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QNX Momentics IDE User's Guide
This User's Guide describes version 8.0 of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that's part of the QNX Tool Suite.
Analyzing Memory Usage and Finding Memory Problems
QNX Momentics IDE lets you run Memory Analysis and several Valgrind (pronounced val-grinned) tools to find memory problems such as leaks and corruption, and to measure memory usage of programs. It also provides the QNX System Information perspective so you can learn which processes are consuming memory or other resources excessively.

QNX Momentics IDE User's Guide
This User's Guide describes version 8.0 of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that's part of the QNX Tool Suite.
- Working with QNX Momentics IDE
  QNX Momentics IDE provides a graphical environment for developing, running, debugging, and profiling applications.
- Developing Projects with the IDE
  To use the QNX Momentics IDE to write applications targeted for QNX OS systems, you must define projects, which are containers that store your source code, configuration files, and binary files.
- Debugging Applications
  The IDE allows you to debug a running application, a library used by the application, or a core file.
- Unit Testing
  The IDE lets you use commercial test frameworks to write unit tests and then execute them by launching a project. While running a test program, you can use the Code Coverage tool to determine how much of the code is exercised (covered) by your tests.
- Analyzing Memory Usage and Finding Memory Problems
  QNX Momentics IDE lets you run Memory Analysis and several Valgrind (pronounced val-grinned) tools to find memory problems such as leaks and corruption, and to measure memory usage of programs. It also provides the QNX System Information perspective so you can learn which processes are consuming memory or other resources excessively.
  - Monitoring memory and resource consumption
    The QNX System Information perspective displays realtime data about the processes running on a target machine, including memory and resource usage statistics.
  - Analyzing heap memory usage
    The IDE offers several ways to analyze an application's heap memory usage. You can view realtime heap statistics, run analysis tools to track heap activity, and use the libc API to read heap information.
  - Finding improper memory usage
    The IDE includes tools that identify lines of code that corrupt memory or cause thread synchronization problems. This information helps you debug process crashing and improper program results.
  - Finding memory leaks
    Many IDE tools track individual heap blocks so they can detect and report memory leaks. The reported details often include stack traces of allocation points, so you can identify pointers related to leaks.
  - Optimizing an application after analysis
    The memory-analyzing tools tell you the total memory a process is using, the sizes of its memory segments, and the history and breakdown of its heap usage. This knowledge helps you determine what programming steps are needed to reduce an application's memory footprint, which can improve performance.
  - Configuring shared library support
    The memory-analyzing tools produce results that contain backtraces for allocations, corruption errors, and leaks. To display line numbers for shared libraries in these backtraces, the active tool must have access to library copies with debug symbols.
  - Running memory-analyzing tools from the command line
    You can run the same tool used by Memory Analysis as well as any Valgrind tool from the command line, outside of QNX Momentics IDE. This is handy for analyzing applications during system startup or when there's no network connection to the target.
  - Attaching Memory Analysis to a running process
    If you want to start analyzing heap activity or finding memory errors for a running process, you can attach the Memory Analysis tool. The IDE then displays the librcheck data received from the target, to illustrate the process's heap allocations and list any memory problems.
  - Controlling librcheck
    You can specify the initial memory checking and tracing settings for the debug allocation library, librcheck, through Memory Analysis in the IDE or through command-line settings. You can further control memory data collection at runtime by using Memory Analysis editor controls, sending signals to the process being analyzed, and making API calls in the code.
  - Importing results from memory-analyzing sessions
    The IDE can import session data generated by a memory-analyzing tool while an application ran. This allows you to view the results of previous analyses, including those shared by other team members or those from sessions that you ran outside of the IDE.
  - Exporting results from memory-analyzing sessions
    The IDE can export session data generated by a memory-analyzing tool while an application ran. This allows you to share analysis results or view them outside of the IDE.
- Analyzing Performance
  QNX Momentics IDE works with the Application Profiler and Valgrind (pronounced val-grinned) Cachegrind tools, which measure the performance of programs running on QNX targets. It also offers the QNX System Information perspective for viewing performance-related metrics.
- Analyzing System Behavior
  Many IDE tools allow you to find errors and optimize applications, but to ensure that your embedded system behaves well, you need to use system-wide diagnostic tools. The QNX System Information and QNX System Profiler tools help you understand process and thread interaction on the target, reduce application and system startup times, and debug deadlock and improper CPU usage levels.
- Building QNX OS Images
  Using the IDE's QNX System Builder feature, you can generate OS images, which are bootable images that contain startup code, the QNX OS, your applications, and any data files used by your applications. The IDE supports image building by allowing you to transfer an image to a target board.
- Reference
  The reference topics provide information about QNX Momentics IDE features and workflows that isn't covered in the chapters related to developing projects or debugging, testing, and analyzing applications.
- JTAG: Debugging with Lauterbach TRACE32
  The Lauterbach TRACE32® In-Circuit Debugger (TRACE32-ICD) supports the JTAG onchip interface so you can perform hardware debugging of QNX OS systems through the QNX Momentics IDE.
QNX Software Development Platform
QNX SDP is a cross-compiling and debugging environment, including an IDE and command-line tools, for building binary images and programs for target boards running the QNX OS 8.0.
QNX Software in the Cloud
QNX Software in the Cloud enables developers to use the QNX OS in the Amazon cloud environment.
QNX Toolkit for Visual Studio Code
This User's Guide describes the QNX^® Toolkit for Visual Studio Code. The guide introduces you to the QNX Toolkit by explaining the QNX development environment and how to build, run, and debug your QNX^® Operating System (OS) applications and systems.
QNX Hypervisor User's Guide
This User's Guide explains the QNX hypervisor architecture and provides instructions for installing and running a QNX Hypervisor system, changing system components and configuration, and using hypervisor features such as virtual devices (vdevs).
Typographical Conventions, Support, and Licensing
This section describes the typographical conventions used throughout the documentation, explains how to obtain technical support, and provides some information about licensing.

Analyzing Memory Usage and Finding Memory Problems

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QNX Momentics IDE lets you run Memory Analysis and several Valgrind (pronounced val-grinned) tools to find memory problems such as leaks and corruption, and to measure memory usage of programs. It also provides the QNX System Information perspective so you can learn which processes are consuming memory or other resources excessively.

The analysis tools support these four tasks:

monitoring memory and resource consumption — you can view realtime data about memory usage for a system or a single process and about resource usage for a process; this feature helps you determine which processes should be further analyzed or optimized
analyzing heap memory usage — you can see which areas of a program use the most dynamic (heap) memory, to learn which sections of code need to be optimized to improve performance
finding memory corruption — you can find and fix the bad memory operations that cause a program to crash or behave improperly
finding memory leaks — you can find and fix memory leaks, to improve an application's long-term stability and performance

The System Information data and the results from the runtime analysis tools can reveal many specific memory problems that you can fix as well as usage trends that suggest how you might optimize an application. You can export data from an analysis session to share results with other team members, who can then import them into their IDE. The import feature also supports postmortem analysis, in which you view analysis results for an application that was run outside of the IDE.

Page updated: March 05, 2025