Backgrond
I am very experienced in C and pretty new to Android and Java, but this is rather environmental issues that programming.
I have developed an administrative application in ANSI-C to be ported to any OS, just adding a UI in OS-dependent code. Well it uses quite some memory, especially for huge user files. I have a working Win32 program, trying to make an Android app using Android Studio with NDK.
Android studio bundle NDK installation works fine
I have installed and made a Win7 ultimate Android Studio 1.3 with bundle NDK and made compiling and running the ActionbarStyled (non NDK) hello-jni (NDK) sample in the emulators, smooth and nice. I also in the emulator been successfully running Hello-jni sample with a bunch of extra c-files (not called, at present just garbage, compiled without errors, in this step)
Then I tried to connect my Samsung TAB3 SM-T110 template (one need a Win7 Samsung driver SAMSUNG_USB_Driver_for_Mobile_Phones.zip) to my Win7 and tried it. ActionbarStyled sample works just fine. So does the Hello-JNI sample.
But
Running Hello-jni sample with a bunch of extra c-files I get this error message:
Error while starting native debug session: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unable to find process for com.example.hellojni on device samsung-sm_t110-47900bc50c0c3100
I try to understand what is the issue? Is it lack of memory, the Samsung is full of active running apps, the emulator obviously not.
What makes the Samsung unit to halt the application? Error message is not that describing?
Some more questions supporting handling this kind of issues
We are talking about Android studio 1.3 bundle NDK, how much from earlier setups (in articles) are applicable for this new future NDK standard use?
Memory?
Running the pure Hello-jni sample I have about 6Mb memory (where 5Mb are used), that is pretty poor for my needs, is there something I need to do have my app getting more memory allocated? Is the error message due to running out of memory?
How large Android Apps are possible to do? Are we in a world like the 8-bit DOS 64Kb segment business again? I know it from past but that isen't the case? And if need to know to handle it. The Library for unrestricted heap memory for bitmaps using NDK on Android question is interesting to read, but here we are talking about the jni (C-)code rather than java.
Compiler optimisation?
I have some really huge C-files due to that they are machine generated converting an XML library of documents to C-code (made a program writing C-code from the XSD definitions). In an application I most of the time use only say 5% of all the C-function, the rest are in Windows dev studio/compiler optimised away. Certainly I can reorganise my source code to quite some extra work, but I need to know. How is the optimisation in the Android Studio NDK support?
Thing is in this test no extra C-functions are called except the same regular as in the hello-jni sample. Actually the compiler should make exactly the same in both cases (the modified and the original hello-jni). But obviously it don't. Please explain a bit more how the environment works so I know?
General interest
I tried to find any spot in the Android developers that describe things like compiler behaviour, memory management and environment (the Java handles such completely different, but in C-programming on need to be aware). I think for NDK use it would be interesting getting a good answer here, for the general understanding of the environment, somewhere in the Android developer pages, rather than here. That also includes how the compiler optimises in different situations. But also how to make environmental settings.
I have an embedded project which runs on a 68332 processor target (68k family). There is no OS on the target. We have a custom simulator that will allow our code to execute within Windows. The simulator is completely without our control to modify. Basically the simulator is executing the machine code which isn't very good when you need to debug. What I would really like to do is interface a debugger to allow us to debug at the source level rather than at the machine/assembly level. Has anyone ever done such a thing? Is there a spec that debuggers support? Perhaps would something like gdb work for this? Any advice is appreciated.
This is not necessarily an answer to your question - I'm not familiar with hooking up an existing 3rd-party debugger to a program executing inside a VM so I can't advise about that.
However, you control the source of your simulator so you can try implementing an interface (maybe a local socket, etc.) where your simulator keeps reporting status information about the code that's executing and links it up with source files by reading debug information from some generated debugging database. You'd likely have to support reading the debugging format of the compiler that compiles your 68k code and then use that information to link back assembly instructions to source code lines.
This way you're effectively implementing a debugger, but since you already have the simulator (a VM really), that's probably not too much of extra work - the simulator already has all state information about the executing 68k code, you just need a way to temporarily pause execution and extract state information during pause. Stepping through code after that is probably a trivial repeat of these steps.
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I was looking into Valgrind to help improve my C coding/debugging when I discovered it is only for Linux - I have no other need or interest in moving my OS to Linux so I was wondering if there is a equally good program for Windows.
As jakobengblom2 pointed out, valgrind has a suit of tools. Depending which one you are talking about there are different windows counter parts. I will only mention OSS or free tools here.
1. MemCheck:
Dr. Memory. It is a relatively new tool, works very well on Windows 7. My favorite feature is that it groups the same leaks' allocation stacks in the report.
http://code.google.com/p/drmemory/
I have also used UMDH( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/268343 ) and found it quiet useful and easy to setup. It works from Win2000 to Win7.
AppVerifier is a must have swissknife for windows native code developers, its "memory" checker does similar job
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd371695%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
2. Callgrind:
My favorite is verysleepy ( http://www.codersnotes.com/sleepy ) It is tiny but very useful and easy to use.
If you need more features, AMD CodeAnalyst™ Performance Analyzer is free:
http://developer.amd.com/documentation/videos/pages/introductiontoamdcodeanalystperformanceanalyzer.aspx
Windows Performance Analysis tools is free from Microsoft, not very easy to use but can get the job done if you are willing to spend the time. http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/sasha/archive/2008/03/15/xperf-windows-performance-toolkit.aspx
Download:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/performance/cc752957
3. Massif:
Similar(not quite exact match) free tools on windows are:
VMMap from sysinternals : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd535533
!heap command in windbg : http://hacksoflife.blogspot.com/2009/06/heap-debugging-memoryresource-leak-with.html
4. Cachegrind:
Above mentioned Windows Performance Tools has certain level of L2 cache miss profiling capability but not quite as good and easy to use as Cachegrind.
5. DRD:
Haven't found anything free and as powerful on Windows yet, the only free tool for windows I can find that is slightly close is the "lock" checker in
AppVerifier:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd371695%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
Why not use Valgrind + Wine to debug your Windows app? See
http://wiki.winehq.org/Wine_and_Valgrind
(Chromium uses this to check the Windows version for memory errors; see
build.chromium.org
and look at the experimental or memory waterfalls, and search for wine.)
There's also Dr. Memory, see
dynamorio.org/drmemory.html
Some more good commercial tools:
Purify
Insure++
For Visual C++, try Visual Leak Detector. When I used it, it detected a memory leak from a new call and returned the actual line in source code of the leak. The latest release can be found at http://vld.codeplex.com/.
Development environment for Windows you are using may contain its own tools. Visual Studio, for example, lets you detect and isolate memory leaks in your programs
i would like to list some tool , hope will be useful
read this article for more detail
Purify
Bounds Checker
Coverity (basically its a code analyzer but, it will catch memory leak in static )
Glow Code
dmalloc
ccmalloc
NJAMD
YAMD
Valgrind
mpatrol
Insure++
Try DUMA
There is Pageheap.exe part of the debugging tools for Windows. It's free and is basically a custom memory allocator/deallocator.
See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/286470
In combination with Visual Studio I generally use Visual Leak Detector or simply _CrtDumpMemoryLeaks() which is a win32 api call. Both are nothing fancy but they get the job done.
I had the chance to use Compuware DevPartner Studio in the past and that was really good, but it's quite expensive.
A cheaper solution could be GlowCode, i just worked with a 5.x version and, despite some problems in attaching to a process i needed to debug, it worked quite well.
I've been loving Memory Validator, from a company called Software Verification.
Viusual Studio can help detecting memory leaks itself. See Microsoft Visual C++ Tips and Tricks -> "Memory Leaks" section.
See also this post in SO
Although real tracing is only possible with the Team Edtion of Visual Studio.
See the "Source Test Tools" link on the Software QA Testing and Test Tool Resources page for a list of similar tools.
I've used BoundsChecker,DevPartner Studio and Intel V-Tune in the past for profiling. I liked V-Tune the best; you could emulate various Intel chipsets and it would give you hints on how to optimize for that platform.
Does Jochen Kalmbach's Memory Leak Detector qualify?
PS: The URL to the latest version is buried somewhere in the article's comment thread.
LeakDiag, UMDH, App Verifier, DebugDiag, are all useful tools to improve robustness of code and find memory leaks.
The Boost Test library can detect memory leaks.
How about the Purify?
Try Intel's Inspector XE product which can help you detect both memory and threading issues: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-inspector-xe/
Perhaps CodeSnitch would be something you're after? http://www.entrek.com/codesnitch.html
If you are developing with Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero C++ Builder, you could use CodeGuard.
More or less all Profilers include checking for memory leaks and show you the stack when the memory was allocated.
I can recommend Intels Parallel Inspector. Simple to use and no recompilation needed. The trial version runs for 30 days.
GlowCode and AtromatedQA also include such capabilites. They all offer free trials.
Compuware DevPartner (aka BoundsChecker) in Contrast needs a slowed down "instrumentation" recompile and the application also runs slower when checking for errors. And BoundsChecker can not work with 64 Bit evsrions at all. We gave up on that tool.
The best tool I ever used is DevPartner BoundsChecker - it's not free but it has an evaluation period.
Another memory tool for your list: Memory Validator.
Not free, but nowhere near as expensive as Purify or Boundschecker.
If you're not afraid of mingw, here are some links (some might work with MSVC)...
http://betterlogic.com/roger/?p=1140
We are just completing a Memory Safety checking tool for Windows, that handles GCC and Micrsoft Visual C (not C++ yet), and are looking for Beta testers.
EDIT June 12, 2011: Not Beta anymore, now production for GCC and Microsoft Visual Studio C.
I found this SF project today:
http://sourceforge.net/p/valgrind4win/wiki/Home/
They are porting valgrind to Windows. Probably in several years we will have a reliable valgrind on windows.
Check out this question: Is there a good Valgrind substitute for Windows? . Though general substitute for valgrind is asked, it mainly discusses memory leak detectors and not race conditions detections.
I used Insure++ which does excellent job in finding c++ memory leaks/corruptions and many other bugs like uninitialized variables, pointer errors, strings etc., It also does visual "Code coverage" and run time memory usage etc.. which give more confident on your code.. You can try it for trail version..
You might want to read what Mozilla is doing regarding memory leaks. One tool in their toolbox is the Hans Boehm garbage collector used as memory leak detector.
You can give a try to RuntimeChecker trial ot to IBM Purify trial..
A free solution would be to use the following code in Visual Studio:
#ifdef _DEBUG
#define new DEBUG_NEW
#endif
Just write this in the top of all your cpp files.
This will detect memory leaks of your application whenc stopping debug run and list them in the output window. Double clicking on a memory leaks line will higlight you the line where memory is allocated and never released. This may help you : http://www.flipcode.com/archives/How_To_Find_Memory_Leaks.shtml
Are there any tools that would allow me to monitor memory usage and leaks? For example, I want to track memory usage when releasing objects manually vs automatically with ARC enabled.
It's called instruments, you can acces it from Product -> Profile -> Leaks in xcode
Instruments is probably the easiest to use and does a pretty good job. It comes with Xcode and you can run it directly from Xcode when you launch your application.
Instruments is quite good at this, but still I find myself using the leaks and heap utilities quite often.
It was recently recommended to me to use Valgrind to check for memory leaks, errors etc. on my iPhone project (which is written mainly in C and Objective-C).
I'm fairly new to this kind of work and was wondering what tools there were in Xcode that would serve the same purpose.
Thanks so much
If you want to check memory leaks then you can run your project with performance tool with leaks. Follow the screen shot.
http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/code/iphone/iPhone_Simulator_Valgrind.20081224.html
Xcode's "Leaks" tool is not the same thing as Valgrind. Valgrind detects overwriting memory boundaries (amongst other things) in addition to detecting memory leaks.