Re: Autorun for Win*

From: Henrik Stuart (hstuart@geocities.com)
Date: 01/13/02


Greetings,

> Also, for alot of you "newer" ppl, or new for windows, if you run the
> executable
> after building in "debug", it will crash alot more, but you can then find
> the exact reason, and trace the code. you cant with release, but it crashes
> less (but you wont know always when there is a problem).

   That is actually as wrong as it can be. :o)
   Debug builds (in vc++) does, as I have stated repetitiously, add
   extra safe-guards to your code and as such crashes in an "orderly"
   fashion, i.e. when something actually goes wrong.
   Now, in a release build the wonderful compiler will optimise your
   source code being compiled to make it faster/more compact/whatever
   you might choose as your priority for optimisations. When you do
   this a lot, and I do stress a LOT, might go wrong that didn't
   earlier due to the unique characteristics of the debug memory heap
   vc++ uses to allocate from. For instance in a release build it's
   possible to overwrite the return jump register without anyone
   caring and potentially you will be executing very interesting
   things. Unfortunate memory overwrites is another hazard of not
   using the debug build. :o)
   So PLEASE, unless you have a production-worthy code-base that you
   "KNOW" work, do not try to compile as a release build, let alone
   bother people with why it isn't working before you've run with the
   debug build.
   If your mud, as you claim, crash less frequently in a release build
   you now know that it means you have some really interesting bugs
   hiding well within the depths of your program that you should go
   track down at the closest free moment. :o)

--
Yours truly,
  Henrik Stuart (http://www.unprompted.com/hstuart/)

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