Memory leak tool for C++ under Windows

Question

I need a recommendation of a free tool (even for a trial) for detecting memory leaks in C++ under Windows (Visual Studio 2005).

I've looked in the net, but I would prefer a recommendation.

Answer 1

How about the Purify?

EDIT: Another option is BoundsChecker for Visual C++.

Answer 2

Check out this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/413477/is-there-a-good-valgrind-substitute-for-windows . Though general substitute for valgrind is asked, it mainly discusses memory leak detectors and not race conditions detections.

Answer 3

Definitely Purify! I've used that to analyze some massive code bases (>3,000 kSLOC) and found it to be excellent.

You might like to look at this list at Wikipedia.

By the way, I've found memwatch to be useful. Thanks Johan!

Answer 4

Viusual Studio can help detecting memory leaks itself. See Microsoft Visual C++ Tips and Tricks -> "Memory Leaks" section. See also this post in SO

Although real tracing is only possible with the Team Edtion of Visual Studio.

Answer 5

More or less all Profilers include checking for memory leaks and show you the stack when the memory was allocated.

I can recommend Intels Parallel Inspector. Simple to use and no recompilation needed. The trial version runs for 30 days.

GlowCode and AtromatedQA also include such capabilites. They all offer free trials.

Compuware DevPartner (aka BoundsChecker) in Contrast needs a slowed down "instrumentation" recompile and the application also runs slower when checking for errors. And BoundsChecker can not work with 64 Bit evsrions at all. We gave up on that tool.

Answer 6

I used Insure++ which does excellent job in finding c++ memory leaks/corruptions and many other bugs like uninitialized variables, pointer errors, strings etc., It also does visual "Code coverage" and run time memory usage etc.. which give more confident on your code.. You can try it for trail version..

Answer 7

In combination with Visual Studio I generally use Visual Leak Detector or simply _CrtDumpMemoryLeaks() which is a win32 api call. Both are nothing fancy but they get the job done.

Answer 8

The best tool I ever used is DevPartner BoundsChecker - it's not free but it has an evaluation period.

Answer 9

You might want to read what Mozilla is doing regarding memory leaks. One tool in their toolbox is the Hans Boehm garbage collector used as memory leak detector.

Answer 10

You can give a try to RuntimeChecker trial ot to IBM Purify trial..

A free solution would be to use the following code in Visual Studio:

#ifdef _DEBUG
#define new DEBUG_NEW
#endif

Just write this in the top of all your cpp files. This will detect memory leaks of your application whenc stopping debug run and list them in the output window. Double clicking on a memory leaks line will higlight you the line where memory is allocated and never released. This may help you : http://www.flipcode.com/archives/How_To_Find_Memory_Leaks.shtml

Answer 11

i would like to list some tool , hope will be useful

read this article for more detail

1. Purify
2. Bounds Checker
3. Coverity (basically its a code analyzer but, it will catch memory leak in static )
4. Glow Code
5. dmalloc
6. ccmalloc
7. NJAMD
8. YAMD
9. Valgrind
10. mpatrol
11. Insure++

Answer 12

The user-mode dump heap (UMDH) utility works with the operating system to analyze Windows heap allocations for a specific process. That's a pretty good tool for free from Microsoft. Here is a mini tutorial "How to use Umdh.exe to find memory leaks".

Answer 13

The free tool DebugDiag will help find memory and handle leaks.

You don't need to augument your program for DebugDiag to work.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=28BD5941-C458-46F1-B24D-F60151D875A3&displaylang=en

Although it is not the easiest or most intuitive program to use! Make sure you google for tutorials and instructions on how to use it.

Answer 14

Another memory tool for your list: Memory Validator.

Not free, but nowhere near as expensive as Purify or Boundschecker.