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
