The "grind" is pronounced with a short 'i' – ie. "grinned" (rhymes with send, mend, tinned, friend, spend, lend, bend, fend, blend"). This document explains how to run <a href="https://valgrind.org/" >Valgrind</a> against C-Menu and what to expect in its output. <hr> @section background Background Valgrind's <tt>--show-leak-kinds=all</tt> mode reports four categories of memory at program exit: <table class="markdownTable"> <tr class="markdownTableHead"> <th class="markdownTableHeadNone"> Category

Meaning

definitely lost

Memory that can no longer be reached — a true leak.

indirectly lost

Memory reachable only through a definitely-lost block.

possibly lost

Heuristic: may or may not be reachable.

still reachable

Memory still pointed to by a live pointer at exit. Often intentional (library caches, global singletons, etc.).

C-Menu aims for zero definitely lost / indirectly lost / possibly lost bytes, and suppresses the known ncurses still reachable allocations that the ncurses library intentionally retains as global caches.

Suppression File

src/valgrind.supp suppresses the following known-harmless ncurses still reachable records (all rooted in frames such as _nc_first_db, _nc_setupterm, _nc_acs_map, and update_getenv inside libncursesw / libtinfo). These allocations are reachable through ncurses global state and are freed by the OS on process exit; suppressing them keeps Valgrind output actionable.

How to Run

Using the Makefile target (recommended)

cd C-Menu/src

make valgrind

This builds menu (if needed) and then runs:

valgrind --leak-check=full --show-leak-kinds=all \
         --leak-resolution=high --track-origins=yes \
         --suppressions=valgrind.supp \
         ./menu

Running manually

cd C-Menu/src
valgrind --leak-check=full --show-leak-kinds=all \
         --leak-resolution=high --track-origins=yes \
         --suppressions=valgrind.supp \
         ./menu [your-menu-args]

You can substitute form, pick, view, or ckeys in place of menu.

Expected Output

With the suppression file applied, Valgrind should report:

LEAK SUMMARY:
   definitely lost: 0 bytes in 0 blocks
   indirectly lost: 0 bytes in 0 blocks
     possibly lost: 0 bytes in 0 blocks
   still reachable: 0 bytes in 0 blocks   (suppressed)
        suppressed: N bytes in N blocks
ERROR SUMMARY: 0 errors from 0 contexts (suppressed: N from N)

Any non-zero definitely lost, indirectly lost, or possibly lost values indicate a real leak that should be investigated.

Reference

Suppression file: src/valgrind.supp
Sample Valgrind output (before fixes): src/valgrind.out