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1================
2AddressSanitizer
3================
4
5.. contents::
6   :local:
7
8Introduction
9============
10
11AddressSanitizer is a fast memory error detector. It consists of a compiler
12instrumentation module and a run-time library. The tool can detect the
13following types of bugs:
14
15* Out-of-bounds accesses to heap, stack and globals
16* Use-after-free
17* Use-after-return (to some extent)
18* Double-free, invalid free
19
20Typical slowdown introduced by AddressSanitizer is **2x**.
21
22How to build
23============
24
25Follow the `clang build instructions <../get_started.html>`_. CMake build is
26supported.
27
28Usage
29=====
30
31Simply compile and link your program with ``-fsanitize=address`` flag.  The
32AddressSanitizer run-time library should be linked to the final executable, so
33make sure to use ``clang`` (not ``ld``) for the final link step.  When linking
34shared libraries, the AddressSanitizer run-time is not linked, so
35``-Wl,-z,defs`` may cause link errors (don't use it with AddressSanitizer).  To
36get a reasonable performance add ``-O1`` or higher.  To get nicer stack traces
37in error messages add ``-fno-omit-frame-pointer``.  To get perfect stack traces
38you may need to disable inlining (just use ``-O1``) and tail call elimination
39(``-fno-optimize-sibling-calls``).
40
41.. code-block:: console
42
43    % cat example_UseAfterFree.cc
44    int main(int argc, char **argv) {
45      int *array = new int[100];
46      delete [] array;
47      return array[argc];  // BOOM
48    }
49
50    # Compile and link
51    % clang -O1 -g -fsanitize=address -fno-omit-frame-pointer example_UseAfterFree.cc
52
53or:
54
55.. code-block:: console
56
57    # Compile
58    % clang -O1 -g -fsanitize=address -fno-omit-frame-pointer -c example_UseAfterFree.cc
59    # Link
60    % clang -g -fsanitize=address example_UseAfterFree.o
61
62If a bug is detected, the program will print an error message to stderr and
63exit with a non-zero exit code. Currently, AddressSanitizer does not symbolize
64its output, so you may need to use a separate script to symbolize the result
65offline (this will be fixed in future).
66
67.. code-block:: console
68
69    % ./a.out 2> log
70    % projects/compiler-rt/lib/asan/scripts/asan_symbolize.py / < log | c++filt
71    ==9442== ERROR: AddressSanitizer heap-use-after-free on address 0x7f7ddab8c084 at pc 0x403c8c bp 0x7fff87fb82d0 sp 0x7fff87fb82c8
72    READ of size 4 at 0x7f7ddab8c084 thread T0
73        #0 0x403c8c in main example_UseAfterFree.cc:4
74        #1 0x7f7ddabcac4d in __libc_start_main ??:0
75    0x7f7ddab8c084 is located 4 bytes inside of 400-byte region [0x7f7ddab8c080,0x7f7ddab8c210)
76    freed by thread T0 here:
77        #0 0x404704 in operator delete[](void*) ??:0
78        #1 0x403c53 in main example_UseAfterFree.cc:4
79        #2 0x7f7ddabcac4d in __libc_start_main ??:0
80    previously allocated by thread T0 here:
81        #0 0x404544 in operator new[](unsigned long) ??:0
82        #1 0x403c43 in main example_UseAfterFree.cc:2
83        #2 0x7f7ddabcac4d in __libc_start_main ??:0
84    ==9442== ABORTING
85
86AddressSanitizer exits on the first detected error. This is by design.
87One reason: it makes the generated code smaller and faster (both by
88~5%). Another reason: this makes fixing bugs unavoidable. With Valgrind,
89it is often the case that users treat Valgrind warnings as false
90positives (which they are not) and don't fix them.
91
92``__has_feature(address_sanitizer)``
93------------------------------------
94
95In some cases one may need to execute different code depending on whether
96AddressSanitizer is enabled.
97:ref:`\_\_has\_feature <langext-__has_feature-__has_extension>` can be used for
98this purpose.
99
100.. code-block:: c
101
102    #if defined(__has_feature)
103    #  if __has_feature(address_sanitizer)
104    // code that builds only under AddressSanitizer
105    #  endif
106    #endif
107
108``__attribute__((no_sanitize_address))``
109-----------------------------------------------
110
111Some code should not be instrumented by AddressSanitizer. One may use the
112function attribute
113:ref:`no_sanitize_address <langext-address_sanitizer>`
114(or a deprecated synonym `no_address_safety_analysis`)
115to disable instrumentation of a particular function. This attribute may not be
116supported by other compilers, so we suggest to use it together with
117``__has_feature(address_sanitizer)``. Note: currently, this attribute will be
118lost if the function is inlined.
119
120Initialization order checking
121-----------------------------
122
123AddressSanitizer can optionally detect dynamic initialization order problems,
124when initialization of globals defined in one translation unit uses
125globals defined in another translation unit. To enable this check at runtime,
126you should set environment variable
127``ASAN_OPTIONS=check_initialization_order=1``.
128
129Blacklist
130---------
131
132AddressSanitizer supports ``src`` and ``fun`` entity types in
133:doc:`SanitizerSpecialCaseList`, that can be used to suppress error reports
134in the specified source files or functions. Additionally, AddressSanitizer
135introduces ``global`` and ``type`` entity types that can be used to
136suppress error reports for out-of-bound access to globals with certain
137names and types (you may only specify class or struct types).
138
139You may use an ``init`` category to suppress reports about initialization-order
140problems happening in certain source files or with certain global variables.
141
142.. code-block:: bash
143
144    # Suppress error reports for code in a file or in a function:
145    src:bad_file.cpp
146    # Ignore all functions with names containing MyFooBar:
147    fun:*MyFooBar*
148    # Disable out-of-bound checks for global:
149    global:bad_array
150    # Disable out-of-bound checks for global instances of a given class ...
151    type:class.Namespace::BadClassName
152    # ... or a given struct. Use wildcard to deal with anonymous namespace.
153    type:struct.Namespace2::*::BadStructName
154    # Disable initialization-order checks for globals:
155    global:bad_init_global=init
156    type:*BadInitClassSubstring*=init
157    src:bad/init/files/*=init
158
159Supported Platforms
160===================
161
162AddressSanitizer is supported on
163
164* Linux i386/x86\_64 (tested on Ubuntu 10.04 and 12.04);
165* MacOS 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 (i386/x86\_64).
166
167Support for Linux ARM (and Android ARM) is in progress (it may work, but
168is not guaranteed too).
169
170Limitations
171===========
172
173* AddressSanitizer uses more real memory than a native run. Exact overhead
174  depends on the allocations sizes. The smaller the allocations you make the
175  bigger the overhead is.
176* AddressSanitizer uses more stack memory. We have seen up to 3x increase.
177* On 64-bit platforms AddressSanitizer maps (but not reserves) 16+ Terabytes of
178  virtual address space. This means that tools like ``ulimit`` may not work as
179  usually expected.
180* Static linking is not supported.
181
182Current Status
183==============
184
185AddressSanitizer is fully functional on supported platforms starting from LLVM
1863.1. The test suite is integrated into CMake build and can be run with ``make
187check-asan`` command.
188
189More Information
190================
191
192`http://code.google.com/p/address-sanitizer <http://code.google.com/p/address-sanitizer/>`_
193
194