1
2Release notes for Valgrind
3~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4If you are building a binary package of Valgrind for distribution,
5please read README_PACKAGERS.  It contains some important information.
6
7If you are developing Valgrind, please read README_DEVELOPERS.  It contains
8some useful information.
9
10For instructions on how to build/install, see the end of this file.
11
12If you have problems, consult the FAQ to see if there are workarounds.
13
14
15Executive Summary
16~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
17Valgrind is a framework for building dynamic analysis tools. There are
18Valgrind tools that can automatically detect many memory management
19and threading bugs, and profile your programs in detail. You can also
20use Valgrind to build new tools.
21
22The Valgrind distribution currently includes six production-quality
23tools: a memory error detector, two thread error detectors, a cache
24and branch-prediction profiler, a call-graph generating cache abd
25branch-prediction profiler, and a heap profiler. It also includes
26three experimental tools: a heap/stack/global array overrun detector,
27a different kind of heap profiler, and a SimPoint basic block vector
28generator.
29
30Valgrind is closely tied to details of the CPU, operating system and to
31a lesser extent, compiler and basic C libraries. This makes it difficult
32to make it portable.  Nonetheless, it is available for the following
33platforms:
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
46Note that AMD64 is just another name for x86_64, and Valgrind runs fine
47on Intel processors.  Also note that the core of MacOSX is called
48"Darwin" and this name is used sometimes.
49
50Valgrind is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2.
51Read the file COPYING in the source distribution for details.
52
53However: if you contribute code, you need to make it available as GPL
54version 2 or later, and not 2-only.
55
56
57Documentation
58~~~~~~~~~~~~~
59A comprehensive user guide is supplied.  Point your browser at
60$PREFIX/share/doc/valgrind/manual.html, where $PREFIX is whatever you
61specified with --prefix= when building.
62
63
64Building and installing it
65~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
66To 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
78To 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
92Important!  Do not move the valgrind installation into a place
93different from that specified by --prefix at build time.  This will
94cause things to break in subtle ways, mostly when Valgrind handles
95fork/exec calls.
96
97
98The Valgrind Developers
99