crabgrind

Valgrind Client Request interface for Rust programs

crabgrind is a small library that enables Rust programs to tap into Valgrind's tools and virtualized environment.

Valgrind offers a "client request interface" that is accessible through C macros in its header files. However, these macros can’t be used in languages fortunate enough to lack C preprocessor support, such as Rust. To address this,crabgrind wraps those macros in C functions and expose this API via FFI.

Essentially, crabgrind acts as a thin wrapper. It adds some type conversions and structure, but all the real things are done by Valgrind itself.

Compatibility

crabgrind usually builds against the latest Valgrind releases, even if some new APIs aren't available—at least it compiles. However, some releases may introduce breaking changes. So, if you run into build errors or need a specific new feature, check out the compatibility table.

Valgrind	crabgrind
3.23	0.1.11
3.22	0.1.10
3.21	0.1.9

Quickstart

crabgrind does not link against Valgrind but instead reads its header files, which must be accessible during build.

If you have installed Valgrind using OS-specific package manager, the paths to the headers are likely to be resolved automatically by cc.

In case of manual installation, you can set the path to the Valgrind headers location through the DEP_VALGRIND environment variable. For example:

DEP_VALGRIND=/usr/include cargo build

Next, add dependency to Cargo.toml

[dependencies]
crabgrind = "0.1"

Then, use some of Valgrind's API

use crabgrind as cg;

fn main() {
    if matches!(cg::run_mode(), cg::RunMode::Native) {
        println!("run me under Valgrind");
    } else {
        cg::println!("Hey, Valgrind!");
    }
}

and run under Valgrind

cargo build
valgrind ./target/debug/appname

and finally, for more details and code examples, be sure to check out the documentation.

License

crabgrind is distributed under MIT license.

Valgrind itself is a GPL2, however valgrind/*.h headers are distributed under a BSD-style license, so we can use them without worrying about license conflicts.