Wed
14
Jan 2015

Deleaker is a tool for programmers that finds resource leaks in C++ programs. It's commercial, with free trial and unconditional 30 day money back. Here is my review of this tool. I've tested version 3.0.27.0.

Deleaker is installed as a plugin for Visual Studio, any version from 2005 to 2013. It also works with Visual Studio Community 2013, as this new free version also supports plugins. There is also standalone Deleaker application (see below).

The purpose of this tool is to augment debugging of native C++ programs with the ability to list all resources that are allocated at the moment (heap memory, virtual memory, OLE memory, GDI objects, USER objects, handles) and so to detect resource leaks. Here is how it works:

The interface is very simple - it can be learned in just few minutes. You can build your program and start debugging it by hitting F5, Deleaker is enabled automatically. Now just open dedicated panel (menu Deleaker > Deleaker Window) and there press "Take snapshot" button. You don't even have to pause execution, but of course the button works as well when your program is paused at a breakpoint. After few seconds, the panel is populated with a list of currently allocated resources, with the place from which it was allocated shown in first column.

After selecting one, bottom panel displays full call stack. Clicking in this call stacks navigates to the place in the source code where the allocation is specified. Finally, after program exit, the list is filled with resources that were not freed - these are actual leaks!

You can filter the list by module (EXE or DLL file that made the call) and by resource type (memory, GDI objects etc.). There is also a column with size of the resource and "Hit Count" - number of resources that were allocated by that particular place in the code (e.g. inside a loop) and stay allocated at the moment.

"Show full stack" button is a nice feature. Clicking it displays full call stack, while by default, the stack is stripped from entries that don't come from your code, but from system libraries. For example, above my function with the actual allocation instruction, there is MSVCR120D.dll!operator new, then there is MSVCR120D.dll!malloc etc... until ntdll.dll!RtlAllocateHeap. It's good that the program can ignore such call stack entries. It also entirely ignores allocations made by system modules outside of your code.

Unfortunately it does this only by identifying module that the function comes from and not it's name, so it cannot ignore templates, like these from STL containers. Maybe ignoring functions by name specified as wildcard or regular expression would help, e.g. "std::*" or "std\:\:.+" - just like Visual Studio debugger can step over specified functions, as I described in How to Make Visual Studio Debugger not Step Into STL.

You can press "Take snapshot" multiple times and save the snapshots for later view. (They are just numbered, you cannot give them names.) By the way, Deleaker captures F5 key, so even when during debugging session, if the focus is in Deleaker panel, this button doesn't resume your program, but instead refreshes the list of allocations (takes new snapshot). You can also select two snapshots and compare them. Then you see only resources that were allocated in the right snapshot and not in the left, which can indicate a leak that happened during some time of the program execution.

Besides heap memory allocations, the tool can also detect other types of resources, like GDI objects. Unfortunately not all interesting types of resources are covered. For example, an opened file of type FILE* f = fopen(...) is shown as normal memory allocation and opened file of type HANDLE f = CreateFile(...) is not shown at all, but I guess it must be due to some system internals.

I didn't find a single leak in my main home project, so I created a dedicated, simple program to test if it can really find leaks. I also checked that it works with programs compiled in Release configuration as well.

Aside from being a Visual Studio plugin, Deleaker can also work as standalone Windows application.

Overall, I like the program. If its price is not a problem for you or your company, I think it can be very useful in improving quality of developed software. I especially like the fact that it's so easy to learn and use.

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