|
From: Nicholas N. <nj...@cs...> - 2005-02-25 20:04:09
|
Hi, I just, for the first time, found myself in the situation of introducing Valgrind to multiple people. And so I realised that we are sorely lacking a "Quick Start Guide", which tells people the minimum amount of information required to start using Memcheck. And so I wrote one. It's attached. Feedback is welcome. I think this would be useful to make official, either as part of the user manual, or maybe as a separate doc. I can HTML it and commit it if people think this is a good idea. As a result of writing this, I think we should do the following: - make --leak-check=yes the default for Memcheck - increase the default --num-callers size to 12 Why? Partly because in the quick start I immediately suggest starting with this command line: valgrind --tool=memcheck --num-callers=40 --leak-check=yes ... because that's what I think is most useful. And I think that's most useful because the survey responses I've received in the last year (14 of them) almost everyone uses --leak-check=yes all the time, and most people immediately crank up --num-callers to at least 10 (and sometimes much higher, eg. 40). --show-reachable=yes is also pretty popular, but I don't think it's quite popular enough to make the default. So, the quick start would then be shorter, since I wouldn't have to explain those options. I think it's currently already too long, but it's only a draft. I think this document and these settings changes would lower the bar for new users to get Memcheck working usefully as quickly as possible, which is what 95% of users would want, and is something we should aim for. Comments? N |