kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Ian McInerney <Ian.S.McInerney@xxxxxxxx>]

This is purely a documentation update for the dev docs. It adds the new
debugging options that enable GLib assertions, the Address Sanitizer and
Valgrind support into the documentation so they are accessible and
documented.

-Ian

From e33fed84e5f60f46857a1145b04d93c9a5503924 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Ian McInerney <Ian.S.McInerney@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2019 19:08:21 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Update building documentation with new debugging options

---
 Documentation/development/compiling.md | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 34 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/development/compiling.md b/Documentation/development/compiling.md
index 3b16725f6..9aa9ef8b4 100644
--- a/Documentation/development/compiling.md
+++ b/Documentation/development/compiling.md
@@ -194,6 +194,40 @@ passed via the OCE_DIR flag.  This option is enabled by default.
 Alternatively KICAD_USE_OCC can be used instead of OCE. Both options are not supposed to be enabled
 at the same time.
 
+## Development Analysis Tools ## {#dev_tools}
+
+KiCad can be compiled with support for several features to aid in the catching and debugging of
+runtime memory issues
+
+### Valgrind support
+
+The KICAD_USE_VALGRIND option is used to enable Valgrind's stack annotation feature in the tool framework.
+This provides the ability for Valgrind to trace memory allocations and accesses in the tool framework
+and reduce the number of false positives reported. This option is disabled by default.
+
+### C++ standard library debugging
+
+KiCad provides two options to enable debugging assertions contained in the GCC C++ standard library:
+KICAD_STDLIB_DEBUG and KICAD_STDLIB_LIGHT_DEBUG. Both these options are disabled by default, and only
+one should be turned on at a time with KICAD_STDLIB_DEBUG taking precedence.
+
+The KICAD_STDLIB_LIGHT_DEBUG option enables the light-weight standard library assertions by passing
+`_GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS ` into CXXFLAGS. This enables things such as bounds checking on strings, arrays
+and vectors, as well as null pointer checks for smart pointers.
+
+The KICAD_STDLIB_DEBUG option enables the full set of standard library assertions by passing
+`_GLIBCXX_DEBUG` into CXXFLAGS. This enables full debugging support for the standard library.
+
+### Address Sanitizer support
+
+The KICAD_SANITIZE option enables Address Sanitizer support to trace memory allocations and
+accesses to identify problems. This option is disabled by default. The Address Sanitizer
+contains several runtime options to tailor its behavior that are described in more detail in its
+[documentation](https://github.com/google/sanitizers/wiki/AddressSanitizerFlags).
+
+This option is not supported on all build systems, and is known to have problems when using
+mingw.
+
 ## Demos and Examples ## {#demo_install_opt}
 
 The KiCad source code includes some demos and examples to showcase the program. You can choose
-- 
2.21.0