Release notes for Purify version 2001a.04.00 IRIX6
Contents
========
o Changes from previous releases
o Supported systems
o Restrictions and known issues
New in This Release
===================
- Bug fixes and compatibility with OS patches.
- HTML-based online help system. See the "HTML Help" topic in the
Restrictions and Known Issues section.
- New product versioning system. This release is the successor of:
Purify 5.3 for IRIX
New in Purify 5.3
=================
- Bug fixes and compatibility with OS patches.
- 64-bit applications are now supported. A 64-bit program is one
that is built with the compiler option "-64."
- Support for Irix 7.3 compiler
- Support for gcc 2.8.1 and 2.9.5 compiler. Please read the
Restrictions for important related IRIX patch information.
New in Purify 5.2
=================
- Bug fixes and compatibility with OS patches.
- This release uses a new FlexLm based licensing. Read the new installation
guide before installing the product. Use rs_install instead of
pure_install for the installation.
New in Purify 4.6
=================
- IRIX 5.x is no longer supported.
New in Purify 4.5
=================
- Support for Irix 6.5.x and the 7.2.1 compilers
- Support for applications using POSIX threads on Irix 6.5.x. Pthread
support is not available for versions of Irix prior to 6.5. Please
read the Restrictions for important related IRIX patch information.
- More aggressive checking of optimized N32 code has been implemented.
This can lead to more UMR's. See the option -ignore-n32-o-umr=yes in
the Restrictions section for information on how to disable this behavior.
- This is the last release to support Irix 5.x
==================================================
Supported systems
=================
Operating system and Hardware
-----------------------------
Purify has been tested with IRIX versions 6.2 and 6.5.
Purify also supports 64-bit programs on IRIX64 6.5. A 64-bit program
is one that is built with the compiler option "-64."
Compilers
---------
Purify has been tested with the following compilers:
- cc
- CC
- gcc
- g++
Debuggers
---------
- dbx, version 6.1 or better
- cvd, the Workshop Debugger, version 2.5 or
better.
See the "Restrictions and Known Issues" section for more details.
Threads
-------
Purify supports these threads packages:
- the sproc interface.
- POSIX threads.
==================================================
Restrictions and Known Issues
=============================
HTML Help
---------
As of version 2001a.04.00, the online help has been replaced by a more
robust HTML based help system. The new online help incorporates all the
information from the product user manual.
The following restrictions and notes apply to using the HTML help system:
- The only supported browser is Netscape Navigator. You must use
Netscape Navigator 4.7 or higher.
- Netscape must be on your path when you run your instrumented program.
Your path is used to locate the browser.
- The first time you request help from a viewer, a new netscape session
will be started, even if you already have netscape running. This session
will be re-used by subsequent help requests unless you re-use the
launched browser for another purpose. If you close the browser, a new
browser will be launched upon the next help request.
- The new help system uses Javascript. On some platforms, the MOZILLA_HOME
environment variable must be set in order for Javascript based web pages
to work properly. If you experience Java related problems with the help:
Make sure your netscape installation directory is on your path and that
MOZILLA_HOME is either not set at all (we will set it for you) or is set to
the same installation directory.
If MOZILLA_HOME is set but does not point to the same netscape installation
as the netscape on your path, the help may not work correctly.
If MOZILLA_HOME is not set at all, Purify will attempt to set it when
we start netscape. But we will be unable to set it correctly if the
netscape found on your path does not resolve to an actual installation
directory. For example, if netscape actually references a wrapper script
in /usr/local/bin. In this case, you will need to set MOZILLA_HOME
explicitly.
See the Netscape release notes for more information on MOZILLA_HOME.
- Use the Help->Help Topics menu item to access the top level of the
help system. In Quantify, you can also access the top level of the
help system using the Help button on the initial Quantify Control
Panel.
- Context sensitive help is available on leaf menu items and on buttons
ONLY. For information about a window, such as the Purify viewer,
PureCoverage Annotated Source windows, or Quantify Function Detail
window, use the Help->On Window menu item.
- To view the help standalone, without launching the Purify GUI, point your
browser to the following:
product_home/UI/html/punix.htm
(Where "product_home" is the installation location of Purify. e.g. the
result of the -printhomedir option.)
- PDF versions of the Purify Quick Reference card is available in the
doc/pdf section of your installation, if you have installed PDF
documentation. Otherwise, see the corresponding area of your
installation CD.
General
-------
- Purify supports both 32-bit and 64-bit application development, and
will select the correct mode of operation automatically based on the
executable or shared object.
- The product home directory has been reorganized to support both 32
and 64-bit development. This organization should be transparent for
all 32-bit users and most 64-bit users. However, the location of
the Purify stubs library is different.
32-bit libraries have been moved to the lib32 directory:
purifyhome/lib32/libpurify_stubs.a
purifyhome/lib32/libpurify_stubs.so
purifyhome/lib32/libpurify_stubs_n32.a
purifyhome/lib32/libpurify_stubs_n32.so
To preserve backward compatibility, the following links are provided
in purifyhome:
purifyhome/libpurify_stubs.a
purifyhome/libpurify_stubs.so
purifyhome/libpurify_stubs_n32.a
purifyhome/libpurify_stubs_n32.so
32-bit API users are encouraged to use the libraries from the lib32
directory, and not from purifyhome.
64-bit API users must link against the equivalent library in the
lib64 directory:
purifyhome/lib64/libpurify_stubs.a
purifyhome/lib64/libpurify_stubs.so
The API header file has not moved and is shared for both development
modes.
- If you use Purify -printhomedir to prefix product libraries, you must
qualify the library path with the appropriate lib sub-directory:
`purify -printhomedir`/lib32/libpurify_stubs.a
`purify -printhomedir`/lib32/libpurify_stubs.so
`purify -printhomedir`/lib32/libpurify_stubs_n32.a
`purify -printhomedir`/lib32/libpurify_stubs_n32.so
`purify -printhomedir`/lib64/libpurify_stubs.a
`purify -printhomedir`/lib64/libpurify_stubs.so
- You may not see Purify error messages from an MPI (Message Passing
Interface) test program. An MPI program first creates a given number
of children and these children actually execute the test program. The
parent doesn't execute the test program. So, one needs to set the purify
option -follow-child-processes=yes to get the errors from an MPI test
program. Note that when you set this option, a new purify viewer per child
will come up. Thus, the number of processes increases. This could have
an effect on the performance of your program. So, it is better to test
with smaller number of children.
User Interface
--------------
- In version 5.3, the format of view files has changed. This means that
the 5.3 Viewer cannot be used to view older view files, and 5.3 view
files cannot be opened by older Viewers.
Please use the Viewer of the same version to open view files.
- If a large number of items are selected, "Expand all" followed by
"Collapse all" can crash some unpatched versions of the OpenWindows
3.0 server.
This occurs if you are displaying on a SUN workstation.
- If you expand or collapse messages while the "Continue" or "Reset
etc. Continue" buttons are displayed, the buttons may subsequently be
incorrectly positioned.
- The "Edit" toolbar item may be slow to respond.
- The Purify GUI menus and buttons become inaccessible if either the
NumLock or ScrollLock key is activated. The workaround is to switch
them off, or add the following line(s) to your $HOME/.Xdefaults file.
! Ignore the NumLock and ScrollLock keys on
! mouse buttons
Purify*ignoreModifierMask: Mod3|Mod2
This second workaround will take effect for a new Purify viewer after
you restart your X-session or run a command like 'xrdb -merge
$HOME/.Xdefaults'.
- The "Invoke ClearDDTS" Button has been modified to bring up the
ClearQuest web interface. This feature only works with Netscape
Navigator.
The site-wide URL for ClearQuest can be given during installation or
set by manually editing the file
pure_clearquest_url
in your Purify home directory. A user can override the site-wide URL
by setting the environment variable:
PURE_CLEARQUEST_URL
This feature is partly implemented by a shell script,
("pure_invoke_clearquest" in your Purify home directory) to allow
you to tailor its operation to your needs. If you wish, you may copy
and customize this. script. As long as the directory containing
the script appears in your search path before your Purify home
directory, it will be used instead of the original script.
If you prefer to use Purify with ClearDDTS, you can do so by setting
the X resource:
Purify*ddtsCommandString
to 'xddts', if xddts is in your search path, or to the full path to
your xddts executable. xddts is invoked by a shell script
("pure_invoke_ddts" in your Purify home directory). If you wish to
customize it, please read the section on customizing
"pure_invoke_clearquest" above.
If you already have a customized "pure_invoke_ddts" script in your
search path, All you need to do is set your X resource as described
above, and Purify will find your customized script automatically.
Compilers
---------
- Those purified programs compiled with gcc which initialize function
pointers globally may dump core. g++ programs with global constructors
may also dump core.
This is due to a bug (#801456) in SGI assembler. SGI will make it
available in Irix 6.5.10 and will also release a patch (#3944) for the
previous Irix releases. Please contact SGI Support to obtain this patch.
Note that the g++ library libstdc++ may have been built by the old
assembler. Please build this with the new assembler to ensure that
the purified program runs without dumping.
- The GNU gcc extensions are not tested against Purify. Most gcc
extensions will probably work fine. Known limitations at present
include problems with nested functions (e.g.: making a pointer to a
nested function and attempting to call through it will not work).
- For systems running IRIX 6.5.7f or higher, Purify may fail to instrument
/usr/lib/libc.so with the error message
Processing /usr/lib/libc.so.1 - error fatal:
Jump registered out of no transformed block
[SA906D8, SA90710] /usr/lib/libc.so.1
This is a bug in cord. libc.so is corded, but cord is not updating the
notransform information in the shared library correctly.
This does not happen with Irix versions below 6.5.7, or with version on
the maintenance stream (e.g. 6.5.7m).
Rational Support is working with SGI to make a patch available. Please
contact Rational Support regarding availability of the patch.
- Aggressive Loading
Some compilers load data from memory but ignore the data that has
been read, especially when optimization is turned on. Purify will
signal a UMR if the loaded data is uninitialized. In some sense this
is a false error report because the uninitialized data will not affect
your program.
Purify'ing X Applications
-------------------------
- When running a Purify'd X application, there is a potential for
deadlock if your application causes Purify to generate a message while
the application is holding the X lock, since Purify will be unable to
generate the message, and the application is blocked until the message
is delivered.
To avoid this kind of problem, you should run your application on a
different X server than the Purify UI or Purify stderr output, or you
should use the -log-file= or -view-file= options to specify a file to
capture messages for inspection after your application is finished.
A convenient way to debug on two displays is to pre-start the Purify
Viewer on one display ("slave"), and then start the application on
the other display ("master"):
% purify -display slave:0 -view a.out.X &
% a.out.X -display master:0
The two commands must be executed on the same computer, but it could be
the workstation associated with either display, or altogether another
computer remote from both displays. The application will connect to the
already started Purify Viewer, and messages will not conflict with the
X display interactions of the application under test.
Debuggers
---------
- Invoking a debugger on a core file generated by a purified program, will
cause numerous "mismatch" messages to be printed. These can be ignored,
and will not affect debugging.
Threads
-------
- Call chains describing when memory was malloced or freed do not always
include the thread id.
- The Purify API functions purify_map_pool() and purify_map_pool_id() are
not MT safe.
- For applications using Pthreads, the purified program may crash or hang
if dlopen is called.
This is a bug in rld. SGI released patch (#3910) to correct the problem;
please contact SGI Support to obtain the patch.
Note that your application may not use dlopen directly, but a library
it is using may call dlopen. C++ exception handling may also call dlopen.
- Customers using unsupported threads packages should contact Rational
Software technical support (support@rational.com) to ensure compatibility.
Unsupported Features
--------------------
- SBR and SBW errors are not reported on IRIX.
- The Initialized Data and BSS sections are not checked for ABR and ABW
errors on IRIX.
- Statically linked mallocs are ignored: users who implement their own
malloc function must put it in a DSO.
- Instrumentation of stripped binaries and shared libraries is not supported.
Misleading Error Messages
-------------------------
- A failure to write to disk may result in a message like:
#Error: (system) No such file or directory, write() failed [a.out].
In this case, you can see that you are out of disk space with "df .",
and you should clean up or otherwise acquire more disk space.
- More aggressive UMR checking has been added. This may cause spurious
UMR's in some optimized n32 code. To disable this aggressive checking,
use the option:
-ignore-n32-o-umr=yes
or set the environment variable:
PURIFY_IGNORE_N32_O_UMR
Purify Swap Usage
-----------------
A Purify'd application needs more swap space than the equivalent
unpurify'd version. Running under a debugger, you will need even more. To
add swap space you may do the following:
Do the following as root to add a 40MB swap file:
/usr/sbin/mkfile 40m /usr/swap
Add this line to /etc/fstab:
/usr/swap swap swap pri=3 0 0
Then execute:
/etc/init.d/swap stop
/etc/init.d/swap start
You may also allocate virtual swap to appease the debuggers swap
requirements. Check the man page (man swapctl) for caveats.
Do the following as root:
vi /etc/config/vswap.options
>change vswaplen to 250000
/sbin/chkconfig vswap on
/etc/init.d/swap stop
/etc/init.d/swap start
How do I use the API functions?
------------------------------
There are stubs for the Purify API functions in the files libpurify_stubs.so
and libpurify_stubs.a. For the N32 ABI, the files are libpurify_stubs_n32.so
and libpurify_stubs_n32.a. You use the .so during development, and the
.a for shipping your product. If you link with the .a file, the Purify API
functions will be stubbed out even if you subsequently Purify your program.
Manual Examples
---------------
The examples in Chapter 12 of the manual are intended to help the user
understand the circumstances that would cause Purify to report what it
reports. At least one example does not apply to Purify on IRIX.
- The MSE example in Chapter 12 will not produce an MSE on IRIX.
Copyright Notice
----------------
The following copyright applies to portions of the ClearQuest
integration and HTML based help system.
Copyright 1996 Netscape Communications Corporation, all rights reserved.
Created: Jamie Zawinski (jwz@netscape.com), 24-Dec-94. Permission to
use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its
documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided
that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both
that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of
this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express
or implied warranty.