Re: [Boost-users] [Boost.Test] Error: Non-aligned pointer being freed

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [Boost.Test] Error: Non-aligned pointer being freed
From: Peter Klotz (peter.klotz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-07-04 13:44:57

Hello Sebastian

Sebastian Hauer wrote:
> Hello Boost Users,
> when running my unit tests on Mac OS X compiled with darwin gcc 4.2.1
> for x86_64 I am getting the following error messages printed out even
> though no testing error were detected. As a side note running the same
> unit test on Windows MSVC 8 or Solaris gcc 3.2 succeeds without
> issues, so this seems to be either gcc 4.2 or Mac OS X specific.
> This point to framework_impl's clean() method:

> ------------------
>     void            clear()
>     {
>         while( !m_test_units.empty() ) {
>             test_unit_store::value_type const& tu =
> *m_test_units.begin();
> 
>             // the delete will erase this element from map
>             if( test_id_2_unit_type( tu.second->p_id ) == tut_suite )
>                 delete  (test_suite const*)tu.second;
>             else
>                 delete  (test_case const*)tu.second;  // <-- Line 133
>         }
>     }
> -----------------
> 
> I think test_case's dtor was made public in 1.39 but I guess this did
> not fix the problem at hand.

The problem you are seeing is exactly the same I reported a while ago 
against Boost 1.37.0 (and it is still present in 1.39.0).

Please have a look at this thread:

http://www.nabble.com/-Boost.Test--valgrind-complains-about-invalid-reads-td20500154.html

I finally proposed to rewrite framework_impl::clear() and to make the 
test_unit destructor virtual. This solves the valgrind issue in my test 
program.

The original code tries hard to not destroy a derived class (test_suite, 
test_case) through a base class (test_unit) pointer in 
framework_impl::clear(). Doing so would require a virtual test_unit 
destructor.

Regards, Peter.