13 Memory leaks

Memory leaks can be the bane of many a programmer and is the type of error that can typically go unnoticed in simple test cases. It is perhaps not until an application has been released to the customer and is being run in real-life situations that memory leaks get noticed and become a serious problem. Luckily the mpatrol library provides tools that can quickly help detect, identify and remove such errors. Note that it's probably a good idea to fix any warnings or errors that appear in the mpatrol log file before starting to look at removing memory leaks.

Surprisingly, there are no less than four different groups of mpatrol library run-time options that you can use to detect memory leaks in a program, all without having to change a single line of code! They each employ different techniques in order to locate the unfreed memory allocations at program termination and operate independently of one another so that any combination of techniques can be used at any one time. They also have differing levels of detail in the information they provide, so which options you use will depend on what your requirements are.

If you wish to see a summary of the memory leaks grouped together by call site then the PROF or LEAKTABLE options are your best bet. The output file produced by the PROF option can be displayed by the mprof command, which will display a list of memory leaks as one of the tables that it shows. Each entry in the memory leak table will normally only show one level of stack depth from its call graph but this can be changed with the --stack-depth option in the mprof command. The table of memory leaks can also be written to a graph specification file for later visualisation with a graph package. Using the PROF option is probably the best way to summarise where memory leaks occur in a program.

However, the LEAKTABLE option can generate similar information to the PROF option in the mpatrol log file. The drawback to this option is that the entries displayed will only ever show the immediate calling functions and no call stack information, but in many cases this is good enough. Another drawback to this option is that it is affected by calls in the code to manipulate the leak table. However, if the calls aren't there then that won't be an issue. The leak table should really be used from within the source code (see below) but it can still provide some useful information with the LEAKTABLE option.

The third option is the SHOWUNFREED option, which will show the details of every unfreed memory allocation at the end of program execution. No attempt is made to summarise them, but the full details of each (including the call stack if available) are given. This option is really only useful if there are a small number of unfreed memory allocations when a program terminates, but it is invaluable if all of the gory details are required.

The final group of options are the LOGALLOCS, LOGREALLOCS and LOGFREES options¹. In some situations a program will abort abnormally before it can exit, in which case the LEAKTABLE and SHOWUNFREED options will not display anything, and the PROF option will not finish writing out the profiling output file unless you are exceptionally lucky with the AUTOSAVE option. One can argue that you should be looking for the cause of the error rather than memory leaks in such a program, but it is still possible to detect the latter using the aforementioned LOG* options and the mleak command.

The mleak command reads in an mpatrol log file, recording the details of each logged memory allocation, reallocation or deallocation and then writes out what the SHOWUNFREED option should have written out at the end of the log file. It has a few limitations compared to the SHOWUNFREED option, but the details of each unfreed memory allocation that it writes out should be accurate, although only if the logging information in the log file was complete and accurate as well.

Note that more information from the SHOWUNFREED and LOG* options can be obtained by using the USEDEBUG option. This will attempt to add missing source file and line number information to the details recorded by these options in the mpatrol log file, but only if it is supported by the particular system and object file format, and then only if the program was compiled with debugging information from the compiler. If the USEDEBUG option isn't supported then it might be possible to use the mpsym command to postprocess the mpatrol log file using a symbolic debugger to fill in such information. You may also find that running the log file through a C++ encoded name demangler is useful as well if your program contains C++ code.

Despite the plethora of automated features that the mpatrol library has for detecting memory leaks, the most powerful method of narrowing down such leaks is by modifying the source code. The mpatrol library provides several functions that can be used to keep track of differences in the heap between two or more points in a program's execution — such information can be invaluable when pinpointing where a memory leak is coming from.

The first set of functions are based upon taking a snapshot of the heap at a certain point and then walking the heap to examine the differences at a later point. The __mp_snapshot() function returns the current event identifier in the mpatrol library and the __mp_iterate() function traverses the heap calling a user-defined callback function for each memory allocation that has changed since a particular event identifier. This is very useful for noting memory allocations that have been made since a certain point in a program but have not been freed when they were expected to. The heapdiff tool (see heapdiff) provided in libmptools makes use of these functions to provide an easy-to-use interface.

The mpatrol library also provides a leak table (see Leak table) that can be manipulated at any point in a program for the purpose of detecting changes in the heap. The __mp_clearleaktable() function clears the leak table, while the __mp_leaktable() function writes the contents of the leak table to the mpatrol log file. Automatic logging of memory allocations, reallocations and deallocations can be turned on and off using the __mp_startleaktable() and __mp_stopleaktable() functions respectively. The main advantage to using the leak table instead of the functions described in the previous paragraph is that it can provide a summary of unfreed allocations rather than showing the details of each one individually. It can also summarise freed allocations without requiring the use of the NOFREE option.

Finally, you can indicate to the mpatrol library that a particular memory allocation will remain allocated until program termination and that it should not be treated as a memory leak. This can be done by calling the __mp_setmark() function, and thereafter any attempt to free the newly-marked allocation will result in an error, although reallocating it is possible. It is normal in many programs to make several initial memory allocations that will remain in use throughout the program's lifetime. On most systems, such allocations will be freed when the program terminates anyway so there will be no need to free them explicitly. It is these allocations that should be marked so as to prevent them showing up as memory leaks.