| Release notes for Valgrind | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| If you are building a binary package of Valgrind for distribution, | |
| please read README_PACKAGERS. It contains some important information. | |
| If you are developing Valgrind, please read README_DEVELOPERS. It contains | |
| some useful information. | |
| For instructions on how to build/install, see the end of this file. | |
| If you have problems, consult the FAQ to see if there are workarounds. | |
| Executive Summary | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| Valgrind is a framework for building dynamic analysis tools. There are | |
| Valgrind tools that can automatically detect many memory management | |
| and threading bugs, and profile your programs in detail. You can also | |
| use Valgrind to build new tools. | |
| The Valgrind distribution currently includes six production-quality | |
| tools: a memory error detector, two thread error detectors, a cache | |
| and branch-prediction profiler, a call-graph generating cache abd | |
| branch-prediction profiler, and a heap profiler. It also includes | |
| three experimental tools: a heap/stack/global array overrun detector, | |
| a different kind of heap profiler, and a SimPoint basic block vector | |
| generator. | |
| Valgrind is closely tied to details of the CPU, operating system and to | |
| a lesser extent, compiler and basic C libraries. This makes it difficult | |
| to make it portable. Nonetheless, it is available for the following | |
| platforms: | |
| - X86/Linux | |
| - AMD64/Linux | |
| - PPC32/Linux | |
| - PPC64/Linux | |
| - ARM/Linux | |
| - x86/MacOSX | |
| - AMD64/MacOSX | |
| - S390X/Linux | |
| - MIPS32/Linux | |
| - MIPS64/Linux | |
| Note that AMD64 is just another name for x86_64, and Valgrind runs fine | |
| on Intel processors. Also note that the core of MacOSX is called | |
| "Darwin" and this name is used sometimes. | |
| Valgrind is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2. | |
| Read the file COPYING in the source distribution for details. | |
| However: if you contribute code, you need to make it available as GPL | |
| version 2 or later, and not 2-only. | |
| Documentation | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| A comprehensive user guide is supplied. Point your browser at | |
| $PREFIX/share/doc/valgrind/manual.html, where $PREFIX is whatever you | |
| specified with --prefix= when building. | |
| Building and installing it | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| To install from the Subversion repository : | |
| 0. Check out the code from SVN, following the instructions at | |
| http://www.valgrind.org/downloads/repository.html. | |
| 1. cd into the source directory. | |
| 2. Run ./autogen.sh to setup the environment (you need the standard | |
| autoconf tools to do so). | |
| 3. Continue with the following instructions... | |
| To install from a tar.bz2 distribution: | |
| 4. Run ./configure, with some options if you wish. The only interesting | |
| one is the usual --prefix=/where/you/want/it/installed. | |
| 5. Run "make". | |
| 6. Run "make install", possibly as root if the destination permissions | |
| require that. | |
| 7. See if it works. Try "valgrind ls -l". Either this works, or it | |
| bombs out with some complaint. In that case, please let us know | |
| (see www.valgrind.org). | |
| Important! Do not move the valgrind installation into a place | |
| different from that specified by --prefix at build time. This will | |
| cause things to break in subtle ways, mostly when Valgrind handles | |
| fork/exec calls. | |
| The Valgrind Developers |