NuMega BoundsChecker 6.5 (VisualC++)

Release Notes for NuMega SmartCheck (TM) Version 6.0 This document contains late-breaking technical and product information. Contents * What's New * Reporting Problems And Suggestions * Installation Prerequisites * Installation * Removing An Installation * Frequently Asked Questions * Bug Fixes * Known Anomalies * Technical Notes What's New ========== SmartCheck 6.0 is easier to use. You can start and stop event reporting to see just the events you are debugging. When SmartCheck detects an error, you can go directly to Visual Basic to fix it. SmartCheck 6.0 supports VB6 and several new operating systems. It also contains bug fixes and many enhancements. 1. New operating systems and compilers supported: * Microsoft Visual Basic 6 * Microsoft Visual C++ 6 * Windows CE emulation mode * Windows 98 2. Microsoft Visual Basic 6 support includes support for User defined types (UDTs) and CallByName, plus parameter checking and error analysis for these new VB intrinsics: Filter, FormatCurrency, FormatDateTime, FormatNumber, FormatPercent, InstrRev, Join, MonthName, Replace, Round, Split, StrReverse, WeekdayName, StrConv, CreateObject. In Examples, VBBugBench has examples for VB 6 intrinsics. These are disabled by default. To enable the VB 6 intrinsics add the following line to the Conditional Compilation Arguments edit control on the Make Property Page: VB6_INTRINSICS = 1. Set VB6_INTRINSICS = 0 (or leave the argument blank) to compile for VB 5. 3. When SmartCheck detects an error, you can go to your source code in Visual Basic and edit your code. You must launch SmartCheck from Visual Basic to use this feature. Go to Source is available from the Program Error Detected window, and from any line in the Program Results window that is associated with VB source code in the project you loaded before running SmartCheck. 4. You can start and stop collecting information in the event log while your program is running. This lets you reduce the size of your event file, and see just the events for the part of the run you are trying to debug. From SmartCheck, use the new toolbar button, or deselect Event reporting on the Program menu to turn off logging. You can also control reporting from the Program Error Detected window. Note: After you stop event reporting, you may still see a few events in the Program Results window if these events are needed to match up with events that occurred while reporting was enabled. You can set the initial event reporting state for your program on the Reporting tab of the Program Settings dialog. 5. SmartCheck provides an API for starting and stopping event reporting from within your program. The Event Reporting API can be used as a straight API from C/C++ programs, or as a COM object from VB. NMEVTRPT.dll is installed in the Windows System directory. The header and import library files are in ERptAPI under the SmartCheck installation directory (NMEvtRpt.lib, and NMEvtRpt.h). See Using the Event Reporting API (AboutAPI.txt) in ERptAPI for details. 6. SmartCheck collects version information and the complete filename of every module loaded by your program. Choose Version Information from the View menu to see the information. Click on column headers to sort in ascending order. You can also print a report of version information. 7. SmartCheck records environment information about your session in a new Session Information event. To see this event, use View-Specific Events, and check Comments. Session information is the first event after your program starts. SmartCheck also logs your username, machine name and run date in the Program Transcript window. 8. SmartCheck version 6 adds analysis for VB runtime errors resulting from a system exception (such as Access Violation or GPF) or C++ exception inside a property put or get, or method call. Previously, these errors tended to result in VB runtime error 80010108, with no information on the source of the problem. Also included is analysis for C++ or system exceptions while loading a DLL (VB runtime error 48). Previously, this resulted in a vague analysis such as "Invalid access to memory location. The new analyzers tell you the details of the exception, and where it occurred. 9. Help for detected errors includes more Visual Basic code samples. 10. You can turn off immediate reporting of detected errors from the Program Error Detected window. This is useful if SmartCheck is detecting lots of errors, and you want to continue your run without acknowledging each error as it is detected. 11. On the View menu, View suppressed errors lets you display suppressed errors in the Program Results window, or remove them from the view. This option only applies to errors you suppressed yourself, and not to errors suppressed by the standard libraries distributed with SmartCheck. 12. SmartCheck's new compliance report makes it easier for you to see just the API calls your program makes that aren't supported by a particular operating system. Compliance reporting moved from the Program menu to the View menu. 13. A new setting, Overwrite memory with fill pattern upon deallocation, was added to Advanced Error Detection settings. When a program runs under SmartCheck, Windows NT can overwrite freed memory with a fill pattern to increase the chance that a General Protection Fault will occur if the program uses the freed memory. In previous versions of SmartCheck, this behavior always occurred. As a result, some programs that continued to use freed memory appeared to work outside of SmartCheck, but failed to run under SmartCheck. Since the error was often in third party code the user could not control, it was not possible to continue checking the application under SmartCheck without modifying the Windows NT Registry. Now you determine whether or not Windows NT overwrites memory after it is freed. To perform the most rigorous check on your program, enable the Overwrite memory with fill pattern setting. This setting applies only to Windows NT. 14. SmartCheck remembers dlls and ocxs that your program loads dynamically. This makes it easier for you to do selective checking because you don't need to manually enter the names of dynamically loaded modules in the Files to check tab of the Program Settings dialog. 15. You can select where SmartCheck stores its temporary files on the Program Information tab of the Program Settings dialog. 16. SmartCheck appears on a new DevPartner menu and toolbar in the VB IDE. New releases of NuMega DevPartner for Visual Basic products such as CodeReview, TrueTime, and FailSafe also appear on the DevPartner menu when they are installed. 17. SmartCheck can check programs compiled with NuMega TrueTime 1.1 instrumentation, but cannot check programs compiled with TrueTime 1.0. 18. See the section on Bug Fixes for the most significant bug fixes. Reporting Problems and Suggestions ================================== NuMega Technical Support can assist you with all your technical problems, from installation to troubleshooting. To contact Technical Support: World Wide Web www.numega.com Go to Support E-Mail tech@numega.com Fax 603-578-8401 Telephone 888 NUMEGA-S (U.S. and Canada) 1-603-578-8100 (International) Telephone support is available as a paid Priority Support Service from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM EST, Monday through Friday. Have your product version and serial number ready. Technical Support handles installation and setup issues free of charge. Problem reports should include: - Product na