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   8 <H1>MemProf - Profiling and leak detection</H1>
   9
  10 <h2> Introduction </h2>
  11
  12 <p>
  13  MemProf is a tool for profiling memory usage and finding
  14  memory leaks. Its two major features are:
  15 </p>
  16
  17 <ul>
  18 <li> It can generate a profile how much memory was
  19     allocated by each function in your program.</li>
  20
  21 <li> It can scan memory and find blocks that you've
  22     allocated but are no longer referenced anywhere.</li>
  23 </ul>
  24
  25 <p>
  26  MemProf works by pre-loading a library to override the
  27  C library's memory allocation functions and does not
  28  require you to recompile your program.
  29 </p>
  30
  31 <p>
  32  One advantage MemProf has over some other similar
  33  tools that are available is that it has a nice GUI
  34  frontend and is relatively easy to use.
  35 </p>
  36
  37 <h2> Changes in 0.6.x </h2>
  38 <p>
  39  The project was forked as the website vanished from the GNOME project
  40  infrastructure, the current maintainer didn't respond to inquieries and
  41  memprof is far too young too let it die. The code and releases will
  42  be hosted here and hopefully one day it will be back on the GNOME
  43  infrastructure.
  44 </p>
  45
  46 <h2> Changes in 0.6  </h2>
  47 <p>
  48  The main attraction of 0.6 is that memprof now works again,
  49  thanks to Michael Meeks. Other new features in the four years since 0.5.1
  50  release include a rewritten profile module that handles recursion
  51  better. Also a large number of bugs have been fixed.
  52 </p>
  53
  54 <h2> Changes in 0.5.1 </h2>
  55 <p>
  56  0.5.1 reworks the way that libmemintercept.so works
  57  to work a lot better with C++ and with threads.
  58  (it fixes the infamous "Starter malloc size exceeded" bug)
  59  It also changes the data structures in the main
  60  program to use considerably less memory.
  61 </p>
  62
  63 <h2> Changes in 0.5.0 </h2>
  64 <p>
  65  The big change in this release is a port to GTK+-2.0
  66  and GNOME-2.0, done by Kristian Rietveld. There are
  67  also quite a few bug fixes since 0.4.1.
  68 </p>
  69
  70 <h2> Changes in 0.4.1 </h2>
  71 <p>
  72  This is mostly a bug fix release - it fixes problems with
  73  recent versions of libc, a crash when using menu accelerators,
  74  a problem with leaving sockets around, and so forth.
  75 </p>
  76 <p>
  77  It also includes a bunch more translations and a feature
  78  to do regular-expression based exclusion of funtions
  79  from Martin Baulig.
  80 </p>
  81
  82 <h2> Changes in 0.4.0 </h2>
  83 <p>
  84  The backend in 0.4.0 has been almost totally rewritten
  85  to support profiling threaded programs and to follow
  86  the children of programs that fork.
  87 </p>
  88 <p>
  89  The front end has also been improved in a number of
  90  ways, translations have been added for 12 languages,
  91  and numerous bugs have been fixed by myself and others.
  92 </p>
  93 <p>
  94  Numerous bugs have most likely also been added, so please
  95  try it out, find them, and let me know.
  96 </p>
  97
  98 <h2> Requirements </h2>
  99
 100 <p>
 101  For the interface, memprof requires:
 102 </p>
 103
 104     <ul>
 105       <li>GTK+ 2.0</li>
 106       <li>GConf 2.0</li>
 107       <li>libgnomeui 2.0</li>
 108       <li>libglade 2.0</li>
 109     </ul>
 110
 111     <p>
 112       These (or newer versions) are all available from <a href="http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/">http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/</a>
 113       but if binary packages are available from your distribution,
 114       it's much easier to install them that way.
 115     </p>
 116
 117     <ul>
 118       <li>libbfd and libiberty from the GNU binutils distribution.
 119         (Debian users will probably need to install the binutils-dev package)</li>
 120       <li>Linux (kernel version 2.2 will work better)</li>
 121       <li>GNU libc (2.0 or or newer will work, but 2.0 may produce warnings
 122         when compiling. Most recent development has been done with version 2.3.)</li>
 123     </ul>
 124
 125 <h2> Screenshots </h2>
 126
 127 <ul>
 128 <li> <a href="memprof.jpg">GTK+-1.2 based memprof</a></li>
 129 <li> <a href="memprof-gtk2.jpg">GTK+-2 based memprof (0.5 series)</a></li>
 130 </ul>
 131
 132 <h2> Get the source </h2>
 133
 134 <ul>
 135 <li> You can <a href="http://repo.or.cz/w/memprof.git">browse the sourcecode.</a> or
 136 use git to get the respotitory. <pre>git clone git://repo.or.cz/memprof.git</pre> </li>
 137 <li> <a href="http://www.secretlabs.de/projects/memprof/releases">Current tarballs</a></li>
 138 </ul>
 139
 140 <h2> Frequently asked questions </h2>
 141
 142     <dl>
 143       <dt><i>What do the colors mean?</i></dt>
 144       <dd>Yellow = Allocated<br>
 145           Blue = Allocated then freed (high-water-mark)<br>
 146           Red = Leaked (after you press the "Leaks" toolbar button)</dd>
 147       <dt><i>Is there any documentation?</i></dt>
 148       <dd>Not currently, no. Contributions would be appreciated.<br></dd>
 149     </dl>
 150
 151 <h2> Mailing List </h2>
 152
 153 <p>
 154 Discussion of using and developing Memprof occurs on
 155 <a href="mailto:memprof-list@gnome.org">memprof-list@gnome.org</a>.
 156 <a href="http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/memprof-list">Subscription information</a>
 157 </p>
 158
 159 <h2> Reporting Bugs </h2>
 160
 161 <p>
 162 Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system.
 163 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/, project memprof). You will need to create an
 164 account for yourself.
 165 </p>
 166
 167 <h2> License </h2>
 168
 169 Memprof is Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, Red Hat, Inc. Copyright 2002,
 170 Kristian Rietveld, Copyright 2009 Holger Hans Peter Freyther, and
 171 licensed under the terms of the
 172 <a href="COPYING">GNU General Public License</a>.
 173
 174 <h2> Other similar tools </h2>
 175
 176 <p>
 177 The technique that MemProf uses for detecting leaks, scanning
 178 memory for pointers, is the basis of the Boehm Garbage
 179 Collector. While the Boehm GC is mostly meant for memory
 180 management, it also has a mode for leak detection
 181 in programs that manually free memory. The package,
 182 unlike MemProf, is highly portable.
 183 </p>
 184
 185 <p>
 186 Keith Packard wrote a memory debugging library (memleak)
 187 included with X that does leak detection. This was
 188 separated out from the X distribution by Jon Christopher
 189 and turned into the standalone
 190 <a href="http://quorum.tamu.edu/jon/gnu/">Debauch</a>
 191 package. From the documentation Debauch seems similar
 192 to MemProf in scope and techniques but somewhat more comprehensive
 193 and portable. It doesn't, however, have MemProf's nice GUI frontend.
 194 </p>
 195
 196 <hr>
 197 <H4>In case of questions contact Holger Freyther<A HREF="mailto:zecke+memprof@secretlabs.de">
 198 &lt;zecke+memprof@secretlabs.de&gt;</A></H4>
 199
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