KDev-Valgrind :

User Documentation

Damien CoppelAnthony Corbacho

Lionel DucMathieu Lornac

Sebastien RannouLucas Sarie

This document is for developers wishing to use the plugin. It enablesto understand in a simple and efficient way the process of installation,the usage of the module, and to take advantage of the features of themodule.

The KDev-Valgrind team - December 9, 2011 1

Description of the document

Titre User documentationDate December 9, 2011Mail kdevvalgrind 2012@labeip.epitech.eu

In charge Sebastien RANNOUVersion 1.3

Table of revisions

Date Section(s) CommentaireMarch 2011 All Creation of the documentApril 2011 3.3 Modification of the git address on sbrk.orgJuly 2011 All Update

December 2011 6 Update

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Contents

1 Summary of the document 4

2 Introduction 42.1 Aim of EIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42.2 Aim of KDev-Valgrind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3 Installation 43.1 Installation script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43.2 KDevPlatform and KDevelop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3.2.1 With packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43.2.2 With sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3.3 KDev-valgrind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63.3.1 From the sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3.4 Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

4 Uninstallation 7

5 Language 7

6 Usage 86.1 Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

6.1.1 Global tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86.1.2 Specific tabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

6.2 Launch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96.3 Result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

6.3.1 Memcheck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106.3.2 Massif . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116.3.3 Callgrind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126.3.4 Cachegrind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

6.4 Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

7 FAQ 14

8 Links 14

9 Conclusion 14

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1 Summary of the document

The first part of the document explains how to install KDevelop and the plugin kdevvalgrind.There is no graphical installer for the current development version, but the plugin aims developerswith some knowledge and this point won’t be a problem for them. Later we’ll provide packagesfor some distributions to make this process easier for classic users.Then the several actions to configure and to use the plugin will be detailed. A brief description ofbugs and usual questions is available at the end of the document, as well as uselful links.

2 Introduction

2.1 Aim of EIP

The EIP1 is a two years project where students of the Epitech are working in group of 5 to Nstudents on a project of their own reflexion. The primary goal of the final project of Epitech is toachieve a project as you would in a business context. In addition, it allows students to practicetheir managerial skills.

2.2 Aim of KDev-Valgrind

KDev-Valgrind is a project aiming at create a plugin for the KDevelop environment. This pluginwill integrate the Valgrind’s tools in the IDE2 and facilitate its use. Even if Valgrind is use bymany developpers, there is curently no implementation in this IDE.

The integration is a will of the KDevelop community and obvioulsy, it will be free3.

3 Installation

3.1 Installation script

An installation script is available4 for the Ubuntu distribution as well as for Archlinux.

This script enables to easily install KDevPlatform, KDevelop, and KDev-valgrind.

However, an installation script won’t cover all developer needs. Indeed it is difficult to handledifferent versions in that way and the uninstallation is totally dependant of the script which is nottolerable. That’s why we have decided to create packages for major GNU/Linux distributions aswell as distributions that we like. Inside a distribution, a package enables the update, installationand uninstallation of the plugin. This is a considerable plus for open source systems, we can’tavoid that way. The integrity of sources is also handled, before unarchiving, a checksum inside thepackage is computed. Moreover, by registering dependancies of the plugin, the installation can’tbe in an invalid state.

3.2 KDevPlatform and KDevelop

3.2.1 With packages

All GNU/Linux distribution have a package manager. This makes the installation process easieras well as updates. The installation of a package is done that way:

Under Ubuntu :

sudo apt-get install kdevelop

1Epitech Innovative Project2Integrated Development Environment3Free as in freedom, not as in beer4http://redmine.sbrk.org/attachments/10/bootstrap.sh

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Under Fedora :

sudo yum install kdevelop

Under Archlinux :

sudo pacman -S kdevelop

3.2.2 With sources

We can locally install KDevelop directly from the sources of the git repository. This method ishowever more complex. The required dependencies are different among distributions, here aresome examples:

Under Fedora 13:

kdelibs-devel kdebase-workspace-devel

Under Ubuntu 11.04:

git cmake gcc g++ kdelibs5-dev zlib1g-dev kdebase-workspace-dev

The details for the different distributions are available on their wiki.

Then we have to download the sources :

git clone git://anongit.kde.org/kdevplatform $HOME/src/kdevplatform

git clone git://anongit.kde.org/kdevelop $HOME/src/kdevelop

It is necessary to compile and install KDevPlatform first (by specifying an installation path,here “$HOME/kdevelop4”).

mkdir -p $HOME/src/kdevplatform/build

cd $HOME/src/kdevplatform/build

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/kdevelop4 ../

make

make install

Then with KDevelop :

mkdir -p $HOME/src/kdevelop/build

cd $HOME/src/kdevelop/build

cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$HOME/kdevelop4 -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/kdevelop4 ../

make

make install

Before running KDevelop, we need to specify the environment variable “KDEDIRS” :

export KDEDIRS=$HOME/kdevelop4:/$KDEDIRS

kbuildsycoca4

KDevelop is now ready to be start:

$HOME/kdevelop4/bin/kdevelop

If KDevelop is installed from the sources, the package manager wont automatically update it.However it is possible to update it in the following way:

cd $HOME/src/kdevelop/build && make uninstall

cd $HOME/src/kdevplatform/build && make uninstall

cd $HOME/src/kdevplatform && git pull

cd $HOME/src/kdevplatform/build && make && make install

cd $HOME/src/kdevelop && git pull

cd $HOME/src/kdevelop/build && make && make install

kbuildsycoca4

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3.3 KDev-valgrind

Once KDevPlatform and KDevelop are installed, we can install the plugin.

3.3.1 From the sources

The sources are available on the official repository of KDE or on our server sbrk.org. The officialsources are often synchronized when the new versions on the other server are validated.

Later the official server will be the only one used, but at that moment, only one member of thegroup has the necessary rights to commit.

Sources from sbrk (for developpers):

git clone git@sbrk.org:kdev-valgrind.git

Official sources:

git clone git://anongit.kde.org/kdev-valgrind

Then we have to compile and install sources. These commands are using files from the“$HOME/src/” folder, which depends of the path where sources where downloaded.

mkdir -p $HOME/src/kdev-valgrind/build

cd $HOME/src/php/build

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/kdevelop4 ../

make

make install

export KDEDIRS=$HOME/kdevelop4:/usr

kbuildsycoca4

Once installed, the plugin will be automatically detected by KDevelop upon the next startup.Updates are also simple to perform :

cd $HOME/src/kdev-valgrind && git pull

cd $HOME/src/kdev-valgrind/build && make && make install

kbuildsycoca4

3.4 Verification

Once the plugin is installed, we can check that its loading is correctly made in KDevelop.In the tab “Help->Loaded Plugins”, a new line should appear as shown on the figure 1.

Figure 1: Valgrind plugin correctly loaded

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4 Uninstallation

In the same fashion it is very easy to remove the plugin :

cd $HOME/src/kdev-valgring/build && make uninstall

Upon the next startup of KDevelop, the plugin won’t be available anymore.

5 Language

The language of the plugin is defined according to the one set in the operating system.

Thanks to the open source community, the plugin is already available in several languages.

The “locales” that are currently supported are the following : ca, ca@valencia, en GB, es, et,fr, it, nds, nl, pt, pt BR, sv, uk.

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6 Usage

6.1 Configuration

The plugin provides a global configuration tab, and a configuration tab per tool.

The different configurations are accessible via the menu “Run - Configure Launches” as showon the figure 2.

Figure 2: Configure launches

6.1.1 Global tab

The global configuration of the plugin is available with the “Valgrind” line of the configurationmenu. It can be common to all projects or specific to a few.

This tab enables to define the path to the Valgrind binary (configured to default) which willbe launched with parameters that can also be configured there. 3.

Figure 3: Global configuration tab of Valgrind

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6.1.2 Specific tabs

Each tool of the Valgrind suite has its own configuration tab. The tools Memcheck, Massif,Callgrind and Cachegrind are usable and configurable as shown of the Figure 4

Figure 4: Configuration tab of memcheck

6.2 Launch

Once configured (the default configuration will work in most cases), we can launch the selected tool.

We can launch the tool using the KDevelop menu(“Run - Profile Launch->Valgrind”) as shownon the figure 5.

Figure 5: Valgrind launch

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6.3 Result

6.3.1 Memcheck

Memcheck is a memory error detector. It can detect the following problems that are common inC and C++ programs :

• Accessing memory you shouldn’t, e.g. overrunning and underrunning heap blocks, overrun-ning the top of the stack, and accessing memory after it has been freed.

• Using undefined values, i.e. values that have not been initialised, or that have been derivedfrom other undefined values.

• Incorrect freeing of heap memory, such as double-freeing heap blocks, or mismatched use ofmalloc/new/new[] versus free/delete/delete[]

• Overlapping src and dst pointers in memcpy and related functions.

• Memory leaks.

Problems like these can be difficult to find by other means, often remaining undetected for longperiods, then causing occasional, difficult-to-diagnose crashes.

The different errors found by the tool will be displayed in a tree as shown on the Figure 6. Theerrors are also highlighted in the source code in order to get a clear view.

Figure 6: Result of a call to the plugin

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6.3.2 Massif

Massif is a heap profiler. It measures how much heap memory your program uses. This includesboth the useful space, and the extra bytes allocated for book-keeping and alignment purposes. Itcan also measure the size of your program’s stacks.

Heap profiling can help you reduce the amount of memory your program uses. On modernmachines with virtual memory, this can be used to speed up your program (a smaller programwill interact better with your machine’s caches and avoid paging) and if your program uses lots ofmemory, it will reduce the chance that it exhausts your machine’s swap space.

Also, there are certain space leaks that aren’t detected by traditional leak-checkers, such asMemcheck’s. That’s because the memory isn’t ever actually lost (a pointer remains to it) but it’snot in use. Programs that have leaks like this can unnecessarily increase the amount of memorythey are using over time. Massif can help identify these leaks.

Importantly, Massif tells you not only how much heap memory your program is using, it alsogives very detailed information that indicates which parts of your program are responsible for al-locating the heap memory.

In the configuration tab, you can also choose to use “Massif visualizer” to get a graphical viewof the data.

Figure 7: The tool massif used in combination with massif visualizer

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6.3.3 Callgrind

Callgrind is a profiling tool that records the call history among functions in a program’s run asa call-graph. By default, the collected data consists of the number of instructions executed, theirrelationship to source lines, the caller/callee relationship between functions, and the numbers ofsuch calls.

Optionally, cache simulation and/or branch prediction (similar to Cachegrind) can producefurther information about the runtime behavior of an application.

In the configuration tab, you can also choose to use “KCachegrind” to get a graphical view ofthe data.

Figure 8: The tool callgrind used in combination with kcachegrind

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6.3.4 Cachegrind

Cachegrind simulates how your program interacts with a machine’s cache hierarchy and (option-ally) branch predictor. It simulates a machine with independent first-level instruction and datacaches, backed by a unified second-level cache. This exactly matches the configuration of manymodern machines.

These statistics are presented for the entire program and for each function in the program. Youcan also annotate each line of source code in the program with the counts that were caused directlyby it.

However, some modern machines have three levels of cache. For these machines (in the caseswhere Cachegrind can auto-detect the cache configuration) Cachegrind simulates the first-level andthird-level caches.

In the configuration tab, you can also choose to use “KCachegrind” to get a graphical view ofthe data.

Figure 9: The tool cachegrind

6.4 Interactions

It is possible to clic on the errors to go to the line of the error in the editing area. If the file isnot open, it will automatically be open by the editor and the cursos go to the line specified byValgrind.

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7 FAQ

What can I do with KDev-Valgrind ?Once finished, the plugin will bring all functionnalities offered by Valgrind inside KDevelop.Moreover, thanks to the computations made on the results, it will be easier to visualize andinterprate Valgrind’s output.

Why sould I use KDev-Valgrind ?The usage of the plugin enables C/C++ developers to save time during debugging by avoidingto run it in a console outside of the IDE.

Which version of KDevelop is supported ?The plugin is developped for the 4.x versions of KDevelop. Major changes were introducedbetween the version 3 and 4, the plugin is not working on older versions such as 3.x.

Can we freely use KDev-Valgrind, under which license is it available ?Yes, the plugin is totally free, it is developped under the GNU GPL license. It can bemodified and distributed.

Can we use the plugin in other IDEs ?No, the plugin is made for KDevelop and won’t run in other IDEs. However, if you want toport it to other projects, you are welcome.

Can we install the plugin directly from the package manager ?The plugin is in constant evolution and updates are frequent. The creation of dedicatedpackages will be made once the plugin is stable.

Can we use the plugin on Windows ?Unfortunayely no. Valgrind is stricly linked to the memory management on GNU/Linux andcan’t run on Windows.

8 Links

Redmine containing many information of the project :http://redmine.sbrk.org/projects/kvalgrind

Official redmine on KDE.org :https://projects.kde.org/projects/playground/devtools/plugins/kdev-valgrind

Wiki of the project :http://redmine.sbrk.org/projects/kvalgrind/wiki

Bug tracker :http://redmine.sbrk.org/projects/kvalgrind/issues

Gantt :http://redmine.sbrk.org/projects/kvalgrind/issues/gantt

9 Conclusion

Even if this project is for C/C++ developers with some knowledge, the integration of a complicatedtool at first sight (only with command lines) enables more people to enjoy the possibilities offeredby Valgrind in a very simple way.

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