LouisBrunner / LouisBrunner/valgrind-macos

Valgrind crashes macOS 15 on arm64

Open
#123 13 comments 11 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

15.0 arm64
Dominant language
C
Stars
1.4k
Forks
72
Avg merge
6h 40m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

Description

As discussed https://github.com/LouisBrunner/valgrind-macos/issues/56#issuecomment-2442886835, Valgrind suffers from some kind of memory issues on arm64, causing the whole system to slow down and/or crash.

Click here if you want to use Valgrind on arm64 right now, even though it might crash or even damage your computer

Because of the above reason, arm64 support is hidden behind an opt-in environment variable. Make sure you are aware of the risk of using such an experimental version of Valgrind.
As stated in the [Valgrind license](https://github.com/LouisBrunner/valgrind-macos/blob/main/COPYING#L258) (which applies to this fork as well), we accept no liability for any damage (be it a loss of data, damage to your computer, loss of warranty or anything else) resulting from your use of Valgrind.

Click here to acknowledge you are aware of the risks and accept that the maintainers of Valgrind and this fork are not liable for any damage to your computer

If you want to use Valgrind on arm64, you will need to set the environment variable `I_ACKNOWLEDGE_THIS_MIGHT_CRASH_OR_DAMAGE_MY_COMPUTER` to a value of `yes`.

Note: when building with `brew`, you will need to use `HOMEBREW_I_ACKNOWLEDGE_THIS_MIGHT_CRASH_OR_DAMAGE_MY_COMPUTER=yes` while running `brew install` or `brew upgrade`.

This needs to be done while building (during `./configure` to be exact) and while running Valgrind itself.

This issue is dedicated to discussion and resolution of this specific memory issue and not to general arm64 support or related issues (e.g. suppressions). If you want to report other issues with arm64, please [create a new issue](https://github.com/LouisBrunner/valgrind-macos/issues/new/choose). Any off-topic comments will be mark as such and hidden.

Once this issue is resolved, the opt-in will be removed and arm64 will be available without extra flag.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the linked discussion and reproduce the Valgrind memory failure on macOS 15 arm64, using the ./configure/build path and runtime opt-in described here. Trace the issue to a confirmed resolution, then verify that Valgrind no longer slows or crashes the system and that the arm64 opt-in can be removed.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c, macos
Domain
devtools, operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.