6550 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
6551 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6553 * OBSOLETE configurations
6555 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
6556 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
6558 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
6561 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6562 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6563 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6564 be permanently REMOVED.
6566 * Gould support removed
6568 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
6570 * New features for SVR4
6572 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
6573 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
6574 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
6576 * Many C++ enhancements
6578 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
6579 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
6581 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
6583 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
6584 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
6585 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
6586 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
6588 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
6589 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
6591 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
6593 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
6594 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
6595 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
6597 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
6598 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
6600 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
6602 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
6603 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
6604 include ``set remote P-packet''.
6606 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
6608 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
6609 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
6610 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
6612 * ``apropos'' command added.
6614 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
6615 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
6616 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
6620 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
6621 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
6622 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
6623 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
6624 enabled by configuring with:
6626 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
6628 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
6630 * New native configurations
6632 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
6633 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
6634 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
6638 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6639 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
6640 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6642 * OBSOLETE configurations
6644 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
6646 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6647 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6648 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6649 be permanently REMOVED.
6653 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
6654 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
6655 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
6656 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
6657 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
6658 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
6659 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
6664 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
6666 * set extension-language
6668 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
6669 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
6670 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
6671 set extension-language .c c++
6672 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
6673 and their associated languages.
6675 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
6677 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
6678 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
6679 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
6683 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
6684 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
6686 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
6687 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
6689 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
6690 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
6691 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
6692 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
6693 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
6694 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
6695 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
6696 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
6698 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
6699 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
6700 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
6701 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
6705 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
6706 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
6707 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
6708 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
6709 for xdb and dbx commands.
6713 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
6714 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
6715 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
6717 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
6718 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
6719 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
6721 * Debugging across forks
6723 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
6728 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
6729 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
6730 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
6732 * GDB remote protocol additions
6734 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
6735 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
6736 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
6737 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
6739 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
6740 full 64-bit address. The command
6742 set remoteaddresssize 32
6744 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
6745 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
6748 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
6749 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
6751 maint packet heythere
6753 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
6754 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
6757 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
6758 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
6759 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
6761 * Tracing can collect general expressions
6763 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
6764 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
6765 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
6767 * mask-address variable for Mips
6769 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
6770 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
6771 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
6773 * Higher serial baud rates
6775 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
6776 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
6777 to achieve all of these rates.)
6781 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
6782 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
6785 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
6787 * New native configurations
6789 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
6790 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
6791 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6792 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6793 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6794 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
6795 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
6799 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6800 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
6801 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
6802 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
6803 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
6804 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
6805 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
6806 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
6807 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6808 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6809 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
6811 * New debugging protocols
6813 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
6814 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
6815 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
6816 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6817 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6818 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6822 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
6823 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
6828 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
6829 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
6831 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
6833 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
6834 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
6835 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
6837 * Live range splitting
6839 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
6840 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
6841 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
6845 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
6846 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
6850 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
6851 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
6852 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
6857 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
6862 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
6863 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
6864 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
6865 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
6866 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
6867 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
6871 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
6872 the symbol at the specified address.
6876 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
6877 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
6878 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
6879 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
6880 file tracepoint.c for more details.
6884 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
6885 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
6886 of most MIPS variants.
6890 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
6891 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
6892 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
6896 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
6897 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
6898 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
6899 the possible architectures.
6901 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
6903 * New native configurations
6905 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
6906 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
6907 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
6908 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
6909 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6910 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
6914 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
6915 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6916 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
6917 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
6918 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
6920 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6924 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
6925 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
6926 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
6927 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
6928 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6932 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6934 * Windows 95/NT native
6936 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6937 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6938 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6939 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6940 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6942 * dont-repeat command
6944 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6945 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6946 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6947 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6949 * Send break instead of ^C
6951 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6952 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6953 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6955 * Remote protocol timeout
6957 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6958 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6959 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6961 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6963 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6964 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6965 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6966 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6967 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6969 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6970 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6971 automatically on hpux10.
6973 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6975 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6977 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6979 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6980 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6981 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6982 every character. The default value is 1050.
6984 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6986 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6987 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6988 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6989 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6990 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6991 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6993 * Speedups for remote debugging
6995 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6996 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6997 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6999 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
7001 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
7002 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
7004 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
7006 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
7008 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
7009 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
7011 * Remote targets use caching
7013 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
7014 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
7015 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
7016 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
7017 off' turns the data cache off.
7019 * Remote targets may have threads
7021 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
7022 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
7023 gdb/remote.c for details.
7027 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
7028 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
7029 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
7030 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
7031 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
7032 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
7033 sequence is something like
7035 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
7037 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
7041 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
7042 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
7043 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
7044 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
7045 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
7046 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
7047 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
7048 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
7052 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
7053 but does simplify configuration and building.
7057 GDB now supports hpux10.
7059 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
7061 * New native configurations
7063 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
7064 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
7065 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
7066 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
7070 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
7071 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
7072 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
7073 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
7076 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
7078 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
7079 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
7080 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
7081 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
7082 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
7084 * Arguments to user-defined commands
7086 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
7087 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
7090 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
7092 To execute the command use:
7095 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
7096 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
7097 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
7099 * New `if' and `while' commands
7101 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
7102 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
7103 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
7104 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
7105 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
7106 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
7107 if the expression is zero.
7109 * Fortran source language mode
7111 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
7112 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
7113 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
7114 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
7117 * Better HPUX support
7119 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
7120 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
7121 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
7122 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
7123 that behavior do the following before running the program:
7129 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
7130 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
7136 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
7137 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
7140 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
7141 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
7143 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
7145 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
7146 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
7147 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
7148 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
7149 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
7150 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
7152 * New DOS host serial code
7154 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
7155 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
7158 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
7160 * New "complete" command
7162 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
7163 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
7165 * Trailing space optional in prompt
7167 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
7168 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
7170 * Breakpoint hit counts
7172 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
7173 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
7174 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
7175 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
7176 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
7179 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
7181 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
7182 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
7183 arrays actually contain only short strings.
7185 * Shared library breakpoints
7187 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
7188 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
7190 * Hardware watchpoints
7192 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
7193 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
7195 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
7199 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
7200 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
7202 * Improved Irix 5 support
7204 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
7206 * Improved HPPA support
7208 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
7210 * New native configurations
7212 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
7213 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
7214 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
7215 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
7219 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
7220 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
7223 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
7225 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
7226 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
7230 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
7231 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
7233 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
7235 * Irix 5 is now supported
7239 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
7240 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
7241 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
7242 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
7243 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
7246 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
7248 * User visible changes:
7252 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
7253 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
7254 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
7255 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
7256 debugging info for the mips target).
7258 * DEC Alpha native support
7260 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
7261 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
7262 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
7263 Alpha-specific notes.
7265 * Preliminary thread implementation
7267 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
7269 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
7271 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
7272 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
7275 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
7277 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
7278 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
7279 call methods, ...etc.
7281 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
7283 * User visible changes:
7285 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
7286 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
7287 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
7288 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
7290 Filename completion now works.
7292 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
7293 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
7294 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
7296 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
7297 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
7298 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
7299 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
7300 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
7304 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
7305 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
7308 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
7312 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
7313 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
7314 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
7318 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
7319 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
7320 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
7321 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
7322 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
7326 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
7327 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
7328 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
7330 * New targets supported
7332 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7333 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
7334 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
7335 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
7336 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
7338 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
7339 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
7340 GO32 memory extender.
7342 * New remote protocols
7344 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
7346 * New source languages supported
7348 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
7349 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
7350 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
7353 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
7355 * HP Precision Architecture supported
7357 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
7358 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
7359 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
7360 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
7361 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
7362 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
7364 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
7366 * Faster and better demangling
7368 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
7369 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
7370 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
7371 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
7372 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
7373 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
7376 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
7377 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
7378 compiler does not actually implement.
7380 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
7382 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
7383 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
7384 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
7385 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
7386 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
7387 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
7390 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
7391 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
7393 * Improved configure script
7395 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
7396 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
7397 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
7398 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
7400 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
7401 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
7402 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
7403 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
7404 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
7405 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
7407 * Documentation improvements
7409 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
7410 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
7411 before submitting changes.
7413 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
7414 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
7415 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
7416 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
7417 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
7419 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
7420 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
7421 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
7422 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
7423 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
7424 around this problem.
7428 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
7429 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
7430 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
7433 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
7434 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
7436 * New native hosts supported
7438 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
7439 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
7441 * New targets supported
7443 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
7445 * New file formats supported
7447 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
7448 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
7452 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
7454 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
7455 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
7457 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
7458 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
7459 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
7461 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
7462 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
7464 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
7465 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
7466 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
7469 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
7470 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
7471 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
7472 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
7473 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
7475 * Internal improvements
7477 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
7478 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
7480 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
7481 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
7482 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
7483 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
7484 shared code that handles any of them.
7486 * New command line options
7488 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
7492 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
7493 General Public License.
7495 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
7497 * Host/native/target split
7499 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
7500 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
7501 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
7502 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
7503 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
7505 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
7506 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
7507 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
7508 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
7509 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
7510 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
7511 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
7513 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
7514 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
7515 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
7517 * New hosts supported
7519 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
7520 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
7521 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
7523 * New targets supported
7525 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
7526 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
7528 * New native hosts supported
7530 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
7531 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
7532 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
7534 * New file formats supported
7536 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
7537 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
7538 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
7542 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
7543 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
7544 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
7546 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
7548 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
7549 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
7550 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
7551 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
7555 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
7556 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
7557 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
7559 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
7563 The crash that occurred when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
7564 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
7567 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
7568 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
7570 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
7571 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
7572 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
7573 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
7574 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
7575 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
7577 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
7578 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
7579 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
7580 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
7584 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
7585 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
7586 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
7587 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
7588 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
7590 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
7591 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
7592 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
7593 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
7597 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
7598 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
7599 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
7600 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
7601 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
7602 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
7603 each instruction being stepped through.
7605 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
7606 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
7608 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
7609 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
7610 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
7611 processor with a serial port.
7615 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
7616 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
7617 supported, and what files each one uses.
7621 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
7622 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
7623 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
7624 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
7626 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
7627 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
7628 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
7629 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
7633 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
7634 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
7635 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
7636 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
7637 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
7638 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
7640 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
7643 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
7645 * Better support for C++ function names
7647 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
7648 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
7649 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
7650 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
7651 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
7653 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
7654 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
7655 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
7656 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
7657 for the list of formats.
7659 * G++ symbol mangling problem
7661 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
7662 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
7663 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
7664 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compiling gdb/symtab.c. The
7665 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
7666 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
7669 * New 'maintenance' command
7671 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
7672 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
7673 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
7675 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
7676 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
7677 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
7678 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
7679 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
7680 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
7682 The following commands are new:
7684 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
7685 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
7686 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
7688 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
7690 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
7691 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
7692 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
7693 read after argv processing.
7695 * New hosts supported
7697 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
7699 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
7701 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
7702 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
7703 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
7704 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
7705 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
7708 * New targets supported
7710 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7712 * More smarts about finding #include files
7714 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
7715 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
7716 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
7717 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
7718 the one that contains your sources.
7720 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
7721 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
7722 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
7724 * Interesting infernals change
7726 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
7727 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
7728 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
7729 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
7731 * Bug fixes (of course!)
7733 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
7734 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
7735 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
7737 See the ChangeLog for details.
7739 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
7741 * New machines supported (host and target)
7743 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
7745 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
7747 * New malloc package
7749 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
7750 Mmalloc is capable of handling multiple heaps of memory. It is also
7751 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
7752 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
7753 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
7754 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
7758 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
7759 'help info proc' for details.
7761 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
7763 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
7764 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
7767 * File name changes for MS-DOS
7769 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
7770 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
7771 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
7772 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
7773 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
7774 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
7776 * Cross byte order fixes
7778 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
7779 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
7781 * New -mapped and -readnow options
7783 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
7784 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
7785 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
7786 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
7787 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
7788 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
7789 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
7790 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
7791 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
7792 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
7794 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
7795 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
7796 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
7797 slower, but makes future operations faster.
7799 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
7800 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
7801 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
7804 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
7806 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
7807 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
7808 shared across multiple host platforms.
7810 * longjmp() handling
7812 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
7813 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
7814 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
7815 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
7819 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
7820 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
7825 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
7826 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
7827 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
7829 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
7831 * New machines supported (host and target)
7833 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7835 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
7836 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
7838 * New machines supported (target)
7840 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
7844 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
7845 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
7846 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
7848 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
7849 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
7850 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
7851 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
7852 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
7855 * New features for SVR4
7857 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
7858 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
7859 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
7861 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
7862 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
7863 it prints the address mappings of the process.
7865 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
7866 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
7868 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
7870 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
7871 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
7872 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
7873 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
7874 same code linked statically.
7878 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
7879 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
7880 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
7881 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
7882 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
7883 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
7887 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7888 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7889 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7892 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
7894 * New machines supported (host and target)
7896 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
7897 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
7898 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7900 * Almost SCO Unix support
7902 We had hoped to support:
7903 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7904 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
7905 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
7906 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
7908 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
7910 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
7911 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
7912 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
7913 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
7918 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
7919 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
7920 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
7924 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7925 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7926 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7928 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7930 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7931 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7932 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7934 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7935 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7936 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7937 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7940 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7941 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7942 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7943 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7946 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7947 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7950 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7951 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7952 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7955 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7957 * Improved configuration
7959 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7960 Porting BFD is simpler.
7964 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7965 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7966 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7967 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7971 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7973 * New host supported (not target)
7975 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7978 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7980 * Multiple source language support
7982 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7983 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7984 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7985 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7986 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7987 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7991 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7992 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7993 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7994 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7996 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7997 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7998 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
8000 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
8001 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
8005 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
8006 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
8007 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
8008 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
8011 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
8013 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
8014 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
8015 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
8016 examining core files.
8020 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
8023 * New machines supported (host and target)
8025 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
8026 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
8027 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
8029 * New hosts supported (not targets)
8031 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
8033 * New targets supported (not hosts)
8035 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
8036 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
8037 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
8039 * New remote interfaces
8045 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
8049 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
8051 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
8052 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
8053 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
8054 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
8055 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
8056 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
8057 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
8058 stub on the target system.
8060 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
8062 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
8063 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
8064 object file types such as a.out and coff.
8066 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
8067 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
8070 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
8072 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
8073 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
8075 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
8076 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
8077 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
8079 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
8080 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
8081 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
8082 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
8084 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
8085 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
8086 it is already running. Default is ON.
8088 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
8089 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
8090 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
8091 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
8094 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
8095 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
8096 or the value of the environment variable
8099 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
8100 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
8103 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
8104 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
8105 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
8107 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
8108 history expansion will be performed on
8109 command line input. The default is OFF.
8111 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
8112 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
8113 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
8115 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
8116 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
8117 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
8120 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
8121 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
8122 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
8125 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
8126 ``set width'' instead.
8128 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
8129 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
8130 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
8131 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
8133 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
8136 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
8139 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
8142 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
8145 * Support for Epoch Environment.
8147 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
8148 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
8149 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
8153 * Support for Shared Libraries
8155 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
8156 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
8157 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
8158 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
8159 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
8160 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
8161 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
8162 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
8164 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
8165 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
8166 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
8168 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
8173 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
8174 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
8175 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
8176 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
8177 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
8178 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
8180 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
8182 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
8184 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
8185 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
8186 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
8189 * C++ multiple inheritance
8191 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
8194 * C++ exception handling
8196 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
8197 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
8198 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
8201 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
8202 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
8203 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
8205 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
8206 current stack frame.
8209 * Minor command changes
8211 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
8212 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
8213 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
8215 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
8216 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
8217 frames without printing.
8219 * New directory command
8221 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
8222 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
8223 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
8224 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
8225 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
8227 * Configuring GDB for compilation
8229 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
8232 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
8233 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
8234 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
8235 where the program that you are debugging will run.