Re: A Valgrind-observant ncurses

[Bill Gray]

Hi Steve,

On 6/20/24 08:03, Steve Litt wrote:
> :-)
>
> Every two years I observe that programs compiled with ncurses make
> Valgrind throw an error,

   Sorry,  could you elaborate there?  What error do you see?

   For me,  a 'basic' ncurses program wherein I call newterm() instead 
of initscr(),  and then call delscreen() at exit,  results in Valgrind 
warning me that five or six blocks are accessible,  but not freed :

https://www.projectpluto.com/temp/ncurses.log

   It's five blocks unless printw() is called;  apparently,  that 
function maintains a static buffer that isn't freed.

   Those unfreed blocks are definitely a minor nuisance if (like me) 
you want to be able to run your code through Valgrind and verify that 
everything got freed.  However,  leaving memory to be freed and files to 
be closed at exit does not (at least in my mind,  or in Valgrind's logs) 
constitute an "error".

-- Bill

> and could somebody please have a command line
> option to make ncurses get rid of all its RAM. From the responses the
> last several years I assume the answer is probably still no.
>
> So this year I'll ask a different question. My understanding is that
> ncurses can be slightly modified and then compiled to not throw that
> Valgrind error, the downside being worse performance and possible loss
> of some functionality. So what I'd like to do is compile a special,
> diagnostic ncurses that doesn't throw the Valgrind error, use it for
> testing, and then switch to the version of ncurses that comes with my
> Linux distribution (Void Linux in my case). So here are some questions:
>
> 1) How do I keep my diagnostic ncurses completely separate from my
> distro provided ncurses so that my distro-provided applications don't
> go slower or lose functionality?
>
> 2) Where can I find instructions on how to compile my diagnostic ncurses
> so that my home-brew applications don't throw Valgrind errors (assuming
> I have no memory leaks in the code I wrote) when compiled with my
> diagnostic ncurses?
>
> Thanks,
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> http://444domains.com