Issues from previous releases

The following documentation discusses issues that serve as important warnings or isssues that were new enhancements with this release.

These issues may provide clues that may help if you are a new user of the GNU tools or if you run into problems with the GNUPro tools.

General issues
Compiler issues
Debugger issues
Utilities issues

General issues

The following documentation discusses new features and alerts for this release of GNUPro Toolkit.

For problems with this or future releases, Cygnus now has Website support access. See Accessing Cygnus Web Support to report problems.

eCos^TM (Embedded Cygnus Operating System), a full-featured, run-time solution under open-source licensing terms is available for using with the GNUPro tools. eCos, a royalty-free, highly configurable, application-specific operating system, is targeted at embedded systems development, allowing embedded system developers to focus on differentiating their products instead of developing, maintaining, or configuring proprietary, real-time kernels. Details on eCos are available online at the following location, along with specific documentation and open-source licensing terms.

http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos/

The GNUPro visual debugger, Cygnus Insight^TM, formerly known as GDBTk has many significant changes; see Debugger issues and Working with Cygnus Insight, the visual debugger, for details regarding usage and features of Insight.

The GNUPro tools are now supported for use in the Win32 environment by using the Cygwin^TM tools, a porting layer for applications that are generally functional only in Unix environments.

See Cygwin: a free Win32 porting layer for Unix applications and GNUPro Tools for Embedded Systems for details about using the tools for developing programs in the Win32 environment.

Rebuilding is now available for the Windows operating system. See Rebuilding from source for details and instructions.

There is now support for several new targets with this release.

Host	Target	Output Format
HP-UX 10. x	MIPS 64 V_R5`xxx`	ELF
SPARC Solaris 2.5	ARM 7/7T	COFF
	M68K	ELF¹
	MIPS 64 V_R5`xxx`	ELF
	MIPS LSI TinyRISC	ELF
	v85`x`	ELF
SPARC SunOS 4.1.4	D10V	ELF
	MIPS 64 V_R5`xxx`	ELF
	MIPS LSI TinyRISC	ELF
	MIPS TX39	ELF
	v85`x`	ELF
Windows NT4.0/95²	D10V	ELF
	M68K	ELF³
	MIPS LSI TinyRISC	ELF
	MIPS 64 V_R5`xxx`	ELF
	MIPS TX39	ELF
	v85`x`	ELF

1.To use the Motorola "Coldfire" version, if that is the configuration you intend to specify as a target, see Motorola m68k development in GNUPro Tools for Embedded Systems.

2.See also Cygwin: a free Win32 porting layer for Unix applications in GNUPro Tools for Embedded Systems for details about using the tools for developing programs in the Win32 environment.

3.See previous footnote for the Motorola "Coldfire" version.

For the complete list of supported hosts and targets, see Embedded cross-configuration support and see GNUPro Tools for Embedded Systems for details about specific hosts and targets.

Compiler issues

The following documentation concerns enhancement issues that may affect the API or ABI when working with the GNUPro compiler tools.

For documentation specific to a particular processor, see the specific processor’s documentation as well as GNUPro Tools for Embedded Systems.

The command input, gcc --help, will now give a list of options for the GNU compiler, GCC.

init_priority allows initialiazation of objects in the order that you want.

There is now namespace support, identifying the particular scope for wrapping class or type functions so that two or more libraries can work together.

There have been enhancements to the GNU profiler, gprof, enabling profiling when testing the compiler.

Thread safe exception handling is now supported for the Solaris 2.6 and PowerPC 860 systems.

The GNU C++ library, libstdc++, is not thread safe by default under Solaris. Contact us for information on how to recreate the library so that it is thread safe, using -lthread or -lpthread.

Debugger issues

The following documentation concerns the enhancement issues for the GNUPro debugger tools.

Continued enhancements have improved the GNUPro visual debugger, Cygnus Insight (formerly known as GDBTk).

See Working with Cygnus Insight, the visual debugger for details regarding usage and features of Insight.

The Source Window now has cache functionality generating faster navigation, searches and settings.

A Function Browser window now interacts with the Source Window in order to examine functions in source code for multiple executables. A dialog box is available in order to enter text, declaring functions as static or as regular expressions.

The interface for the Memory window has faster refresh rates.

Improved mouse functionality allows for right click features to provide better and faster access to standard debugging features through pop-up windows.

The Target Selection window for the GNUPro visual debugger, Cygnus Insight, has additional functionality. Accessible from Insight’s Source Window, V850 users developing with ICE select a target by entering the name of the ICE target into the Target Selection window’s dialog box. The V850 processor is the only supported target until the next release.

The GNU debugger, GDB, is going through many changes in its emergence as version 5, available in a 1999 release. See future releases for the results of the development.

Utilities issues

The following documentation concerns enhancement issues for GNUPro utilities.

The GNU linker tool has improved function and variable linking since the addition of a few supported targets (see Embedded cross-configuration support for the complete listing of targets). This linking allows for selecting specific functions and variables in an object file when configuring, whereby the linking selectively (or explicitly) includes those libraries in the linking instruction.

For specific assembler or linker details, consult the specific processor’s documentation and GNUPro Tools for Embedded Systems.

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