Subversion Repositories or1k

                What has changed in GDB?

             (Organized release by release)

*** Changes in GDB 5.0:

* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets

Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point

programs on all x86 targets.  In particular, ``info float'' now

displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with

greater level of detail.

* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints

It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and

bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints.  Data-read watchpoints

on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is

written.

* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB

The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files

necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows

machines ``out of the box''.

The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals.  It is

possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver

signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc.  (Previously, a signal

would kill the program being debugged.)  Programs that hook hardware

interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.

It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their

standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or

even close them.  The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,

and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's

terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.

The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which

enables debugging graphics programs.  Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C

also works.

DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by

GDB.

It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working

directory.  It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of

times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,

breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.

* New native configurations

ARM GNU/Linux                                   arm*-*-linux*

PowerPC GNU/Linux                               powerpc-*-linux*

* New targets

Motorola MCore                                  mcore-*-*

x86 VxWorks                                     i[3456]86-*-vxworks*

PowerPC VxWorks                                 powerpc-*-vxworks*

TI TMS320C80                                    tic80-*-*

* OBSOLETE configurations

Altos 3068                                      m68*-altos-*

Convex                                          c1-*-*, c2-*-*

Pyramid                                         pyramid-*-*

ARM RISCix                                      arm-*-* (as host)

Tahoe                                           tahoe-*-*

Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,

but the code will be left in place.  If there is no activity to revive

these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will

be permanently REMOVED.

* Gould support removed

Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.

* New features for SVR4

On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process

without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and

load symbols from the running process's executable file.

* Many C++ enhancements

C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly

in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.

* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program

A popen(3) style serial-device has been added.  This device starts a

sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates

with that.  The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax

``| '' vis:

        (gdb) set remotedebug 1

        (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args

* MIPS 64 remote protocol

A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB

expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32

instead of 64 bits has been fixed.

The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been

added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.

* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''

The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by

``set remote X-packet''.  Other commands in ``set remote'' family

include ``set remote P-packet''.

* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.

The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now

accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''.  The tracepoint command

``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.

* ``apropos'' command added.

The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and

documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to

try to find a command that does what you are looking for.

* New MI interface

A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB.  This

interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate

process.  This is part of the long term libGDB project.  See the

"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information.  It can be

enabled by configuring with:

        .../configure --enable-gdbmi

*** Changes in GDB-4.18:

* New native configurations

HP-UX 10.20                                     hppa*-*-hpux10.20

HP-UX 11.x                                      hppa*-*-hpux11.0*

M68K Linux                                      m68*-*-linux*

* New targets

Fujitsu FR30                                    fr30-*-elf*

Intel StrongARM                                 strongarm-*-*

Mitsubishi D30V                                 d30v-*-*

* OBSOLETE configurations

Gould PowerNode, NP1                            np1-*-*, pn-*-*

Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,

but the code will be left in place.  If there is no activity to revive

these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will

be permanently REMOVED.

* ANSI/ISO C

As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and

buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer

containing any K&R compatibility code.  We believe that all systems in

use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port

available.  If this is not true, please report the affected

configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately.  See the README file for

information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one

already.

* Readline 2.2

GDB now uses readline 2.2.

* set extension-language

You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source

languages by using the `set extension-language' command.  For instance,

you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying

        set extension-language .c c++

The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions

and their associated languages.

* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000

When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,

you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the

PowerPC family you are debugging.  The command

        set processor NAME

sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME.  GDB knows about the

following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:

  ppc-uisa  PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code

  rs6000    IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view

  403       IBM PowerPC 403

  403GC     IBM PowerPC 403GC

  505       Motorola PowerPC 505

  860       Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850

  601       Motorola PowerPC 601

  602       Motorola PowerPC 602

  603       Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e

  604       Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e

  750       Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750

At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the

special-purpose processor registers.  Since almost all the affected

registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is

only useful for remote debugging in its present form.

* HP-UX support

Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much

more extensive support for HP-UX.  Added features include shared

library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,

support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode

for xdb and dbx commands.

* Catchpoints

HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a

generalization of the old catch command.  On HP-UX, it is now possible

to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.

This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first

argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up.  See the

output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.

* Debugging across forks

On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens

in the inferior.

* TUI

HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI).  To get

it, build with --enable-tui.  Although this can be enabled for any

configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.

* GDB remote protocol additions

A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.

Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub

fails to respond.  The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'

allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.

For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a

full 64-bit address.  The command

        set remoteaddresssize 32

can be used to revert to the old behaviour.  For existing remote stubs

the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information

will be discarded.

In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance

command `packet' to send any text string to the stub.  For instance,

        maint packet heythere

sends the packet "$heythere#".  Note that it is very easy to

disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong

time.

The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the

target to what is in the executable file without uploading or

downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.

* Tracing can collect general expressions

You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints.  This requires

further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and

doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.

* mask-address variable for Mips

For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of

a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'.  This is mainly

of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.

* Higher serial baud rates

GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,

230400, and 460800 baud.  (Note that your host system may not be able

to achieve all of these rates.)

* i960 simulator

The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a

builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.

*** Changes in GDB-4.17:

* New native configurations

Alpha GNU/Linux                                 alpha*-*-linux*

Unixware 2.x                                    i[3456]86-unixware2*

Irix 6.x                                        mips*-sgi-irix6*

PowerPC GNU/Linux                               powerpc-*-linux*

PowerPC Solaris                                 powerpcle-*-solaris*

Sparc GNU/Linux                                 sparc-*-linux*

Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1                          m68k-motorola-sysv

* New targets

Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC)                        arc-*-*

Hitachi H8/300S                                 h8300*-*-*

Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator                  mn10200-*-*

Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator                  mn10300-*-*

MIPS NEC VR4100                                 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*

MIPS NEC VR5000                                 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*

MIPS Toshiba TX39                               mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*

Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator                     d10v-*-*

Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator                   m32r-*-elf*

Tsqware Sparclet                                sparclet-*-*

NEC V850 w/simulator                            v850-*-*

* New debugging protocols

ARM with RDI protocol                           arm*-*-*

M68K with dBUG monitor                          m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}

DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol           mips*-*-*

PowerPC with DINK32 monitor                     powerpc{,le}-*-eabi

PowerPC with SDS protocol                       powerpc{,le}-*-eabi

Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices                 powerpc{,le}-*-eabi

* DWARF 2

All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging

format.  The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2

information.

* Java frontend

GDB now includes basic Java language support.  This support is

only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.

* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path

For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for

loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for

locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.

* Live range splitting

GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live

range splitting as part of its optimization.  See gdb/doc/LRS for

more details on the expected format of the stabs information.

* Hurd support

GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been

updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.

* ARM Thumb support

GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit

instruction set.  ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb

instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing

accordingly.

* MIPS16 support

GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit

instruction set.

* Overlay support

GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been

linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB

will decide which section to use for symbolic info.  You can choose to

control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement

additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring

in the overlay mapping.  Do "help overlay" for more detail.

* info symbol

The command "info symbol 
" displays information about

the symbol at the specified address.

* Trace support

The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows

asynchronous collection and display of trace data.  This requires

extensive support in the target-side debugging stub.  Tracing mode

includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the

file tracepoint.c for more details.

* MIPS simulator

Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed

by Cygnus Solutions.  The simulator supports the instruction sets

of most MIPS variants.

* Sparc simulator

Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed

by the European Space Agency.  The simulator is not built into

Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.

* set architecture

For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a

basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the

architecture explicitly.  "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists

the possible architectures.

*** Changes in GDB-4.16:

* New native configurations

Windows 95, x86 Windows NT                      i[345]86-*-cygwin32

M68K NetBSD                                     m68k-*-netbsd*

PowerPC AIX 4.x                                 powerpc-*-aix*

PowerPC MacOS                                   powerpc-*-macos*

PowerPC Windows NT                              powerpcle-*-cygwin32

RS/6000 AIX 4.x                                 rs6000-*-aix4*

* New targets

ARM with RDP protocol                           arm-*-*

I960 with MON960                                i960-*-coff

MIPS VxWorks                                    mips*-*-vxworks*

MIPS VR4300 with PMON                           mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*

PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor                     powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*

Hitachi SH3                                     sh-*-*

Matra Sparclet                                  sparclet-*-*

* PowerPC simulator

The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,

contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.

PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only

basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit

performance and I/O hardware.  See sim/ppc/README for more details.

* Solaris 2.5

GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.

* Windows 95/NT native

GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.

To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,

which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.

Further information, binaries, and sources are available at

ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.

* dont-repeat command

If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the

command will not be repeated if the user just types return.  This is

useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental

extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.

* Send break instead of ^C

The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break

rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it.  By default,

GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.

* Remote protocol timeout

The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'

that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying

to read from the target.  The default value is 2.

* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)

By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are

loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker.  By using the command `set

stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior

when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints

in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.

Note this feature does not work on hpux8.  On hpux9 you must link

/usr/lib/end.o into your program.  This feature should work

automatically on hpux10.

* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support

Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.

* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"

When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you

may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting

the `syn-garbage-limit'.  A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore

every character.  The default value is 1050.

* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions

If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it

a recording of a remote debug session.  This recording may then be

replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay".  See gdbserver/README for

details.  This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing

remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it

to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.

* Speedups for remote debugging

GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using

the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,

and more efficient S-record downloading.

* Memory use reductions and statistics collection

GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.

Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.

*** Changes in GDB-4.15:

* Psymtabs for XCOFF

The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables.  This

can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.

* Remote targets use caching

Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the

remote side.  The data cache could lead to incorrect results because

it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to

debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache

off' turns the the data cache off.

* Remote targets may have threads

The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads

in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'.  See

gdb/remote.c for details.

* NetROM support

If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include

support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs.  The NetROM

acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can

write into it over the network.  GDB's support consists only of

support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use

another protocol, such as standard remote protocol.  The usual

sequence is something like

        target nrom 

        load 

        target remote :1235

* Macintosh host

GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only.  It

may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and

it can debug through the serial port.  All the usual GDB commands are

available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the

device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX".  See mpw-README in the main

directory for more information on how to build.  The MPW configuration

scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the

mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.

* Autoconf

GDB configuration now uses autoconf.  This is not user-visible,

but does simplify configuration and building.

* hpux10

GDB now supports hpux10.

*** Changes in GDB-4.14:

* New native configurations

x86 FreeBSD                                     i[345]86-*-freebsd

x86 NetBSD                                      i[345]86-*-netbsd

NS32k NetBSD                                    ns32k-*-netbsd

Sparc NetBSD                                    sparc-*-netbsd

* New targets

A29K VxWorks                                    a29k-*-vxworks

HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N)   hppa*-*-pro*

CPU32 EST-300 emulator                          m68*-*-est*

PowerPC ELF                                     powerpc-*-elf

WDC 65816                                       w65-*-*

* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs

GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it

possible to attach to running processes.  As the mounting of the /proc

filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines

the availability of /proc during startup.  This can lead to problems

if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.

* Arguments to user-defined commands

User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.

Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9.  A

trivial example:

define adder

  print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2

To execute the command use:

adder 1 2 3

Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.

Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,

use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.

* New `if' and `while' commands

This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined

commands.  Both commands take a single argument, which is the

expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to

execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being

terminated by the word `end'.  The `if' command list may include an

`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only

if the expression is zero.

* Fortran source language mode

GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77.  It will recognize

Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but

variables and functions may not be handled correctly.  GDB will work

with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other

Fortran compilers.

* Better HPUX support

Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs

running hpux9 or later.  You can attach to running dynamically linked

processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so

for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them.  To change

that behavior do the following before running the program:

        adb -w a.out

        __dld_flags?W 0x5

        control-d

This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.

To revert to the normal behavior, do this:

        adb -w a.out

        __dld_flags?W 0x4

        control-d

You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after

the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have

external linkage.

GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on

HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).

* Target byte order now dynamically selectable

You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the

commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the

current setting by using "show endian".  You can also give the command

"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order

associated with the executable.  Currently, only embedded MIPS

configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.

* New DOS host serial code

This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you

no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to

a PC's serial port.

*** Changes in GDB-4.13:

* New "complete" command

This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it

were to be given as a command itself.  This is intended for use by emacs.

* Trailing space optional in prompt

"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set.  This

allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.

* Breakpoint hit counts

"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint

has been hit.  This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you

can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info

to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one

less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of

that breakpoint.

* Ability to stop printing at NULL character

"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of

an array when the first NULL is encountered.  This is useful when large

arrays actually contain only short strings.

* Shared library breakpoints

In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set

breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.

* Hardware watchpoints

There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite

targets.  See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.

Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under Linux.

* Annotations

Annotations have been added.  These are for use with graphical interfaces,

and are still experimental.  Currently only gdba.el uses these.

* Improved Irix 5 support

GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.

* Improved HPPA support

GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.

* New native configurations

Sequent PTX4                            i[34]86-sequent-ptx4

HPPA running OSF/1                      hppa*-*-osf*

Atari TT running SVR4                   m68*-*-sysv4*

RS/6000 LynxOS                          rs6000-*-lynxos*

* New targets

OS/9000                                 i[34]86-*-os9k

MIPS R4000                              mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}

Sparc64                                 sparc64-*-*

* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support

There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.

This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.

* Fixes

As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic

and configuration-specific.  See the ChangeLog for more detail.

*** Changes in GDB-4.12:

* Irix 5 is now supported

* HPPA support

GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable

to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and

GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36).  Until the next major release

of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12

can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.

*** Changes in GDB-4.11:

* User visible changes:

* Remote Debugging

The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote

target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's

debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor.  It is now an

integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more

debugging info for the mips target).

* DEC Alpha native support

GDB now works on the DEC Alpha.  GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable

debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should

work with a future GCC release.  See the README file for a few

Alpha-specific notes.

* Preliminary thread implementation

GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.

* LynxOS native and target support for 386

This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured

to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README

for details).

* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.

This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name

mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,

call methods, ...etc.

*** Changes in GDB-4.10:

 * User visible changes:

Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now

supports the `load' command.  This is only useful if you have some

other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it

somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.

Filename completion now works.

When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the

arrow to point to the line specified.  Also, "info line" prints

addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).

All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called

vxworks-timeout.  This option represents the number of seconds gdb

should wait for responses to rpc's.  You might want to use this if

your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens

to be on the far side of a thin network line.

 * DEC alpha support

This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for

cross debugging.  Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.

*** Changes in GDB-4.9:

 * Testsuite

This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.

The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available

via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.

 * C++ demangling

'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to

emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated

Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront.  Despite

disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to

use gdb with AT&T cfront.

 * Simulators

GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.

So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the

Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.

 * New targets supported

H8/300 simulator                        h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms

H8/500 simulator                        h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms

SH simulator                            sh-hitachi-hms    or sh

Z8000 simulator                         z8k-zilog-none    or z8ksim

IDT MIPS board over serial line         mips-idt-ecoff

Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported.  It requires a custom

version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the

GO32 memory extender.

 * New remote protocols

MIPS remote debugging protocol.

 * New source languages supported

This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language

used by telecommunications companies.  Chill support is also being integrated

into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.

*** Changes in GDB-4.8:

 * HP Precision Architecture supported

GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX.  A preliminary

version of this support was available as a set of patches from the

University of Utah.  GDB does not support debugging of programs

compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file

format.  Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS

(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).

Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.

 * Faster and better demangling

We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style

demangler.  It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'.  Wide

character types (wchar_t) are now supported.  Demangling of each symbol is now

only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.

This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate

increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in

symbol lookups.

`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront.  It was written

from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's

compiler does not actually implement.

 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem

In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple

inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities.  We

recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a

very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.

The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to

circumvent the problem.  A future GCC release will contain a complete

fix.

The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7

release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.

 * Improved configure script

The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if

you don't supply a host system type.  The old scheme of supplying a

host system triplet is preferable over using this.  All the magic is

done in the new `config.guess' script.  Examine it for details.

We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's

version.  It now supports the --with-xxx options.  In particular,

`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.

The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --

only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.

We hope to make this the default in a future release.

 * Documentation improvements

There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to

produce clean changes to the code.  We implore people to read it

before submitting changes.

The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane

M4 macros.  The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release.  Pre-built

`info' files are also provided.  To build `info' files from scratch,

you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in

a future texinfo-X.Y release.

*NOTE*  The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.

We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has

been seen in 3.0.  We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141

or better.  If that isn't possible, there is a patch in

`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work

around this problem.

 * New features

GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by

the user.  The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'.  Ie: you can now type