2 Release notes for Valgrind
3 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4 If you are building a binary package of Valgrind for distribution,
5 please read README_PACKAGERS. It contains some important information.
7 If you are developing Valgrind, please read README_DEVELOPERS. It contains
8 some useful information.
10 For instructions on how to build/install, see the end of this file.
12 If you have problems, consult the FAQ to see if there are workarounds.
17 Valgrind is a framework for building dynamic analysis tools. There are
18 Valgrind tools that can automatically detect many memory management
19 and threading bugs, and profile your programs in detail. You can also
20 use Valgrind to build new tools.
22 The Valgrind distribution currently includes six production-quality
23 tools: a memory error detector, two thread error detectors, a cache
24 and branch-prediction profiler, a call-graph generating cache abd
25 branch-prediction profiler, and a heap profiler. It also includes
26 three experimental tools: a heap/stack/global array overrun detector,
27 a different kind of heap profiler, and a SimPoint basic block vector
30 Valgrind is closely tied to details of the CPU, operating system and to
31 a lesser extent, compiler and basic C libraries. This makes it difficult
32 to make it portable. Nonetheless, it is available for the following
50 Note that AMD64 is just another name for x86_64, and Valgrind runs fine
51 on Intel processors. Also note that the core of macOS is called
52 "Darwin" and this name is used sometimes.
54 Valgrind is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2.
55 Read the file COPYING in the source distribution for details.
57 However: if you contribute code, you need to make it available as GPL
58 version 2 or later, and not 2-only.
63 A comprehensive user guide is supplied. Point your browser at
64 $PREFIX/share/doc/valgrind/manual.html, where $PREFIX is whatever you
65 specified with --prefix= when building.
68 Building and installing it
69 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
70 To install from the GIT repository:
72 0. Clone the code from GIT:
73 git clone git://sourceware.org/git/valgrind.git
74 There are further instructions at
75 http://www.valgrind.org/downloads/repository.html.
77 1. cd into the source directory.
79 2. Run ./autogen.sh to setup the environment (you need the standard
80 autoconf tools to do so).
82 3. Continue with the following instructions...
84 To install from a tar.bz2 distribution:
86 4. Run ./configure, with some options if you wish. The only interesting
87 one is the usual --prefix=/where/you/want/it/installed.
91 6. Run "make install", possibly as root if the destination permissions
94 7. See if it works. Try "valgrind ls -l". Either this works, or it
95 bombs out with some complaint. In that case, please let us know
96 (see http://valgrind.org/support/bug_reports.html).
98 Important! Do not move the valgrind installation into a place
99 different from that specified by --prefix at build time. This will
100 cause things to break in subtle ways, mostly when Valgrind handles
104 The Valgrind Developers