gdbstub

New Features

• HostIo - Add HostIoErrno::{EIO,ENOSYS} variants. #175 (yodel)

Bugfixes

• Add missing alloc::borrow::ToOwned import when building no_std with alloc. #174 (AdamKMeller)

New Protocol Extensions

• Flash - Support for GDB flash commands (e.g: load). #172 (eulerdisk)

This release also coincides with the release of gdbstub_arch 0.3.2:

• x86: Remove "padding" bytes from x86 register packet #171 (cadmic)

New Protocol Extensions

• Tracepoints - Basic tracepoint extension support. #160 (cczetier)
  • Note: Most fundamental tracepoint operations are supported, but there quite a few packets / APIs that are not yet implemented. Please see the module documentation for additional details.

Bugfixes

• Fixed case-insensitive filename collision issue #166 introduced in 0.7.4

This version was yanked, as it introduced two files - qTBuffer.rs and QTBuffer.rs - that resulted in filename collisions when cloning gdbstub on case-insensitive filesystems.

New Features

• Add new core_error feature, to have GdbStubError impl core::error::Error. #154 (ultimaweapon)
  • Note: Out of an abundance of caution, this has been put behind a
    feature-flag, as while gdbstub doesn't claim a strict MSRV at this time,
    it seemed unwise to have a PATCH release break folks stuck on a pre-1.81
    Rust toolchain.

Bugfixes

• Add workaround for vCont packets that specify a '0' (Any) thread-id
  • For more context, see e9a5296c

Internal Improvements

• Various README tweaks
• Various clippy lint fixes
• Fix incorrect valid-addr check in armv4t example

New Protocol Extensions

• LibrariesSvr4 - List an SVR4 (System-V/Unix) target's libraries. #142 (alexcrichton)

Breaking API Changes

• stub::GdbStubError is now an opaque struct with a handful of methods to extract user-defined context (as opposed to being an enum that directly exposed all error internals to the user).
  • This change will enable future versions of gdbstub to fearlessly improve error messages and infrastructure without making semver breaking changes. See #112 for more.
• common::Signal is not longer an enum, and is instead a struct with a single pub u8 field + a collection of associated constants.
  • As a result, yet another instance of unsafe could be removed from the codebase!
• Arch API:
  • Entirely removed single_step_behavior. See #132 for details and rationale
• Target APIs:
  • SingleThreadBase/MultiThreadBase
    • read_addrs now returns a usize instead of a (), allowing implementations to report cases where only a subset of memory could be read. #115 (geigerzaehler)
  • HostIo
    • bitflags has been updated from 1.x to 2.x, affecting the type of HostIoOpenFlags and HostIoOpenMode #138 (qwandor)

Internal Improvements

• Reformatted codebase with nightly rustfmt using imports_granularity = "Item"

New Features

• Target::use_no_ack_mode - toggle support for for activating "no ack mode" #135 (bet4it)

New Protocol Extensions

• ExtendedMode > CurrentActivePid - Support reporting a non-default active PID #133
  • Required to fix vAttach behavior (see Bugfixes section below)

Bugfixes

• Fix for targets with no active threads #127 (xobs)
• Fix vAttach behavior when switching between multiple processes #129 (xobs), and #133
• Minor doc fixes

Bugfixes

• Avoid truncating X packets that contain : and , as part of the payload. #121 (709924470)

Internal Improvements

• Various README tweaks
• Remove some unsafe code
• CI improvements
  • Run no-panic checks on example_no_std
  • Run CI on docs

New Features

• SingleRegisterAccess: Support reporting unavailable regs #107 (ptosi)

New Protocol Extensions

• MultiThreadBase > ThreadExtraInfo - Provide extra information per-thread. #106 (thefaxman)
• LldbRegisterInfo - (LLDB specific) Report register information in the LLDB format. #103 (jawilk)
  • This information can be statically included as part of the Arch implemention, or dynamically reported via the LldbRegisterInfoOverride IDET.

Bugfixes

• Report thread ID in response to ? packet. #105 (thefaxman)

Internal Improvements

• Tweak enabled clippy lints
• Added a light dusting of #[inline] across the packet parsing code, crunching the code down even further
• Expanded on "no-panic guarantee" docs

New Features

• add LLDB-specific HostIoOpenFlags #100 (mrk)

After over a half-year of development, gdbstub 0.6 has finally been released!

This massive release delivers a slew of new protocol extensions, internal improvements, and key API improvements. Some highlights include:

• A new non-blocking GdbStubStateMachine API, enabling gdbstub to integrate nicely with async event loops!
  • Moreover, on no_std platforms, this new API enables gdbstub to be driven directly via breakpoint/serial interrupt handlers!
  • This API is already being used in several Rust kernel projects, such as vmware-labs/node-replicated-kernel and betrusted-io/xous-core to enable bare-metal, in-kernel debugging.
• gdbstub is now entirely panic free in release builds!
  • * subject to rustc's compiler optimizations
  • This was a pretty painstaking effort, but the end result is a substantial reduction in binary size on no_std platforms.
• Tons of new and exciting protocol extensions, including but not limited to:
  • Support for remote file I/O (reading/writing files to the debug target)
  • Fetching remote memory maps
  • Catching + reporting syscall entry/exit conditions
  • ...and many more!
• A new license: gdbstub is licensed under MIT OR Apache-2.0

See the changelog for a comprehensive rundown of all the new features.

While this release does come with quite a few breaking changes, the core IDET-based Target API has remained much the same, which should make porting code over from 0.5.x to 0.6 pretty mechanical. See the transition_guide.md for guidance on upgrading from 0.5.x to 0.6.

And as always, a huge shoutout to the folks who contributed PRs, Issues, and ideas to gdbstub - this release wouldn't have been possible without you! Special shoutouts to gz and xobs for helping me test and iterate on the new bare-metal state machine API, and bet4it for pointing out and implementing many useful API improvements and internal refactors.

Cheers!

New Features

• The new GdbStubStateMachine API gives users the power and flexibility to integrate gdbstub into their project-specific event loop infrastructure.
  • e.g: A global instance of GdbStubStateMachine can be driven directly from bare-metal interrupt handlers in no_std environments
  • e.g: A project using async/await can wrap GdbStubStateMachine in a task, yielding execution while waiting for the target to resume / new data to arrive down the Connection
• Removed all panicking code from gdbstub
  • See the commit message for more details on how this was achieved.
• Introduced strongly-typed enum for protocol defined signal numbers (instead of using bare u8s)
• Added basic feature negotiation to support clients that don't support multiprocess+ extensions.
• Relicensed gdbstub under MIT OR Apache-2.0 #68
• Added several new "guard rails" to avoid common integration footguns:
  • Target::guard_rail_implicit_sw_breakpoints - guards against the GDB client silently overriding target instructions with breakpoints if SwBreakpoints hasn't been implemented.
  • Target::guard_rail_single_step_gdb_behavior - guards against a GDB client bug where support for single step may be required / ignored on certain platforms (e.g: required on x86, ignored on MIPS)
• Added several new "toggle switches" to enable/disable parts of the protocol (all default to true)
  • Target::use_x_upcase_packet - toggle support for the more efficient X memory write packet
  • Target::use_resume_stub - toggle gdbstub's built-in "stub" resume handler that returns SIGRAP if a target doesn't implement support for resumption
  • Target::use_rle - toggle whether outgoing packets are Run Length Encoded (RLE)

New Protocol Extensions

• MemoryMap - Get memory map XML file from the target. #54 (Tiwalun)
• CatchSyscalls - Enable and disable catching syscalls from the inferior process. #57 (mchesser)
• HostIo - Perform I/O operations on host. #66 (bet4it)
  • Support for all Host I/O operations: open, close, pread, pwrite, fstat, unlink, readlink, setfs
• ExecFile - Get full absolute path of the file that was executed to create a process running on the remote system. #69 (bet4it)
• Auxv - Access the target’s auxiliary vector. #86 (bet4it)
• Implement X packet - More efficient bulk-write to memory (superceding the M packet). #82 (gz)

Breaking API Changes

• Connection API:
  • Removed the read and peek methods from Connection
    • These have been moved to the new ConnectionExt trait, which is used in the new GdbStub::run_blocking API
• Arch API:
  • Dynamic read_register + RegId support. #85 (bet4it)
• Target APIs:
  • prefix all IDET methods with support_
    • _makes it far easier to tell at-a-glance whether a method is an IDET, or an actual handler method.
  • Introduce strongly-typed enum for protocol defined signal numbers (instead of using bare u8s)
  • Base API:
    • Make single-stepping optional #92
    • Remove GdbInterrupt type (interrupt handling lifted to higher-level APIs)
    • Remove ResumeAction type (in favor of separate methods for various resume types)
  • Breakpoints API:
    • HwWatchpoint: Plumb watchpoint length parameter to public API
  • TargetXml API:
    • Support for <xi:include> in target.xml, which required including the annex parameter in the handler method.
    • annex is set to b"target.xml" on the fist call, though it may be set to other values in subsequent calls if <xi:include> is being used.
  • Pass PacketBuf-backed &mut [u8] as a response buffer to various APIs #72 (bet4it)
    • Improvement over the callback-based approach.
    • This change is possible thanks to a clause in the GDB spec that specifies that responses will never exceed the size of the PacketBuf.
    • Also see #70, which tracks some other methods that might be refactored to use this approach in the future.

Internal Improvements

• Documentation
  • Fix crates.io badges #71 (atouchet)
  • Add uhyve to real-world examples #73 (mkroening)
• Use stable clippy in CI
• Enable logging for responses with only alloc #78 (gz)
• Lots of internal refactoring and cleanup

While the overall structure of the API has remained the same, 0.5.0 does introduce a few breaking API changes that require some attention. That being said, it should not be a difficult migration, and updating to 0.5.0 from 0.4 shouldn't take more than 10 mins of refactoring.

Check out transition_guide.md for guidance on upgrading from 0.4.x to 0.5.

New Features

• Implement Run-Length-Encoding (RLE) on outgoing packets
  • This significantly cuts down on the data being transferred over the wire when reading from registers/memory
• Add target-specific kind: Arch::BreakpointKind parameters to the Breakpoint API
  • While emulated systems typically implement breakpoints by pausing execution once the PC hits a certain value, "real" systems typically need to patch the instruction stream with a breakpoint instruction. On systems with variable-sized instructions, this kind parameter specifies the size of the instruction that should be injected.
• Implement ResumeAction::{Step,Continue}WithSignal
• Added the Exited(u8), Terminated(u8), and ReplayLog("begin"|"end") stop reasons.
• Added DisconnectReason::Exited(u8) and DisconnectReason::Terminated(u8).
• Reworked the MultiThreadOps::resume API to be significantly more ergonomic and efficient
  • See the transition guide for more details.

New Protocol Extensions

• {Single,Multi}ThreadReverse{Step,Continue} - Support for reverse-step and reverse-continue. #48 (DrChat)
• {Single,Multi}ThreadRangeStepping - Optional optimized range stepping support.

Breaking Arch Changes

• gdbstub::arch has been moved into a separate gdbstub_arch crate
  • See #45 for details on why this was done.
• (x86) Break GPRs & SRs into individual fields/variants #34

Breaking API Changes

• Base Protocol Refactors
  • Reworked the MultiThreadOps::resume API
  • Added a wrapper around the raw check_gdb_interrupt callback, hiding the underlying implementation details
  • Extracted base protocol single-register access methods ({read,write}_register) into separate SingleRegisterAccess trait
    • These are optional GDB protocol methods, and as such, should be modeled as IDETs
• Protocol Extension Refactors
  • Consolidated the {Hw,Sw}Breakpoints/Watchpoints IDETs under a single Breakpoints IDET + sub-IDETs
  • Added new arch-specific kind: Arch::BreakpointKind parameter to add_{hw,sw}_breakpoint methods
  • Renamed target::ext::extended_mod::ConfigureASLR{Ops} to ConfigureAslr{Ops} (clippy::upper_case_acronyms)
• Added {Step,Continue}WithSignal variants to target::ext::base::ResumeAction
• Trait Changes
  • arch::Arch: Added type BreakpointKind. Required to support arch-specific breakpoint kinds
  • arch::Arch: (very minor) Added num_traits::FromPrimitive bound to Arch::Usize
  • arch::Registers: Added type ProgramCounter and associated fn pc(&self) -> Self::ProgramCounter method. Added preemptively in anticipation of future GDB Agent support
• Removed the Halted stop reason (more accurate to simply return {Exited|Terminated}(SIGSTOP) instead).
• Removed the Halted disconnect reason (replaced with the Exited and Terminated stop reasons instead).
• Removed the implicit ExtendedMode attached PID tracking when alloc was available. See 23b56038 rationale behind this change.

Internal Improvements

• Split monolithic GdbStubImpl implementation into separate files (by protocol extension)
• Finally rewrite + optimize GdbStubImpl::do_vcont, along with streamlining its interactions with the legacy s and c packets
• Sprinkle more IDET-based dead code elimination hints (notably wrt. stop reasons)
• Remove the default self.current_mem_tid hack, replacing it with a much more elegant solution
• Packet Parser improvements
  • Remove last remaining bit of UTF-8 related code
  • Eliminate as much panicking bounds-checking code as possible
  • support efficient parsing of packets that are parsed differently depending on active protocol extension (namely, the breakpoint packets)
  • (currently unused) Zero-cost support for parsing Z and z packets with embedded agent bytecode expressions
• Use intra-doc links whenever possible

Bugfixes

• Fix RiscvRegId for arch::riscv::Riscv64 #46 (fzyz999)

New Protocol Extensions

• TargetDescriptionXmlOverride - Allow targets to override the target description XML file (target.xml) specified by Target::Arch::target_description_xml. This is useful in cases where a Target is expected to be generic over multiple architectures. #43 (with help from DrChat)

Bugfixes

• use write! instead of writeln! in output! macro #41

New Arch Implementations

• Implement RegId for Mips/Mips64 #38 (starfleetcadet75)
• Implement RegId for MSP430 #38 (starfleetcadet75)

Packaging

• Exclude test object files from package #37 (keiichiw)

New Arch Implementations

• Implement RegId for x86/x86_64 #34 (keiichiw)

Bugfixes

• Switch fatal error signal from T06 to S05,
• specify cfg-if 0.1.10 or later #33 (keiichiw)
  • cargo build fails if cfg-if is 0.1.9 or older

Internal Improvements

• Don't hard-code u64 when parsing packets (use big-endian byte arrays + late conversion to Target::Arch::Usize).

This version includes a major API overhaul, alongside a slew of new features and general improvements. While updating to 0.4.0 will require some substantial code modifications, it's well worth the effort, as 0.4.0 is the safest, leanest, and most featureful release of gdbstub yet!

Fun fact: Even after adding a bunch of new features and bug-fixes, the in-tree example_no_std has remained just as small! The example on the semver-fix-0.2.2 branch is 20251 bytes, while the example on 0.4.0 is 20246 bytes.

Breaking API Changes

• Rewrite the Target API in terms of "Inlineable Dyn Extension Traits" (IDETs)
  • By breaking up Target into smaller pieces which can be mixed-and-matched, it not only makes it easier to get up-and-running with gdbstub, but it also unlocks a lot of awesome internal optimizations:
    • Substantially reduces binary-size footprint by guaranteeing dead-code-elimination of parsing/handling unimplemented GDB protocol features.
    • Compile-time enforcement that certain groups of methods are implemented in-tandem (e.g: add_sw_breakpoint and remove_sw_breakpoint).
• Update the Target API with support for non-fatal error handling.
  • The old approach of only allowing *fatal* errors was woefully inadequate when dealing with potentially fallible operations such as reading from unauthorized memory (which GDB likes to do a bunch), or handling non-fatal std::io::Error that occur as a result of ExtendedMode operations. The new TargetResult/TargetError result is much more robust, and opens to door to supporting additional error handling extensions (such as LLDB's ASCII Errors).
• Update the Connection trait with new methods (flush - required, write_all, on_session_start)
• Lift Registers::RegId to Arch::RegId, and introduce new temporary RegIdImpl solution for avoiding breaking API changes due to new RegId implementations (see #29)
• Mark various RegId enums as #[non_exhaustive], allowing more registers to be added if need be.
• Error types are now marked as #[non_exhaustive].

New Protocol Extensions

• ExtendedMode - Allow targets to run new processes / attach to existing processes / restart execution.
  • Includes support for set disable-randomization, set environment, set startup-with-shell, and set cwd and cd.
• SectionOffsets - Get section/segment relocation offsets from the target. #30 (mchesser)
  • Uses the qOffsets packet under-the-hood.

Bugfixes

• Fix issues related to selecting the incorrect thread after hitting a breakpoint in multi-threaded targets.
• Ensure that set_nodelay is set when using a TcpStream as a Connection (via the new Connection::on_session_start API)
  • This should result in a noticeable performance improvement when debugging over TCP.

Internal Improvements

• Removed btou dependency.
• Removed all UTF-8 aware str handling code.
  • GDB uses a pure ASCII protocol, so including code to deal with UTF-8 resulted in unnecessary binary bloat.

This version contains a few minor breaking changes from 0.2.1. These are only surface-level changes, and can be fixed with minimal effort.

Version 0.3.0 is identical to the yanked version 0.2.2, except that it adheres to cargo's modified SemVer rule which states that the pre-0.x.y breaking changes should still bump the minor version.

Thanks to h33p for reporting this issue (#27)

Breaking API Changes

• Update Target::resume API to replace raw &mut dyn Iterator with a functionally identical concrete Actions iterator.
• Mark the StopReason enum as #[non_exhaustive], allowing further types to be added without being considered as an API breaking change.

New Protocol Extensions

• Add Target::read/write_register support (to support single register accesses) #22 (thomashk0)
• Add StopReason::Signal(u8) variant, to send arbitrary signal codes #19 (mchesser)

New Arch Implementations

• Add partial RISC-V support (only integer ISA at the moment) #21 (thomashk0)
• Add i386 (x86) support #23 (jamcleod)
• Add 32-bit PowerPC support #25 (jamcleod)

New Arch Implementations

• Add x86_64 support #11 (jamcleod)
• Add Mips and Mips64 support #13 (starfleetcadet75)

Internal Improvements

• Documentation improvements
  • Document PC adjustment requirements in Target::resume
  • Add docs on handling non-fatal invalid memory reads/writes in Target::read/write_addrs.

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