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  14        <a href="../../../">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
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  20  <p>Entries from May 2009.</p>
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  23 <div class="entry">
  24  <div class="title">
  25  <a href="../../../Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
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  27  <div class="date">
  28   2009-05-02 15:00
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  31  <div class="body">
  32
  33 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
  34 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
  35 do not yet know them.</p>
  36
  37 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
  38 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
  39 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
  40 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
  41 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
  42 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
  43 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
  44 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
  45 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
  46 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
  47 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
  48
  49 <p>The second one is
  50 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
  51 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
  52 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
  53 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
  54 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
  55 and the company behind it is running
  56 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
  57 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
  58 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
  59 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
  60 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
  61 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
  62 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
  63 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
  64
  65 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
  66 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
  67 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
  68 surrounded by today.</p>
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  74
  75   Tags: <a href="../../../tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="../../../tags/english">english</a>.
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  87 <h2>Archive</h2>
  88 <ul>
  89
  90 <li>2009
  91 <ul>
  92
  93 <li><a href="../../../archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
  94
  95 <li><a href="../../../archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
  96
  97 <li><a href="../../../archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
  98
  99 <li><a href="../../../archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
 100
 101 <li><a href="../../../archive/2009/05/">May (1)</a></li>
 102
 103 </ul></li>
 104
 105 <li>2008
 106 <ul>
 107
 108 <li><a href="../../../archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
 109
 110 <li><a href="../../../archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
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