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      1 
      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.
      6 
      7 If you are developing Valgrind, please read README_DEVELOPERS.  It contains
      8 some useful information.
      9 
     10 For instructions on how to build/install, see the end of this file.
     11 
     12 If you have problems, consult the FAQ to see if there are workarounds.
     13 
     14 
     15 Executive Summary
     16 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     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.
     21 
     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
     28 generator.
     29 
     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
     33 platforms: 
     34 
     35 - X86/Linux
     36 - AMD64/Linux
     37 - PPC32/Linux
     38 - PPC64/Linux
     39 - ARM/Linux
     40 - x86/MacOSX
     41 - AMD64/MacOSX
     42 - S390X/Linux
     43 - MIPS32/Linux
     44 - MIPS64/Linux
     45 
     46 Note that AMD64 is just another name for x86_64, and Valgrind runs fine
     47 on Intel processors.  Also note that the core of MacOSX is called
     48 "Darwin" and this name is used sometimes.
     49 
     50 Valgrind is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2. 
     51 Read the file COPYING in the source distribution for details.
     52 
     53 However: if you contribute code, you need to make it available as GPL
     54 version 2 or later, and not 2-only.
     55 
     56 
     57 Documentation
     58 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     59 A comprehensive user guide is supplied.  Point your browser at
     60 $PREFIX/share/doc/valgrind/manual.html, where $PREFIX is whatever you
     61 specified with --prefix= when building.
     62 
     63 
     64 Building and installing it
     65 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     66 To install from the Subversion repository :
     67 
     68   0. Check out the code from SVN, following the instructions at
     69      http://www.valgrind.org/downloads/repository.html.
     70 
     71   1. cd into the source directory.
     72 
     73   2. Run ./autogen.sh to setup the environment (you need the standard
     74      autoconf tools to do so).
     75 
     76   3. Continue with the following instructions...
     77 
     78 To install from a tar.bz2 distribution:
     79 
     80   4. Run ./configure, with some options if you wish.  The only interesting
     81      one is the usual --prefix=/where/you/want/it/installed.
     82 
     83   5. Run "make".
     84 
     85   6. Run "make install", possibly as root if the destination permissions
     86      require that.
     87 
     88   7. See if it works.  Try "valgrind ls -l".  Either this works, or it
     89      bombs out with some complaint.  In that case, please let us know
     90      (see www.valgrind.org).
     91 
     92 Important!  Do not move the valgrind installation into a place
     93 different from that specified by --prefix at build time.  This will
     94 cause things to break in subtle ways, mostly when Valgrind handles
     95 fork/exec calls.
     96 
     97 
     98 The Valgrind Developers
     99