Analysing OSE Application Based On Valgrind Tools

It is always painful and hard for programmers to identify memory errors like memory leaks, illegal access memeory unit due to C/C++not support memory management, the increasing complicated software system and the limitation of tradition debug tools e.g. GDB. Meanwhile, OSE is a real-time operation system product from ENEA software AB. Currently, OSE support Rational PurifyPlus to analyse OSE applications, however as an IBM cemmercial product, PurifyPlus is rather expensive, thus not all OSE users could afford it. Besides, since PurifyPlus is a close source software, we could not modify it depends on our needs, therefore, in terms of detecting memory errors inside OSE application, the results from PurifyPlus is not accurate enough in some circurmastances.Valgrind itself is an open source framework for debugging and profiling. It is today available for Linux, Darwin, FreeBSD and Android, on hardware platforms such as ARM, x86and PPC. Valgrind virtualizes the user mode environment and depends on the host OS environment. This thesis explores the solution of using Valgrind to replace PurifyPlus for analyzing memory errors inside OSE applications. Starting with comparing the pros and cons between two popular tools, the thesis then explains the Valgrind architecture, the mechanism behind memory error dectection, OSE architecture and features in OSE operation system. Then the thesis analyses reasons why Valgrind could not be adapted to support analyzing an OSE application and proposes different solutions to solve this particular problem. Meanwhile a prototype is implemented and described, which uses OSE softkernal under Valgrind solution. In the end the thesis performs functionality test and speed test to prove the feasibility of the solution.