valgrind and the "failed to start tool 'memcheck'..." error

I've just decided to update valgrind with the latest version and got the following error:

"failed to start tool 'memcheck' for platform 'amd64-linux': No such file or directory"

It looks like the error is pretty much famous. I saw it also on some machines we use at work. I actually desperately needed valgrind, therefore decided to find out what the problem is.

Checking $PATH and $LD_LIBRARY_PATH didn't help - everything was fine. But what really helped is this message, which I should have read before installing valgrind :)

Important!  Do not move the valgrind installation into a place

different from that specified by --prefix at build time.  This will

cause things to break in subtle ways, mostly when Valgrind handles

fork/exec calls

(valgrind's README file)

But you know, I didn't really moved the installation. What I did was just configure and make, but after that I reconfigured it with prefix and didn't issued "make distclean" before reconfiguring :)

So, the recipe is simple. 

If you do "./configure" -- > "make install", than it should be just fine.

But if you do "./configure" -- > "make" -- > "./configure --prefix=..." -- > "make install", than most probably you will get this error message, see the subject.

Well you built valgrind and changed your mind later with the prefix, than don't forget to "make distclean" the source.

Hope it helps and you will not loose hours looking for reasons of the error ;)

"country of purchase"

Anar here...

Finally it has just happened. If you bought an iOS devise (iPhone for example) in one EU country, you can use your warranty rights in another EU country!!!
Brussels, 25 September 2010, Antitrust: Statement on Apple's iPhone policy changes (Reference:  IP/10/1175    Date:  25/09/2010):

...One focused on the "country of purchase" rule, whereby repairs service is only available in the country where the iPhone was bought, which made the exercise of warranty rights difficult for consumers who had purchased an iPhone in another EU/EEA country than their home country. The Commission had concerns that this rule could amount to territorial restrictions aimed at dissuading European consumers from buying iPhones outside their country of residence and so leading to a partitioning of the market...

Previously, if people buy an unlocked iPhone in Italy while being residents of Germany, for example, they will be refused to get it fixed by warranty in Germany. They were forced to send devices to Apple Service in Italy (by providing home addresses in Italy) :(

Now it seems to be over and the cross-border warranty repair is now allowed. Let's see...

Xcode + AStyle

Anar here...

You know, I think there are many people, who find the auto-formatting of source code in Xcode is really terrible :( I mean, it is very weak (in terms of configuration) for such a descent development environment, which XCode actually is.

Since a very long time I use AStyle (Artistic Style) to format my code. It actually does remarkable job and it is an extremely tunable tool. You can adjust it almost for all, if not for all, indentations schemas...

I have already posted a long time ago a recipe of how to setup astyle for eclipse. Now, it is time to use it in XCode.

I use a user script menu to add my own script, which will than trigger the astyle command to format a source code for me.

Use the User Script menu to add a new script. You should add your script to a section "Text", the type of the script should - a shell script.

Next is the properties of the script:

Input: Entire Document

Directory: Selection

Output: Replace Document Contents

Errors: Display in Alert

And the content of the script:

#!/bin/bash

# I pass selected file instead of a selection, because astyle 1.24
# fails to parse struct with access modifiers. It just hangs instead.
# I also use a tmp file in order to avoid annoying Xcode message, that
# source file was changed outside of Xcode.

# Important: there must be always a new line at the end of the source file.
# Next time I provide a fix for that.


TMP=`mktemp -t xcode.XXXXXXXXXX` || exit 1

cat << 'EOFEOFEOF' > "$TMP"
%%%{PBXAllText}%%%EOFEOFEOF

astyle --options=<***PATH_TO_YOUR_ASTYLE_RC_FILE***> $TMP &>/dev/null

echo -n "%%%{PBXSelection}%%%"
cat $TMP
echo -n "%%%{PBXSelection}%%%"

rm $TMP

Restriction: Be advised, there must be always a new line at the end of the source file!

BTW, don't forget to change that <***PATH_TO_YOUR_ASTYLE_RC_FILE***> to a real path to your astyle resource file ;)

The script above is actually a second version of my script. The first one was much simpler:

#!/bin/sh

echo -n "%%%{PBXSelection}%%%"
/usr/bin/astyle --options=<***PATH_TO_YOUR_ASTYLE_RC_FILE***> <&0 echo -n "%%%{PBXSelection}%%%"

But this version didn't work for me with astyle 1.24. This is why in the second version of the script:

I pass selected file instead of a selection, because astyle 1.24 fails to parse struct with access modifiers. It just hangs instead. I also use a tmp file in order to avoid annoying Xcode message, that source file was changed outside of Xcode.

Finally, just assign some shortcuts (I prefer Options + Command + L) to you script and voilà...

BASH: pipe command output and track the error codes

Anar here...

I've just came across a problem in on of the projects I work on.

I have a bunch of commands in a "pipe line"... something like the following.

command 2>&1 | command2 | command3

Now, what I want is to check the exit code of the first command. If I would use the "$?" than it will return the exit code of the last command, which is not what I need.

The solution is to use bash's PIPESTATUS, which will return an array of exit codes of each command in a line ;)

See what man bash says:

PIPESTATUS

An array variable (see Arrays below) containing a list of exit status values from the processes in the most-recently-executed foreground pipeline (which may contain

only a single command).

So, if I apply the solution to my example above I get something like that:

command  2>&1 | command2 | command3

if (( ${PIPESTATUS[0]} != 0 )); then
 echo "something is wrong..."
fi

"In UNIX there is always a workaround" ;)