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diff --git a/Misc/PURIFY.README b/Misc/PURIFY.README new file mode 100644 index 0000000..947f28c --- /dev/null +++ b/Misc/PURIFY.README @@ -0,0 +1,72 @@ +Purify (tm) and Quantify (tm) are commercial software quality +assurance tools available from Pure Atria Corporation +<http://www.pureatria.com/>. Purify is essentially a memory access +verifier and leak detector; Quantify is a C level profiler. The rest +of this file assumes you generally know how to use Purify and +Quantify, and that you have installed valid licenses for these +products. If you don't have them installed, you can ignore the +following since it won't help you a bit! + +You can easily build a Purify or Quantify instrumented version of the +Python interpreter by passing the LINKCC variable to the make command +at the top of the Python tree: + + make LINKCC='purify gcc' + +This assumes that the `purify' program is on your $PATH, and that you +are using gcc as your C compiler. Note that you can't Purify and +Quantify the interpreter (or any program) at the same time. + +Now, just run the interpreter as you normally would. If you're +running it in place (i.e. not installed), you may find it helpful to +set your PYTHONPATH environment variable. E.g., in Bourne Shell, on a +Solaris 2.x machine: + + % PYTHONPATH=./Lib:./Lib/sunos5:./Lib/tkinter:./Modules ./python + +When running the regression test (make test), I have found it useful +to set my PURIFYOPTIONS environment variable using the following shell +function. Check out the Purify documentation for details: + +p() { + chainlen='-chain-length=12' + ignoresigs='-ignore-signals="SIGHUP,SIGINT,SIGQUIT,SIGILL,SIGTRAP,SIGAVRT,SIGEMT,SIGFPE,SIGKILL,SIGBUS,SIGSEGV,SIGPIPE,SIGTERM,SIGUSR1,SIGUSR2,SIGPOLL,SIGXCPU,SIGXFSZ,SIGFREEZE,SIGTHAW,SIGRTMIN,SIGRTMAX"' + followchild='-follow-child-processes=yes' + threads='-max-threads=50' + export PURIFYOPTIONS="$chainlen $ignoresigs $followchild $threads" + echo $PURIFYOPTIONS +} + +Note that you may want to crank -chain-length up even further. A +value of 20 should get you the entire stack up into the Python C code +in all situations. + +With the regression test, you'll probably get a gabillion UMR errors, +and a few MLK errors. I think most of these can be safely suppressed +by putting the following in your .purify file: + + suppress umr ...; "socketmodule.c" + suppress umr ...; time_strftime + suppress umr ...; "dbmmodule.c" + suppress umr ...; "gdbmmodule.c" + suppress umr ...; "grpmodule.c" + suppress umr ...; "nismodule.c" + suppress umr ...; "pwdmodule.c" + +This will still leave you (currently) with a few UMR and MLK reports. +For now, don't worry about them. We'll be evaluating these as time +goes on, and correcting them as appropriate. + +Using Purify or Quantify in this way will give you coarse grained +reports on the whole Python interpreter. You can actually get more +fine grained control over both by linking with the optional `pure' +module, which exports (most of) the Purify and Quantify C API's into +Python. To link in this module (it must be statically linked), edit +your Modules/Setup file for your site, and rebuild the interpreter. +You might want to check out the comments in the Modules/puremodule.c +file for some idiosyncrasies. + +Using this module, you can actually profile or leak test a small +section of code, instead of the whole interpreter. Using this in +conjuction with pdb.py, dbx, or the profiler.py module really gives +you quite a bit of introspective power. |