Detecting Memory leaks in CE

Memory leaks dont need an introduction here. Those looking for a definition may bypass the rest of this discussion.

Even a novice programmer would have seen couple of them every now and then, slowing overall system performance, and in some cases causing catastrophic fatalities like process and or system hangup!

I chanced to work on the CE6 lab(MS curriculum) on tools for detecting memory leaks in CE based systems, and wondered if ppl around were aware of these comprehensive tools? .... I simply was'nt, till the time I actually had to write about them.

Why is Memory Management so important in CE?
To start with, the simplest reason is Embedded systems are designed with memory constraints, having just enough memory to do the job........... essentially implying we have li'l memory to fool around with!

Another reason is that Embedded Systems, unlike their desktop siblings, run continuously for longer durations of time... some are designed to be kept powered up for months. Even small memory leaks in applications, in a recurrect fashion, lead to complete memory fallout in some unpredictable time.

Bottom line: Memory Leaks in embedded systems...... are deadly!!

Over the next couple of days, I would write on some of the tools I have used to detect and fix memory leaks in my applications. To start with, the first is on the Remote Application Verifier.