Quoting "Dallman, John" <[email protected]>:

> Tom Hughes [mailto:[email protected]]
>> [email protected] wrote:
>> > However it is possible to pack the structs without holes...
>> You're going to recompile glibc and all the other libraries that your
>> program uses with that option are you?
>
> And, of course, if you don't, structs passed between packed and unpacked
> code aren't compatible. Members of the structs will be at different
> offsets as far the two sets of code are concerned. The effects of this
> are
> undefined in the most comprehensive sense of the term: your computer is
> quite unlikely to catch fire, but if it does, it was your fault.

Oh yes, I forgot about those :) You have a good point, but still, the  
effort for recompiling the libraries and other required code for this  
purpose might be much less than trying to find an uninitialized  
variable in some cumbersome code.

For example I could download the whole source tree for FreeBSD OS and  
re-compile with this compiler option (including kernel and all the  
libraries shipped with the OS) in about an hour or two (in which case  
this system can be used several times for debugging code without  
repeating this action). In comparison, even finding the source of a  
single uninitialized variable can take much longer time.

So, the difficulty of finding an uninitialized variable (or many of  
them) can easily outweigh the difficulty of recompiling the libraries  
once for this purpose.

Lets say that all of the difficulties we discussed until now have been  
resolved. Is there any other reason for valgrind not to do eager  
checking for this?

Thanks,
Evren



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