The subject says it all. After i closed my app, it stays in the list of processes with some memory. I tried google perf tools and hours of debugging to find the leak.
Are there other tools to test it and find the problem?
Thank you.
My guess is that you have closed the top level window, and thus all its child windows, but you have not closed the app itself.
This does not happen if your program is arranged in a 'normal' way, but if you have, deliberately or by accident, used an unusual arrangement this can happen.
Fixing it, of course, depends on how exactly you have arranged your code. However, here is a suggestion to begin.
The usual way to close the app is to call wxApp::OnExit() which normally occurs when the top level window closes.
Do you have your own class, derived from wxApp? Do you have an override of OnExit()? If not, then make it so and use the debugger to check whether or not it is being called. If it is not being called, work out how to ensure that it is called.
Another idea: use the following to check that your top level window will close the app
bool wxApp::GetExitOnFrameDelete() const
Returns true if the application will exit when the top-level window is
deleted, false otherwise.
If this return false, use the corresponding set to make it so.
A 3rd idea: The application will not exit while there are any top level windows open. So perhaps you have another top level window that is minimized or invisible but has not been closed? Any wxDialog or WxFrame or window derived from these is a top level window and will prevent the application from closing.
A 4th idea: Do you have any globals or attributes of the application object, whose destructors could enter an endless loop? These destructors are called after the windows are destroyed and if one of them does not return you would see the behaviour you describe.
You may try to look at wxWidget's sample folder. You'll find lots of small but complete applications that contain the full init/exit application cycle.
Inspect some samples and compare with your app's workflow.
Yes...problem solved. A TopLevelWindow that was not destroyed. A Memory Leak....stupid mistake.
Related
So my question is targeted currently at Windows, but knowing the information for OSX would still be useful just to know later incase you have the answer for that.
How my program(s) function:
An initial EXE will run and create a window, this EXE will check and perform updates for the main program and take some user input. After the user input this EXE will start a new EXE (the main program), passing the details from the window so that this new EXE can claim the window and use it. The first program will terminate and the window should not close.
What I need help with:
I know how to create the window, and passing the required arguments through the exe is not something I know, but I dont think I will struggle to find and use that information. My main question is how do I stop the Window from closing when the first EXE terminates because likely the OS will automatically start cleaning things up.
Sidenotes:
Its not a super big deal, I can always start a new program and recreate a window, but I think it would just be a nice aesthetic touch to not have to close the window at all, staying alive and being handled by different programs(potentially at the same time).
I am under the impression that an EXE cannot update itself while running even if the needed files/information/compiled code are not being used so if this is wrong please let me know.
What you're trying to do cannot be done. You cannot transfer ownership of a window to a different thread. This can be inferred from the documentation of DestroyWindows:
A thread cannot use DestroyWindow to destroy a window created by a different thread.
Raymond Chen expands on this as he explains in his blog entry titled Thread affinity of user interface objects, part 1: Window handles:
The thread that creates a window is the one with which the window has an inseparable relationship. Informally, one says that the thread “owns” the window. Messages are dispatched to a window procedure only on the thread that owns it, and generally speaking, modifications to a window should be made only from the thread that owns it.
As far as the OS is concerned, nothing survives the end of a process. This is literally the end. If you need to keep a window around, you cannot terminate the process that owns its owning thread.
Let me explain my question with an example. In my app, I need to provide a way to automatically close it from within "itself." (An example of such function is when an installer/updater of my app needs it to close before installing an update. Another example is when my app performs actions on schedule and needs to automatically close once it's done.)
I picture that in the simplest situation posting the WM_CLOSE message to the own window will accomplish this task, but there're the following cases that will not work with just that:
My app may be displaying an arbitrary number of child dialog windows.
My app may be displaying a common control window, such as Open File dialog:
or this one, but there could be others:
And lastly what could one do if the close button is not even available:
At the current point, I simply resort to terminating my process (either with the exit() method from within, or with TerminateProcess from outside.)
But I'm curious, if there's a more graceful way of closing my GUI app (from within)?
There is no single answer, it depends on your app's architecture and what it's doing. I don't quite understand why you would want to force close your application while it is in a common dialog, but if you do, then exit() is safe. In that case the process is actually shutdown from the operating system's perspective as opposed to a forced termination (TerminateProcess). In theory TerminateProcess might leave objects in the OS (DLL global data and such) in an inconsistent state, and exit() will be cleaner in that regard.
Generally though I'd avoid having visible UI that is up for the user just disappear and instead close the windows in reaction to some user choice.
But, exit() will work.
You can use exit() but a safer way to close the window would be:
SomewWindow->ShowWindow(SW_HIDE);
You could then destroy the window object or show the window later.
I have a strange issue I've been unable to diagnose and am hoping someone can at least point me in the right direction. I have a C++ MFC application that collects data from various sources and displays it on the screen. After a random interval (typically around 5-10 minutes), however, the display gets "corrupted" in a way I've never seen or have been able to track down as shown in the image below (left is normal, right is corrupt):
The basic symptoms are:
Up/down arrow images turn into "5"s and "6"s.
Opening a combo box list results in just the item text displayed (list border and scroll bar is not shown).
Background colours on some controls don't update or display correctly.
Z-order is broken and the app controls "leak" through other windows placed on top.
Pressing Print-Screen with the app in focus no longer captures the window to the clipboard.
Closing and reopening the window does nothing.
Restarting the application gets things back to normal.
Things I've tried to eliminate as a possible cause include:
Operating System & Computer: The same issue is present on a variety of systems from Windows 7-64 bit to Windows Xp-32 bit.
Multi-threading: I added a mutex to prevent the display updates from occurring at the same time but it had no effect (as expected).
Memory Corruption: This has been my assumption all along but there are no signs of memory corruption at all. The base display code has been used for years with no similar issue as well as the base networking message library.
Specific Code: I have narrowed down the issue to one specific dialog among a variety of others that show no issue. They all use the same base code which would seem to indicate the issue lies in the specific display code for the dialog. Exactly how or why the issue occurs has eluded me so far.
Any ideas on what the cause might be or how to narrow it down would be great.
Update 1:
Doing some more timing/repeatable tests and it looks like leaving this one dialog running for a short while causes the issue. The amount time is consistently between 300-400 seconds before the issue shows up.
It sounds like your application could be leaking GDI objects. To check if that is the case, open your task manager and enable the GDI Objects column. Observe the number for your process and see if it's increasing continuously.
If that is actually the case, you should read Detect and Plug GDI Leaks in Your Code with Two Powerful Tools for Windows XP. That MSDN article also offers a tool named GDILeaks.exe that should help you identify your GDI Leaks.
In the case where these symptoms surface within a short time, it should be something that is drawn repeatedly that isn't freeing GDI resources properly. Possibly in (or called within) the windows procedure (OnPaint for example).
If I'm not mistaken Windows' GUI uses a ttf(?) font for those little icons, and it looks like the font gets destroyed somehow (DeleteObject being called with font's handle?)
Asking because in the previous question i was pointer to IExplorerBrowser, however it creates a child window, while Explorer's "Find Target..."behaviour i want to simulate (see previous) exhibits some level of control over newly open or existing Explorer window (i believe that right term is folder view, feel free to correct). Also looking for other API(s) to accomplish BrowsingTo or similar behaviour.
This isn't possible. See Raymond Chen's blog post on the subject.
Aha, the program is using Explorer as a “view this folder for a little while” subroutine. Unfortunately, Explorer doesn’t work that way. For example, the user might decide to use the Address Bar and go visit some other folders completely unrelated to your program, and your program would just be sitting there waiting for the user to close that window; meanwhile, the user doesn’t realize that your program is waiting for it.
I have a third party encryption library, which may create a MessageBox if key creation fails. The failure can be caused by bad random number generation or other rarities, and in most cases, trying again will result in success. My code will attempt key creation up to three times before deciding it failed.
Now, the issue is that the program may be used with automation. If a MessageBox is created during automation, it will block the process forever, because there's nobody to click the 'OK' button.
Does anyone know of a way to catch when this message box is created and automatically close it?
Anything is fair game, as long as it's not something that will make security suites angry. This means no hooking or code tunneling.
In summary, I need to catch when a MessageBox is created and close it. The MessageBox's creation is outside of my control. Modifying the code at runtime is not acceptable.
Also, I've noticed there are some other similar questions, but they don't have the same requirements.
EDIT: Additional note, I can find the message box via searching through all windows until I find one with a matching title and then send it a WM_CLOSE message, but I don't think this is a great solution. I also have no guarantee that the message box has been/will be displayed, or how long after my call it will be displayed. It could display instantly, it could display 1200 ms later, or it could not display at all.
Just before you begin the encryption process, install a WH_CBT hook, and in its callback watch for an nCode of HCBT_CREATEWND. If you get a matching class name ('#32770 (Dialog)' ?) and a matching title either return a nonzero value from the callback, or if that doesn't work post a WM_CLOSE (or a BM_CLICK to a relevant button if selecting an option is necessary). Uninstall the hook after the process for not messing with every possible dialog your application pops up.
That sounds like bad design on the part of that library. Generally any sort of utility library (like encryption) has no business invoking any kind of GUI (unless you explicitly ask it to).
Is there possibly some configuration or setting in this library that could disable its use of message boxes?
If not, I'd suggest that you might want to investigate using a different library. After all, if the designers of this library have already made this kind of poor design decision once, then there may be other unfortunate surprises lurking in there.
You can hope that it will be found by GetForegroundWindow, but this may catch other applications. The more brute force way is to iterate over all windows with EnumWindows looking for something that has a caption or text equal to this shown by the library.
I have once "remote controlled" an application by sending mouse click events to some controls. I guess you would have to do this in a separate thread that is watching for Events if a window is opened. Pretty ugly but working...
Create a new thread. If your function fails and a Message Box is opened, obtain a handle to the message box by looping through the windows (GetTopWindow, GetNextWindow) and comparing the window's process id to the one returned from GetCurrentProcessId().
Or, you can avoid all the hard work and just hook the MessageBox API with detours. It's not very hard, and if you don't want to pay for detours, you can do it manually.
Call VirtualProtect and set the memory protection at MessageBox at PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE
Create a naked function, and use it as a trampoline.
Create a function identical in parameters to MessageBox (this will be your hook)
Create a jump from MessageBox to your hook function.