Question

How to debug mingw built binaries to detect heap errors? I see there are several questions on the topic, but they are general and it’s hard to find the tool that would work well with MinGW. I spent much time on finding the solution, I hope the combined topic will be helpful.

Such a tool becomes necessary when for example someone reports a bug in your library while running it under Visual Studio debugger, which stops with a “Heap Error”.

Answer 1

There is a tool provided by Microsoft called Application Verifier. It is a gui tool that changes system settings to run selected applications in a controlled environment. This makes it possible to crash your program if it causes detectable memory errors. This is a controlled crash that can be debugged.

Fortunately it is obtainable from Microsoft as a separate download. Another way to get it is to have Windows SDK installed with checked Application Verifier checkbox. SDK offers also an option Application Verifier redistributable.

After you configure Application Verifier to have an eye for your app, you need to debug it. Debugging under MinGW is a more common subject, already explained on stackoverflow. [mingw] [debugging] query on stackoverflow gives interesting articles. One of them is How do I use the MinGW gdb debugger to debug a C++ program in Windows?. Gdb is the one I used.

The general questions How to debug heap corruption errors? and Heap corruption detection tool for C++ were helpful to find this tool, but I wasn’t sure if it is compatible with MinGW. It is.