Is there a good Valgrind substitute for Windows?

Question

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.

Solution 1

Some more good commercial tools:

• Purify
• Insure++

Solution 2

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

Solution 3

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

Solution 4

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/.

Solution 5

i would like to list some tool , hope will be useful

read this article for more detail

1. Purify
2. Bounds Checker
3. Coverity (basically its a code analyzer but, it will catch memory leak in static )
4. Glow Code
5. dmalloc
6. ccmalloc
7. NJAMD
8. YAMD
9. Valgrind
10. mpatrol
11. Insure++

View more solutions

Comments

[jakobengblom2]

What kinds of debugging are you looking to do? Valgrind is quite a rich toolset, and the answers below point in all kinds of directions. With an emphasis on memory leak/allocation debugging.

[Liran Orevi]

Maybe you can test the code on a virtual Linux machine inside your Windows, just when you need to check it. you can share the development folder between the virtual and non-virtual machine. that is, if the code is portable enough.

[Norman Ramsey]

Purify: venerable but still useful, as shown by how many changes of corporate ownership it has survived!

[EvilTeach]

Expensive yes. It paid back in one weekend, just using the profiler piece.

[user9665]

It is of very little practical use. It will log the filename/linenumber for offending allocations, but it's only informative if you call malloc directly. When using new/delete, it will unhelpfully pinpoint new.h as the "offending" code.

[Rodrigo]

It works correctly for me, pointing the right line even new/delete are used.

[David Rodríguez - dribeas]

Not really free... but I guess you could find a test license for testing purposes.

[Bob]

I'd defintitely recommend glowcode. I've used it in the past to find an memory leak within a dll being called by my app.

[Calyth]

There were complaints of major slowdowns while using DevPartner at my last workplace. They do everything to avoid using it because of how slow it would be.

[Alex Budovski]

But will it work if a library function allocates? E.g. strdup.

[John Dibling]

Because then you wouldn't be debugging a Windows app - you'd be debugging a Linux app.

[Dan Kegel]

No need to recompile in Wine. Just transfer your .exe and .pdb over to a Linux box. And you wouldn't be debugging a Linux app; you're debugging your exact Windows app.

[the_mandrill]

Pageheap/gflags have helped me get to the bottom of some nasty heap corruption problems.

[C.J.]

The Debug CRT, which is what you are trying to describe is useful for C code. Getting it to work for C++ code is more problematic.

[C.J.]

Insure++ takes forever to instrument your code, and forever to execute your code at runtime.

[Synetech]

It does not seem to work for me. I even tried creating a simple project that did basically nothing other than to allocated some memory and not free it. VLD did not detect it. :-|

[dwj]

Dead link as of 2011-02-04 for BoundsChecker.

[relaxxx]

@Synetech inc. I had the same problem in VS2010... Using the newest version of VLD solved my problem

[ideasman42]

Valdrind does a lot more then find memory leaks, I mainly use it to find use of freed and uninitialized stack and heap memory which can be incredibly hard to debug otherwise.

[Crashworks]

That's how most games do it. But it's a huge undertaking and a lot of instrumentation.

[alexr]

There's also gperftools (formerly Google PerfTools). It's not a valgrind replacement (what is really) but it has a new malloc, cpu profiler, heap profiler and checker. Worth a look as it's support on Linux and Windows (inc Mingw) and other unices.

[KindDragon]

@user9665 Visual Leak Detector (vld.codeplex.com) provide full callstack for each memory leak with minimal souce code changes. Check example on site

[Jarekczek]

I found gflags + gdb (from mingw) helpful in diagnosis.