Ny entry.

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+Title: Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot
+Tags: english, debian
+Date: 2009-05-02 15:00
+
+<p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
+quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
+do not yet know them.</p>
+
+<p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
+tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
+It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
+and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
+program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
+to report the source file name and line number where the problem
+occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
+X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
+'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
+trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
+reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
+
+<p>The second one is
+<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
+a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
+and find problems in the logic.  It started out as the Stanford
+Checker and became well known when it was used to find bugs in the
+Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool and the company behind it
+is running <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community
+service</a> for the free software community, where a lot of free
+software projects get their source checked for free.  Several thousand
+defects have been found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like
+'lock L taken in file X line N is never released if exiting in line
+M', or 'the code in file Y lines O-P can never be executed'.  The
+projects included in the community service project have managed to get
+rid of a lot of reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
+
+<p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
+errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
+make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
+surrounded by today.</p>