Find Memory Leaks Under WinCE

Technical Support
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1

How can I track down memory leaks in my C++ application under WinCE 2013?

2

There are some tools in the platformbuilder (PB). I don’t know any tools that would do that without PB.

In case you don’t have PB, you can get a trial version of it from here. You may need the BSP and Workspace from our images, you can get them from the image downloads section.

There is a nice descritpion for WEC 7, which still should match for WEC 2013.

Here some direct links to some tools that are helpful:

3

Absolutely perfect. Thank you so much!

4

I would concentrate on looking at the Remote Resource Leak Detector. It allows you to take snapshots of your application and compare heap allocations.

Documentation is scant from Microsoft:

Some techniques might be applicable from here: How to Use Remote Tools to Track Memory Leaks in Windows CE Applications (Windows CE 5.0) | Microsoft Learn – though the Application Verifier is now the Remote Resource Leak Detector.

I’ve not tried this, but it looks interesting : Memory leak detection for WinCE | CodeGuru

If I think of anything else I’ll add another comment. There are a couple of minor things – platform builder has a couple of commands that allow you to dump heaps, which is also possible to do in code.

Cheers

John

5

Okay, I’m actually looking for leaks too. The above article from codeguru is spot on, however to find out the file and line number the macro needs to changed.

#include "stdafx.h"
#define _DEBUG
#ifdef _DEBUG
#define DEBUG_NEW new(_NORMAL_BLOCK, (wchar_t*)__FILE__, __LINE__)
#define new DEBUG_NEW
#endif
#include <crtdbg.h>
#include <string>

int wmain(int argc, wchar_t *argv[])
{
    int tmpFlag = _CrtSetDbgFlag(_CRTDBG_REPORT_FLAG);

    tmpFlag |= _CRTDBG_LEAK_CHECK_DF;
    _CrtSetDbgFlag(tmpFlag);
	printf("Welcome to Windows Embedded Project System \n");

    void* ptr = new int[1000];

    // wait till exit or call this to check for leaks
    //_CrtDumpMemoryLeaks();
    return 0;
}

will give you this sort of output

Detected memory leaks!
Dumping objects ->
TestMemoryEmbedded.cpp(21) : {859} normal block at 0x00126350, 4000 bytes long.
 Data: <††††††††切㽡䉼䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄> 䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄䑃䌠⁄
Object dump complete.
The program '[105335494] TestMemoryEmbedded.exe' has exited with code 0 (0x0).

Notice the helpful file and line number.

Cheers

John

6

You can also break when the memory gets allocated.

If the block is allocated at the same point, you can use
_CrtSetBreakAlloc(n);
where n is the order that the allocation was made. In the above example, it would be
_CrtSetBreakAlloc(859);

7

Hi John

Thanks for the link. Tried the crtdbg.h from codeguru but I can’t compile it. Get a lot of errors (tried with MFC and non-MFC). Have you changed something? Do you use the Toradex SDK? or can you attach the crtdbg.h file?