We are pleased to announce a new release of Valgrind, version 3.5.0,
available from http://www.valgrind.org.
Valgrind is an open-source suite of simulation based debugging and
profiling tools. With the tools that come with Valgrind, you can
automatically detect many memory management and threading bugs, which
avoids hours of frustrating bug-hunting, and makes your code more
stable. You can also perform detailed time and space profiling to
help speed up and slim down your programs.
3.5.0 is a feature release with many significant improvements and the
usual collection of bug fixes. This release supports X86/Linux,
AMD64/Linux, PPC32/Linux, PPC64/Linux and X86/Darwin (Mac OS X). See
the release notes below for details.
Our thanks to all those who contribute to Valgrind's development.
This release represents a great deal of time, energy and effort on the
part of many people.
Happy (and productive) debugging and profiling,
-- The Valgrind Developers
Release 3.5.0 (19 August 2009)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.5.0 is a feature release with many significant improvements and the
usual collection of bug fixes. The main improvement is that Valgrind
now works on Mac OS X.
This release supports X86/Linux, AMD64/Linux, PPC32/Linux, PPC64/Linux
and X86/Darwin. Support for recent distros and toolchain components
(glibc 2.10, gcc 4.5) has been added.
-------------------------
Here is a short summary of the changes. Details are shown further
down:
* Support for Mac OS X (10.5.x).
* Improvements and simplifications to Memcheck's leak checker.
* Clarification and simplifications in various aspects of Valgrind's
text output.
* XML output for Helgrind and Ptrcheck.
* Performance and stability improvements for Helgrind and DRD.
* Genuinely atomic support for x86/amd64/ppc atomic instructions.
* A new experimental tool, BBV, useful for computer architecture
research.
* Improved Wine support, including ability to read Windows PDB
debuginfo.
-------------------------
Here are details of the above changes, followed by descriptions of
many other minor changes, and a list of fixed bugs.
* Valgrind now runs on Mac OS X. (Note that Mac OS X is sometimes
called "Darwin" because that is the name of the OS core, which is the
level that Valgrind works at.)
Supported systems:
- It requires OS 10.5.x (Leopard). Porting to 10.4.x is not planned
because it would require work and 10.4 is only becoming less common.
- 32-bit programs on x86 and AMD64 (a.k.a x86-64) machines are supported
fairly well. For 10.5.x, 32-bit programs are the default even on
64-bit machines, so it handles most current programs.
- 64-bit programs on x86 and AMD64 (a.k.a x86-64) machines are not
officially supported, but simple programs at least will probably work.
However, start-up is slow.
- PowerPC machines are not supported.
Things that don't work:
- The Ptrcheck tool.
- Objective-C garbage collection.
- --db-attach=yes.
- If you have Rogue Amoeba's "Instant Hijack" program installed,
Valgrind will fail with a SIGTRAP at start-up. See
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=193917 for details and a
simple work-around.
Usage notes:
- You will likely find --dsymutil=yes a useful option, as error
messages may be imprecise without it.
- Mac OS X support is new and therefore will be less robust than the
Linux support. Please report any bugs you find.
- Threaded programs may run more slowly than on Linux.
Many thanks to Greg Parker for developing this port over several years.
* Memcheck's leak checker has been improved.
- The results for --leak-check=summary now match the summary results
for --leak-check=full. Previously they could differ because
--leak-check=summary counted "indirectly lost" blocks and
"suppressed" blocks as "definitely lost".
- Blocks that are only reachable via at least one interior-pointer,
but are directly pointed to by a start-pointer, were previously
marked as "still reachable". They are now correctly marked as
"possibly lost".
- The default value for the --leak-resolution option has been
changed from "low" to "high". In general, this means that more
leak reports will be produced, but each leak report will describe
fewer leaked blocks.
- With --leak-check=full, "definitely lost" and "possibly lost"
leaks are now considered as proper errors, ie. they are counted
for the "ERROR SUMMARY" and affect the behaviour of
--error-exitcode. These leaks are not counted as errors if
--leak-check=summary is specified, however.
- Documentation for the leak checker has been improved.
* Various aspects of Valgrind's text output have changed.
- Valgrind's start-up message has changed. It is shorter but also
includes the command being run, which makes it easier to use
--trace-children=yes. An example:
- Valgrind's shut-down messages have also changed. This is most
noticeable with Memcheck, where the leak summary now occurs before
the error summary. This change was necessary to allow leaks to be
counted as proper errors (see the description of the leak checker
changes above for more details). This was also necessary to fix a
longstanding bug in which uses of suppressions against leaks were
not "counted", leading to difficulties in maintaining suppression
files (see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=186790).
- Behavior of -v has changed. In previous versions, -v printed out
a mixture of marginally-user-useful information, and tool/core
statistics. The statistics printing has now been moved to its own
flag, --stats=yes. This means -v is less verbose and more likely
to convey useful end-user information.
- The format of some (non-XML) stack trace entries has changed a
little. Previously there were six possible forms:
0x80483BF: really (a.c:20)
0x80483BF: really (in /foo/a.out)
0x80483BF: really
0x80483BF: (within /foo/a.out)
0x80483BF: ??? (a.c:20)
0x80483BF: ???
The third and fourth of these forms have been made more consistent
with the others. The six possible forms are now:
0x80483BF: really (a.c:20)
0x80483BF: really (in /foo/a.out)
0x80483BF: really (in ???)
0x80483BF: ??? (in /foo/a.out)
0x80483BF: ??? (a.c:20)
0x80483BF: ???
Stack traces produced when --xml=yes is specified are different
and unchanged.
* Helgrind and Ptrcheck now support XML output, so they can be used
from GUI tools. Also, the XML output mechanism has been
overhauled.
- The XML format has been overhauled and generalised, so it is more
suitable for error reporting tools in general. The Memcheck
specific aspects of it have been removed. The new format, which
is an evolution of the old format, is described in
docs/internals/xml-output-protocol4.txt.
- Memcheck has been updated to use the new format.
- Helgrind and Ptrcheck are now able to emit output in this format.
- The XML output mechanism has been overhauled. XML is now output
to its own file descriptor, which means that:
* Valgrind can output text and XML independently.
* The longstanding problem of XML output being corrupted by
unexpected un-tagged text messages is solved.
As before, the destination for text output is specified using
--log-file=, --log-fd= or --log-socket=.
As before, XML output for a tool is enabled using --xml=yes.
Because there's a new XML output channel, the XML output
destination is now specified by --xml-file=, --xml-fd= or
--xml-socket=.
Initial feedback has shown this causes some confusion. To
clarify, the two envisaged usage scenarios are:
(1) Normal text output. In this case, do not specify --xml=yes
nor any of --xml-file=, --xml-fd= or --xml-socket=.
(2) XML output. In this case, specify --xml=yes, and one of
--xml-file=, --xml-fd= or --xml-socket= to select the XML
destination, one of --log-file=, --log-fd= or --log-socket=
to select the destination for any remaining text messages,
and, importantly, -q.
-q makes Valgrind completely silent on the text channel,
except in the case of critical failures, such as Valgrind
itself segfaulting, or failing to read debugging information.
Hence, in this scenario, it suffices to check whether or not
any output appeared on the text channel. If yes, then it is
likely to be a critical error which should be brought to the
attention of the user. If no (the text channel produced no
output) then it can be assumed that the run was successful.
This allows GUIs to make the critical distinction they need to
make (did the run fail or not?) without having to search or
filter the text output channel in any way.
It is also recommended to use --child-silent-after-fork=yes in
scenario (2).
* Improvements and changes in Helgrind:
- XML output, as described above
- Checks for consistent association between pthread condition
variables and their associated mutexes are now performed.
- pthread_spinlock functions are supported.
- Modest performance improvements.
- Initial (skeletal) support for describing the behaviour of
non-POSIX synchronisation objects through ThreadSanitizer
compatible ANNOTATE_* macros.
- More controllable tradeoffs between performance and the level of
detail of "previous" accesses in a race. There are now three
settings:
* --history-level=full. This is the default, and was also the
default in 3.4.x. It shows both stacks involved in a race, but
requires a lot of memory and can be very slow in programs that
do many inter-thread synchronisation events.
* --history-level=none. This only shows the later stack involved
in a race. This can be much faster than --history-level=full,
but makes it much more difficult to find the other access
involved in the race.
The new intermediate setting is
* --history-level=approx
For the earlier (other) access, two stacks are presented. The
earlier access is guaranteed to be somewhere in between the two
program points denoted by those stacks. This is not as useful
as showing the exact stack for the previous access (as per
--history-level=full), but it is better than nothing, and it's
almost as fast as --history-level=none.
* New features and improvements in DRD:
- The error messages printed by DRD are now easier to interpret.
Instead of using two different numbers to identify each thread
(Valgrind thread ID and DRD thread ID), DRD does now identify
threads via a single number (the DRD thread ID). Furthermore
"first observed at" information is now printed for all error
messages related to synchronization objects.
- Added support for named semaphores (sem_open() and sem_close()).
- Race conditions between pthread_barrier_wait() and
pthread_barrier_destroy() calls are now reported.
- Added support for custom allocators through the macros
VALGRIND_MALLOCLIKE_BLOCK() VALGRIND_FREELIKE_BLOCK() (defined in
in <valgrind/valgrind.h>). An alternative for these two macros is
the new client request VG_USERREQ__DRD_CLEAN_MEMORY (defined in
<valgrind/drd.h>).
- Added support for annotating non-POSIX synchronization objects
through several new ANNOTATE_*() macros.
- OpenMP: added support for the OpenMP runtime (libgomp) included
with gcc versions 4.3.0 and 4.4.0.
- Faster operation.
- Added two new command-line options (--first-race-only and
--segment-merging-interval).
* Genuinely atomic support for x86/amd64/ppc atomic instructions
Valgrind will now preserve (memory-access) atomicity of LOCK-
prefixed x86/amd64 instructions, and any others implying a global
bus lock. Ditto for PowerPC l{w,d}arx/st{w,d}cx. instructions.
This means that Valgrinded processes will "play nicely" in
situations where communication with other processes, or the kernel,
is done through shared memory and coordinated with such atomic
instructions. Prior to this change, such arrangements usually
resulted in hangs, races or other synchronisation failures, because
Valgrind did not honour atomicity of such instructions.
* A new experimental tool, BBV, has been added. BBV generates basic
block vectors for use with the SimPoint analysis tool, which allows
a program's overall behaviour to be approximated by running only a
fraction of it. This is useful for computer architecture
researchers. You can run BBV by specifying --tool=exp-bbv (the
"exp-" prefix is short for "experimental"). BBV was written by
Vince Weaver.
* Modestly improved support for running Windows applications under
Wine. In particular, initial support for reading Windows .PDB debug
information has been added.
* A new Memcheck client request VALGRIND_COUNT_LEAK_BLOCKS has been
added. It is similar to VALGRIND_COUNT_LEAKS but counts blocks
instead of bytes.
* The Valgrind client requests VALGRIND_PRINTF and
VALGRIND_PRINTF_BACKTRACE have been changed slightly. Previously,
the string was always printed immediately on its own line. Now, the
string will be added to a buffer but not printed until a newline is
encountered, or other Valgrind output is printed (note that for
VALGRIND_PRINTF_BACKTRACE, the back-trace itself is considered
"other Valgrind output"). This allows you to use multiple
VALGRIND_PRINTF calls to build up a single output line, and also to
print multiple output lines with a single request (by embedding
multiple newlines in the string).
* The graphs drawn by Massif's ms_print program have changed slightly:
- The half-height chars '.' and ',' are no longer drawn, because
they are confusing. The --y option can be used if the default
y-resolution is not high enough.
- Horizontal lines are now drawn after the top of a snapshot if
there is a gap until the next snapshot. This makes it clear that
the memory usage has not dropped to zero between snapshots.
* Something that happened in 3.4.0, but wasn't clearly announced: the
option --read-var-info=yes can be used by some tools (Memcheck,
Helgrind and DRD). When enabled, it causes Valgrind to read DWARF3
variable type and location information. This makes those tools
start up more slowly and increases memory consumption, but
descriptions of data addresses in error messages become more
detailed.
* exp-Omega, an experimental instantaneous leak-detecting tool, was
disabled in 3.4.0 due to a lack of interest and maintenance,
although the source code was still in the distribution. The source
code has now been removed from the distribution. For anyone
interested, the removal occurred in SVN revision r10247.
* Some changes have been made to the build system.
- VEX/ is now integrated properly into the build system. This means
that dependency tracking within VEX/ now works properly, "make
install" will work without requiring "make" before it, and
parallel builds (ie. 'make -j') now work (previously a
.NOTPARALLEL directive was used to serialize builds, ie. 'make -j'
was effectively ignored).
- The --with-vex configure option has been removed. It was of
little use and removing it simplified the build system.
- The location of some install files has changed. This should not
affect most users. Those who might be affected:
* For people who use Valgrind with MPI programs, the installed
libmpiwrap.so library has moved from
$(INSTALL)/<platform>/libmpiwrap.so to
$(INSTALL)/libmpiwrap-<platform>.so.
* For people who distribute standalone Valgrind tools, the
installed libraries such as $(INSTALL)/<platform>/libcoregrind.a
have moved to $(INSTALL)/libcoregrind-<platform>.a.
These changes simplify the build system.
- Previously, all the distributed suppression (*.supp) files were
installed. Now, only default.supp is installed. This should not
affect users as the other installed suppression files were not
read; the fact that they were installed was a mistake.
* KNOWN LIMITATIONS:
- Memcheck is unusable with the Intel compiler suite version 11.1,
when it generates code for SSE2-and-above capable targets. This
is because of icc's use of highly optimised inlined strlen
implementations. It causes Memcheck to report huge numbers of
false errors even in simple programs. Helgrind and DRD may also
have problems.
Versions 11.0 and earlier may be OK, but this has not been
properly tested.
The following bugs have been fixed or resolved. Note that "n-i-bz"
stands for "not in bugzilla" -- that is, a bug that was reported to us
but never got a bugzilla entry. We encourage you to file bugs in
bugzilla (http://bugs.kde.org/enter_valgrind_bug.cgi) rather than
mailing the developers (or mailing lists) directly -- bugs that are
not entered into bugzilla tend to get forgotten about or ignored.
To see details of a given bug, visit
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=XXXXXX
where XXXXXX is the bug number as listed below.
84303 How about a LockCheck tool?
91633 dereference of null ptr in vgPlain_st_basetype
97452 Valgrind doesn't report any pthreads problems
100628 leak-check gets assertion failure when using
VALGRIND_MALLOCLIKE_BLOCK on malloc()ed memory
108528 NPTL pthread cleanup handlers not called
110126 Valgrind 2.4.1 configure.in tramples CFLAGS
110128 mallinfo is not implemented...
110770 VEX: Generated files not always updated when making valgrind
111102 Memcheck: problems with large (memory footprint) applications
115673 Vex's decoder should never assert
117564 False positive: Syscall param clone(child_tidptr) contains
uninitialised byte(s)
119404 executing ssh from inside valgrind fails
133679 Callgrind does not write path names to sources with dwarf debug
info
135847 configure.in problem with non gnu compilers (and possible fix)
136154 threads.c:273 (vgCallgrind_post_signal): Assertion
'*(vgCallgrind_current_fn_stack.top) == 0' failed.
136230 memcheck reports "possibly lost", should be "still reachable"
137073 NULL arg to MALLOCLIKE_BLOCK causes crash
137904 Valgrind reports a memory leak when using POSIX threads,
while it shouldn't
139076 valgrind VT_GETSTATE error
142228 complaint of elf_dynamic_do_rela in trivial usage
145347 spurious warning with USBDEVFS_REAPURB
148441 (wine) can't find memory leak in Wine, win32 binary
executable file.
148742 Leak-check fails assert on exit
149878 add (proper) check for calloc integer overflow
150606 Call graph is broken when using callgrind control
152393 leak errors produce an exit code of 0. I need some way to
cause leak errors to result in a nonzero exit code.
157154 documentation (leak-resolution doc speaks about num-callers
def=4) + what is a loss record
159501 incorrect handling of ALSA ioctls
162020 Valgrinding an empty/zero-byte file crashes valgrind
162482 ppc: Valgrind crashes while reading stabs information
162718 x86: avoid segment selector 0 in sys_set_thread_area()
163253 (wine) canonicaliseSymtab forgot some fields in DiSym
163560 VEX/test_main.c is missing from valgrind-3.3.1
164353 malloc_usable_size() doesn't return a usable size
165468 Inconsistent formatting in memcheck manual -- please fix
169505 main.c:286 (endOfInstr):
Assertion 'ii->cost_offset == *cost_offset' failed
177206 Generate default.supp during compile instead of configure
177209 Configure valt_load_address based on arch+os
177305 eventfd / syscall 323 patch lost
179731 Tests fail to build because of inlining of non-local asm labels
181394 helgrind: libhb_core.c:3762 (msm_write): Assertion
'ordxx == POrd_EQ || ordxx == POrd_LT' failed.
181594 Bogus warning for empty text segment
181707 dwarf doesn't require enumerations to have name
185038 exp-ptrcheck: "unhandled syscall: 285" (fallocate) on x86_64
185050 exp-ptrcheck: sg_main.c:727 (add_block_to_GlobalTree):
Assertion '!already_present' failed.
185359 exp-ptrcheck: unhandled syscall getresuid()
185794 "WARNING: unhandled syscall: 285" (fallocate) on x86_64
185816 Valgrind is unable to handle debug info for files with split
debug info that are prelinked afterwards
185980 [darwin] unhandled syscall: sem_open
186238 bbToIR_AMD64: disInstr miscalculated next %rip
186507 exp-ptrcheck unhandled syscalls prctl, etc.
186790 Suppression pattern used for leaks are not reported
186796 Symbols with length>200 in suppression files are ignored
187048 drd: mutex PTHREAD_PROCESS_SHARED attribute missinterpretation
187416 exp-ptrcheck: support for __NR_{setregid,setreuid,setresuid}
188038 helgrind: hg_main.c:926: mk_SHVAL_fail: the 'impossible' happened
188046 bashisms in the configure script
188127 amd64->IR: unhandled instruction bytes: 0xF0 0xF 0xB0 0xA
188161 memcheck: --track-origins=yes asserts "mc_machine.c:672
(get_otrack_shadow_offset_wrk): the 'impossible' happened."
188248 helgrind: pthread_cleanup_push, pthread_rwlock_unlock,
assertion fail "!lock->heldBy"
188427 Add support for epoll_create1 (with patch)
188530 Support for SIOCGSTAMPNS
188560 Include valgrind.spec in the tarball
188572 Valgrind on Mac should suppress setenv() mem leak
189054 Valgrind fails to build because of duplicate non-local asm labels
189737 vex amd64->IR: unhandled instruction bytes: 0xAC
189762 epoll_create syscall not handled (--tool=exp-ptrcheck)
189763 drd assertion failure: s_threadinfo[tid].is_recording
190219 unhandled syscall: 328 (x86-linux)
190391 dup of 181394; see above
190429 Valgrind reports lots of errors in ld.so with x86_64 2.9.90 glibc
190820 No debug information on powerpc-linux
191095 PATCH: Improve usbdevfs ioctl handling
191182 memcheck: VALGRIND_LEAK_CHECK quadratic when big nr of chunks
or big nr of errors
191189 --xml=yes should obey --gen-suppressions=all
191192 syslog() needs a suppression on macosx
191271 DARWIN: WARNING: unhandled syscall: 33554697 a.k.a.: 265
191761 getrlimit on MacOSX
191992 multiple --fn-skip only works sometimes; dependent on order
192634 V. reports "aspacem sync_check_mapping_callback:
segment mismatch" on Darwin
192954 __extension__ missing on 2 client requests
194429 Crash at start-up with glibc-2.10.1 and linux-2.6.29
194474 "INSTALL" file has different build instructions than "README"
194671 Unhandled syscall (sem_wait?) from mac valgrind
195069 memcheck: reports leak (memory still reachable) for
printf("%d', x)
195169 drd: (vgDrd_barrier_post_wait):
Assertion 'r->sg[p->post_iteration]' failed.
195268 valgrind --log-file doesn't accept ~/...
195838 VEX abort: LibVEX_N_SPILL_BYTES too small for CPUID boilerplate
195860 WARNING: unhandled syscall: unix:223
196528 need a error suppression for pthread_rwlock_init under os x?
197227 Support aio_* syscalls on Darwin
197456 valgrind should reject --suppressions=(directory)
197512 DWARF2 CFI reader: unhandled CFI instruction 0:10
197591 unhandled syscall 27 (mincore)
197793 Merge DCAS branch to the trunk == 85756, 142103
197794 Avoid duplicate filenames in Vex
197898 make check fails on current SVN
197901 make check fails also under exp-ptrcheck in current SVN
197929 Make --leak-resolution=high the default
197930 Reduce spacing between leak reports
197933 Print command line of client at start-up, and shorten preamble
197966 unhandled syscall 205 (x86-linux, --tool=exp-ptrcheck)
198395 add BBV to the distribution as an experimental tool
198624 Missing syscalls on Darwin: 82, 167, 281, 347
198649 callgrind_annotate doesn't cumulate counters
199338 callgrind_annotate sorting/thresholds are broken for all but Ir
199977 Valgrind complains about an unrecognized instruction in the
atomic_incs test program
200029 valgrind isn't able to read Fedora 12 debuginfo
200760 darwin unhandled syscall: unix:284
200827 DRD doesn't work on Mac OS X
200990 VG_(read_millisecond_timer)() does not work correctly
201016 Valgrind does not support pthread_kill() on Mac OS
201169 Document --read-var-info
201323 Pre-3.5.0 performance sanity checking
201384 Review user manual for the 3.5.0 release
201585 mfpvr not implemented on ppc
201708 tests failing because x86 direction flag is left set
201757 Valgrind doesn't handle any recent sys_futex additions
204377 64-bit valgrind can not start a shell script
(with #!/path/to/shell) if the shell is a 32-bit executable
n-i-bz drd: fixed assertion failure triggered by mutex reinitialization.
n-i-bz drd: fixed a bug that caused incorrect messages to be printed
about memory allocation events with memory access tracing enabled
n-i-bz drd: fixed a memory leak triggered by vector clock deallocation
(3.5.0: 19 Aug 2009, vex r1913, valgrind r10846).
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