Locked. This question and its answers are locked because the question is off-topic but has historical significance. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions.
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
My app on iOS simulator is using way too much memory. It's probably that memory is leaking. It's a ARC-enabled project with incorporation of plain C code. I tried it with some small project which I malloc and leak on purpose, instrument does not seem to notice. I tried it using Valgrind as described here, but I just can't get it to run. It says "error: address doesn't contain a section that points to a section in a object file".
What other options do I have? Any suggestions to how I would find what I'm leaking?
Maybe to late but you can use Valgrid... http://valgrind.org/ ?
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.
I accidentally stumbled across an application called CHUD Remover that claims to remove CHUD files. It lives in /Developer/Applications/Performance Tools/CHUD.
What is CHUD and why would I want to remove CHUD files from my system?
CHUD Tools are a set of profiling and performance tools for use in applications development on the Mac. The package includes a lot of things, such as DTrace, OpenGL Profiler, and Instruments. Shark in particular is a favorite tool of mine; it's a spectacular profiler with a great interface.
The other two told you what CHUD is. The reason you would want to remove it? To install a newer version, of course!
If you ever plan on doing performance optimization, Shark is a wonderful tool. So don't remove it =)
CHUD stands for Computer Hardware Understanding Developer Tools.
CHUD can also cause a kernel panic and prevent the Mac from booting properly:
com.apple.iokit.CHUDKernLib Kernel Panic Fix
It will remove anything that slow down your computer.
I'm looking for a tool which can monitor a running application (Win32/COM) for a long duration (1-3 days) and detect memory leaks if any. Any suggestions?
It is a .NET Windows application calling lots of unmanaged code.
You can try Memory Validator
iJeeves, the combination of BoundsChecker and .NET memory profiling should help you with your memory analysis. DevPartner Studio 10.5 ships February 4, 2011 with 64-bit application support. Depending on your application raw memory footprint, you may run x86 build configurations with the error dectection memory tracking analysis as long as you keep below the 2gb overall process virtual address limit, 3gb if you link the exe with LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE and run on an x64 OS with extra RAM. The x64 build configuration will let you go up as high as your system RAM allows, at least until you start paging and performance grinds to a standstill. You can run BC error dection for your native code under the .NET process, but object leaks or held references in managed code require a second pass using the .NET memory profiler. We do not yet have a single pass analysis that can handle the mixed C++ and .NET code with full mixed stack traces but we can handle managed code above the line, any PInvokes that cross the line, and all native activity below the line in two passes. Shameless plug: I work on the DevPartner team. The links above pointing to microfocus.com acurately resolve to DevPartner pages. Look for DPS 10.5 when it ships and pull down the eval to see if it meets your needs.
AQTime is nice, I used it several times and it helped me with some tricky bugs.
I used to use Bounds Checker but nowadays I either use the Micrsoft inbuilt CRT library or build my own.
If your looking for a pay$'s tool then DevPartner is well worth using. It has memory leak detection for managed, and unmanaged code.
Application Verifier is free and from Microsoft. It detects memory leaks, double frees, overwrites and many other things. I use it all the time and it has helped me track down some nasty issues.