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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

It only works if every package tests with it.

Otherwise the relevant warnings get swamped by a huge amount by irrelevant warnings.

This is why running Valgrind on Python code does not work.

If that were true it would also apply to C and C++. I have used Valgrind with Python + Boost C++ hybrid programs and it worked fine after spending an hour making a suppressions file.

> it worked fine after spending an hour making a suppressions file.

So you are confirming the problem, but treating it as if ignoring it is the solution for all?

it's a rejection of the thesis that it "does not work". It does, but it requires investing into a suppression file.

Yeah I tried that on a PySide6 application.

Trust me, it does not work.

skill issue

plus, LLMs can generate suppressor files from logs. It's much faster these days.

I've had success with this approach.

Valgrind can generate suppression files directly.

yes but LLMs have access and understanding of my code and can better discern what should be suppressed.

Yes, but in my past experience, one often wants to be edit those files to make them more generic… Valgrind struggles to distinguish which parts of the call stack are essential to a “known leak” versus which are coincidental.

I have never tried asking an LLM to do this-but it seems like the kind of problem with which an LLM might have some success, even if only partial success.

Is an hour a big deal if it's something you can use over and over and over for debug purposes going forward?

For me, a waaay outdated suppressions file for Qt + a rough understanding what syscalls and frameworks do is enough. If my app crashes in a network request and a byte sent to the X server (old example, I use Wayland now) is uninitialized, I know to ignore it.

Valgrind(-memcheck) is an extremely important tool in memory-unsafe languages.

Simplification of overwhelming information sounds like a good use case for local LLMs. So I agree with other comments that toolchains are better positioned to include batteries like Valgrind.

What do you mean if every package tests with it in the context of Go?

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