Hey,

ASan for x86 Release targets is available in MSVC since 
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/addresssanitizer-asan-for-windows-with-msvc/
 , and recently also for x64 + Debug builds 
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/asan-for-windows-x64-and-debug-build-support/
To add some details.


BR,
Dan


---

Daniel EngelkeSoftware Engineer
basysKom GmbH
Robert-Bosch-Str. 7 | 64293 Darmstadt | Germany
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[email protected] | www.basyskom.com


Handelsregister: Darmstadt HRB 9352
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 From:   Andrei Golubev <[email protected]> 
 To:   "[email protected]" <[email protected]> 
 Sent:   8/31/2020 2:01 PM 
 Subject:   [Development] Important recent changes in QList/QString/QByteArray 


 
 
 
 Hello all, 
 
 
 
 
 Over the last week I pushed several patches to enable prepend optimization in 
some core containers, namely, QList, QString, QByteArray. 
 In the light of these changes, there may occur new subtle issues in your code. 
 
 
 
 
 New model
 
 ---
 
 
 
 In a nutshell, prepend optimization code does some magic with the memory 
layout and the stored elements location. 
 This, in turn, affects how you can and cannot use 
iterators/pointers/references to container's elements and their invalidation. 
 
 
 As of today, please consider that any non-const member function of the 
aforementioned container can invalidate "remembered" iterators, pointers or 
references to elements of that container. For example, an iterator is returned 
by QList::begin(), a pointer is  returned by QString::data() (and 
QString::constData()), a reference is returned by QList::at() - this is, of 
course, not an exhaustive list.
 
 The invalidation existed before for cases when a container could detach (due 
to copy-on-write) or reallocate (due to growing or squeezing). Now this is also 
true for non-detaching, non-reallocating, modifying operations. Examples of 
such operations: append,  prepend, insert, emplace, remove, etc.
 
 
 
 
 
 How this affects existing code? 
 --- 
 
 
 To the best of my knowledge, at least certain documentation pieces of QString 
and QByteArray already explained such a thing. So, hopefully, diligent users of 
these 2 containers should be safe.
 
 
 
 QList's behavior changed with regards to the iterators/pointers: as described 
above, using an iterator or a pointer to an element of a QList between 
non-const modifying operations is an undefined behavior (same true for 
references).
 
 
 
 A more subtle issue concerns the users of QVector. Since QVector got unified 
with QList and QList's implementation/behavior changed, old code that was valid 
before may now be a subject to UB. Consider a simple example of the difference: 
 
 
 QVector<int> ints { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... };  // now: effectively QList<int>
 
 auto thirdElemIt = ints.begin() + 2; 
 ints.remove(6);   // removing element at position 6. before: thirdElemIt 
remains valid 
                            //                                                  
     now: thirdElemIt may be invalidated
 
 print(*thirdElemIt);  // before: valid enough behavior; now: undefined
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Aiding the debugging process
 
 --- 
 
 
 Below are some basic steps one can do to simplify the debugging of issues:
 
 
 
 1) Enable assertions in the code. This should be possible even if you have a 
release build, there's a macro definition QT_FORCE_ASSERTS that should 
force-enable assertions (albeit not sure how exactly to specify it during build 
stage). 
 
 
 2) Build with address sanitizer. Even basic "sanitize=address" should suffice 
initially. It should be available both for GCC and Clang (guessing that any 
recent GCC/Clang that supports C++17 also supports ASan). MSVC developers some 
time ago also reported that  ASan is now supported. To enable ASan locally with 
CMake build toolchain, one can use "-DFEATURE_sanitize_address=ON" flag as part 
of the CMake input arguments (when building Qt sources). Don't know an 
alternative if you use configure script + qmake. 
 
 
 3) Valgrind's memory checker should cover roughly same issues as address 
sanitizer.
 
 
 
 Note that you do not need to rebuild Qt/your application to use valgrind which 
may be a preferred option sometimes. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Feel free to contact me in case you find an issue caused by new changes and 
need a help in resolving it. 
 Sorry for possible inconveniences!
 
 
 
 
 
 --
 
 Best Regards, 
 Andrei
 

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