[Valgrind-developers] valgrind on Windows

[Yossi Kreinin]

Hi!

I think I want to try to port valgrind to Windows. My knowledge of the
code base is pretty basic - enough to implement skins that are useful
to me and I'd like them to run under Windows. Not enough to estimate
how stupid the idea of trying such a port is though.

The "Supported Platforms" page states that a Windows port would be
almost a separate project. Naturally, if I get to the point where
something materializes, I'd rather commit it to the main trunk than
create a fork. If I go for the main trunk, I'll probably have to get
some advice about organizing the Windows-specific parts at various
points. If I go for a fork, I'll just get off the list... Which is
better? :)

-- Yossi

[Dan Kegel]

Post by Yossi Kreinin
I think I want to try to port valgrind to Windows.

Y'know, it might be more productive for
you get simply use valgrind on wine. That's
been working for a couple years, and is starting
to be rather useful.

How about you try that out on a few Windows apps and
file bugs for what doesn't work?
- Dan

[Yossi Kreinin]

Post by Dan Kegel
Y'know, it might be more productive for
you get simply use valgrind on wine.
That solves the problem of instrumenting Windows binaries. What I need is

to support people using Windows as their development machine. I'm mostly
interested in running custom skins on Windows; people using Windows normally
buy functionality similar to that of memcheck already.

It sure is more practical to have wine deal with Windows syscalls and
executable formats, when this works out. For starters, I was thinking about
getting "text-only" programs to work (basically those only relying on the
standard C library to talk to the OS). That would be very useful to me; I
don't know whether it's very useful in general.

-- Yossi

[Dan Kegel]

What I need is to support people using Windows as their development machine.

Call me crazy, but I think the best way to do that
is to get their windows development tools running
100% under Wine :-)
- Dan

[Julian Seward]

Post by Dan Kegel

What I need is to support people using Windows as their development machine.

Call me crazy, but I think the best way to do that
is to get their windows development tools running
100% under Wine :-)

I agree. It seems to me a Windows port would be extremely difficult.
Given that Wine already runs on lightly patched version of Valgrind,
your time would be much better spent pushing the via-Wine approach along.
Just my 2 Euro-cents ..

J

[Yossi Kreinin]

Post by Julian Seward
I agree. It seems to me a Windows port would be extremely difficult.
Given that Wine already runs on lightly patched version of Valgrind,
your time would be much better spent pushing the via-Wine approach along.
Just my 2 Euro-cents ..

OK, looks like time to give up :)

My original problem is shipping a custom shared memory checker to
customers who use Windows as a corporate policy, without forcing them
to have physical/virtual Linux machines. The skin itself is tiny, and
works awfully well. Sigh...

Thanks for your feedback!

-- Yossi