NEWS revision 854696cc0e042e88d41fc3bb062de0fb91a0a9c6
1-*-org-*- 2* Version 0.7.0 3** Tracing 4*** Full support for tracing multi-threaded processes 5 6 Ltrace now understands thread groups, and it stops all threads 7 before manipulating breakpoints. The downside is that performance 8 of multi-threaded processes is rather bad, because handling any 9 event implies stopping the whole job. The upside is that 10 individual threads don't get random SIGILL's and SIGSEGV's and 11 events are not missed. 12 13*** Support for tracing inter-library calls 14 15 -e and -x were extended to allow library selectors. See the man 16 page for details. 17 18*** Better support for parameter passing ("fetch backend") 19 20 This version brings more complete support for parameter passing, 21 including passing structures in registers, passing double on i386, 22 and other edge cases that were not handled correctly before. The 23 following architectures now have implementation of fetch backend: 24 i386, x86_64, ppc, ppc64, ia64, s390, s390x, m68k. 25 26*** Awareness of deny_ptrace SELinux boolean 27 28 The deny_ptrace boolean denies all processes from being able to 29 use ptrace to manipulate other processes. Ltrace now understands 30 that this boolean exists, and recommends turning it off, if it is 31 on and ltrace fails to attach to a process. 32 33*** Limited support for tracing returns from tail call functions 34*** -e, -x and -l selectors now allow using globs and regular expressions 35 36 See the man page for details of the selector syntax. This changes 37 the way -x and -l behave with respect to tracing libraries opened 38 by dlopen: 39 40 - In 0.6.0, only those -x symbols that were unmatched in main 41 binary were used to search through symbol table of libraries 42 opened with dlopen. In 0.7.0, -x and -e are applied uniformly 43 to each mapped binary: the main binary, dependent DSO's, and any 44 dlopened libraries. 45 46 - In 0.6.0, -l argument was a filename to open and inspect. In 47 0.7.0, -l is a glob expression matched against each mapped 48 binary. 49 50*** -g command line option dropped 51 52 This option was introduced in 0.6.0 with the meaning identical to 53 -L, which should be used instead. 54 55*** Test suite can now be run under valgrind 56 57 Use --enable-valgrind to turn this on. 58 59*** [ppc] Support both BSS and secure PLTs for 32-bit processes 60*** [mips] Implement software singlestepping 61*** [mips] Add support for CPIC main programs 62*** Support tracing PIE binaries 63 64** Configuration Files 65 66*** New abstraction: parameter pack 67 68 Parameter packs make it much simpler to add specialized decoding 69 logic. The only parameter pack currently implemented is "format" 70 for decoding printf-style format strings. 71 72 In future, it should be relatively straightforward to add more 73 parameter packs for functions like execl, strftime, and others. 74 75*** New expression: zero 76 77 When used in array length expressions, it means "this array ends 78 at the first element with zero value". C strigs are essentially 79 array(char, zero)*. 80 81*** Lenses: change the way that underlying type is rendered 82 83 Lenses are used similarly to parametrized types, e.g.: 84 | void func(lens(int)); | 85 86**** octal 87 88 "octal", which used to be a separate type, is now lens, which can 89 be used to render any underlying type in base 8. Plain "octal" 90 is still valid and means the same thing as "octal(int)". 91 92**** hex, hide, bool 93 94 Similarly, "hex" lens was introduced to format as base 16. 95 "hide" was introduced to conceal given argument. "bool" lens was 96 added to format objects as either true, or false. 97 98**** enum 99 100 "enum" became lens as well. Because enum already uses 101 parentheses to denote the list of enumeration values, the 102 underlying type is selected by square brackets: 103 104 | void func(enum[short](RED,GREEN,BLUE)); | 105 106**** string 107 108 "string" was also turned to lens. The argument can be either a 109 char*, or pointer to array of char, or array of char. The latter 110 is useful in cases like the following: 111 112 | void func_struct_2(struct(string(array(char, 6)))); | 113 114*** Misspelling of "int" as "itn" temporarily accepted, but deprecated 115 116 Pre-0.7 ltrace shipped a buggy version of ltrace.conf that 117 contained the following prototype: 118 119 | itn acl_valid(addr); | 120 121 To support extant versions of ltrace.conf, that use is now 122 considered valid, and "itn" is a synonym of "int". It is however 123 deprecated, and will produce a warning in future. 124 125*** Using void as top-level function argument now deprecated 126 127 Functions that take no arguments shouldn't pretend to take one 128 parameter of void type. For example the following: 129 130 | int fork(void); | 131 132 ... should be declared like this: 133 134 | int fork(); | 135 136 To support extant versions of ltrace.conf, that use is now 137 considered valid. It is however deprecated, and will produce a 138 warning in future. 139 140*** Using void to hide one argument is now obsolete 141 142 Ltrace needs to know the exact underlying type to decide what the 143 calling convention is. The use of void to mean "hide this 144 argument", such as the following example, is therefore obsolete: 145 146 | void func(void, array(int, arg1)); | 147 148 Instead, rewrite the prototype depending on the exact underlying 149 type: 150 151 | void func(hide(int), array(int, arg1)); | 152 | void func(hide(long), array(int, arg1)); | 153 154 To support extant versions of ltrace.conf, this use is still 155 accepted, and "void" is taken to mean "hide(int)". It is however 156 obsolete, produces a warning, and will be removed in future. 157 158** Documentation 159 160*** New manual page ltrace.conf(5) 161*** README, INSTALL brought up to date 162*** New file CREDITS with a list of contributors 163 164** Bugfixes 165 166*** Fix detaching from a process 167 168 Earlier, a process that ltrace detached from would sometimes die 169 of SIGSEGV, SIGTRAP, or SIGILL. These were caused by ltrace 170 detaching from the process just after that process hit a 171 breakpoint. Program counter would thus be left pointing 172 mid-instruction, or signals would be left pending. 173 174*** Argument to -n is now checked for validity 175*** Fix tracing across exec in a stripped binary 176*** [x86] ORIG_RAX/ORIG_EAX may not contain original syscall number 177 178 In cases where the system call shouldn't be restarted, these are 179 set to -1. In that case assume that the return is from the 180 topmost syscall. This gets rid of some "unexpected breakpoint" 181 messages on x86_64 and i386. 182 183*** [ppc] Fix races in tracing -e events in 64-bit processes 184 185 On ppc, the contents of PLT table change after the first call. 186 Ltrace used to handle this by reinserting the (now overwritten) 187 breakpoint after the function returns. This introduced a window 188 where calls to the same function from the same binary (either a 189 recursive calls, or calls from another thread) weren't traced. 190 This is fixed as of 0.7.0. 191 192 As a side effect, events requested via -e now only hit when a PLT 193 call is made, which is consistent with other architectures. 194 195*** [ppc] Allow stepping over lwarx instruction 196 197** Known bugs 198 199*** [arm] Tracing is not supported at all on ARM 200 201 ltrace might work on older kernels, but no attempt was made to 202 fully support it. Newer kernels don't support PTRACE_SINGLESTEP, 203 which ltrace depends on. Before singlestepping is implemented in 204 software, ARM is considered unsupported. 205 206* Version 0.6.0 207 208** General Features 209 210*** Use autotools for building 211*** New option -b: disables output of signals received by the tracee 212*** New option -w: print stack trace of events 213 214 Pass --with-libunwind to configure to enable the feature. This 215 requires libunwind. 216 217*** Support tracing of symbols from libraries opened with dlopen 218 219 These symbols are selected by -x. 220 221** Architecture-specific Changes 222 223*** Various fixes for MIPS and PowerPC 224*** Support for ARM Thumb mode 225*** Implement fetching of 5th and further function arguments on s390 226*** Support fork/exec syscalls on 31-bit s390 227*** Support for float and double arguments on x86_64 228*** Fixes for return arguments (after '+') in nested calls on x86_64 229 230* License 231------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 232Copyright (C) 2012 Petr Machata <pmachata@redhat.com> 233This file is part of ltrace. 234 235ltrace is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it 236under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the 237Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your 238option) any later version. 239 240ltrace is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT 241ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or 242FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License 243for more details. 244 245You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License 246along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. 247