Modern equivalent of BoundsChecker for Visual Studio 2008 [closed]

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In VS6 times there was BoundsChecker from Numega. I understand it is dead now, please correct me if I am wrong. What are the reliable alternatives? Preferably free or at least with trial version available.

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IMO It might be a better idea to write custom memory manager (the one that supports new/delete/malloc/free wrappers). Make a new/delete wrapper that locks unused/freed memory using VirtualProtect (yeah, I know that default allocation block will have to be PAGE_SIZE bytes large, and you'll need a lot of ram even for a small app, but that's the only disadvantage). If you are on linux, it probably have VirtualProtect alternative. In this case any outrageous out-of-bounds access will generate access violation and will be easy to track. Also use stl containers when possible - they also offer bounds checking.

This advice is based on experience - I had worked with a terribly written huge (several megabytes of code) old software that had memory leaks, accessed already freed memory from multiple threads and so on. I've spent week trying different utilities (purify, devpartner studio, aqtime etc), and although some of them provided loads of information, none were really helpful. With custom memory managment problems were eliminated in 2 days (that includes writing memory manager).

If that doesn't work for you, try compuware devpartner studio - if it is still available anywhere.

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BoundsChecker is certainly not dead. "It's only mostly dead, which means partly alive" (sorry, cannot resist the Miracle Max quote from The Princess Bride.) Seriously, BoundsChecker is alive and thriving under Micro Focus stewardship. We are releasing DevPartner Studio with 64-bit application support in BoundsChecker, the .NET/native/mixed performance and coverage profilers, and the .NET memory and holistic CPU/network/disk IO performance profiler. Look for DPS 10.5 to ship on February 4, 2011. The 10.5 release integrates seamlessly with Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010, but you can still use BC standalone to run Active Check against VC6 and VC2003 binaries with some success if needed. Shameless plug: I work on the DevPartner team. I am peppering SO with notes announcing the newfound relevance of DPS 10.5 for C++ and .NET app dev troubleshooting on the x64 platform. With the new pricing model where you can license just BC or just the perf profiler, DPS should be much more accessible than it ever was under Compuware stewardship and lofty pricing. Disclaimer: these are my own opinions not necessarily sanctioned by Micro Focus.

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Boundschecker is not dead. I'm using it with Visual Studio 2008.

They just changed owners (Compuware to MicroFocus, to Borland), now it's called DevPartner for Visual C++ BoundsChecker Suite

Check this:

http://www.borland.com/Products/Software-Testing/Automated-Testing/Devpartner-Studio

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Bounds Checker used to be my second favorite tool, after a good debugger. I found it incredibly useful. Then it got so freakin expensive that I was no longer able to justify its purchase. If you want to know why hardly anybody even knows about this great tool anymore, there's your answer.

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I also work for Micro Focus, and am the main guy right now for the BoundsChecker (DPS Error Detection) runtime internals. The product is definitely not dead, but the main thing keeping it alive right now is the fanatical loyalty of certain people. Though loyalty only goes so far. We continue to have customers. If the product weren't selling at all, the company would have laid us all off long ago and canned the product.

Anyway, for those of you with questions or bugs to report, try our forum at http://community.microfocus.com/.

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Purify (Plus) http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/purifyplus/

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BoundsChecker was acquired multiple times and is now here: http://microfocus.com/products/DevPartner/BoundsCheckerSuite.asp

Another option is Rational Purify (Now owned by IBM): http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/purify/

Both of these products work, kinda. But neither are a silver bullet and bring with them a non-trivial amount of work to get useful information out of them. YMMV