gcov out of memory / mismatched version?

Question

Just trying to get gcov up and running, getting the following error:

$ gcov src/main.c -o build
build/main.gcno:version '404*', prefer '407*'

gcov: out of memory allocating 14819216480 bytes after a total of 135168 bytes

I'm using clang/profile_rt to generate the files gcov needs, I'm assuming that might have something to do with it. It's working on my other computer, though, so I assume it can be fixed somehow.

Subtrahend

Answer 1

I just had the same problem on my machine.

Make sure your versions of gcov and the compiler you use match.

I had this exact problem when compiling with g++-4.7 and I had gcov 4.6.

On my machine sudo apt-get install ggcov got me the latest version. I then had to sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/gcov-4.7 /usr/bin/gcov to make gcov point in the right place.

Strode

Thanks for the help! I got around the problem by simply executing gcov-4.7 instead of gcov. I suppose a more elegant approach would involve using update-alternatives, if I were motivated. – Canorous

Thanks Anthony! And ln -sf can automatically remove the old gcov for you. – Laurustinus

Thanks @EricZ. Updated :D – Strode

Answer 2

My problem was that I updated gcc and g++ so that I could use a newer compiler, but forgot to update the gcov version meaning running "gcov" or "lcov" picked up the previous compilers version of gcov.

So basically running g++ --version and gcov --version should yield the same version number else things are going to go very wrong.

Here is how I updated my compiler version, the last line being what I was missing to get it all working.

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.9 90
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.9 90
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-4.9 90

Annia

Answer 3

I just had the same problem and I had the correct versions installed. Solution in my case: remove all *.gcda files from any subdir you compile in. My make clean did not cover them.

Haldane

Thanks. Had me head scratching for a while! – Govern

Answer 4

1. Running gcov with -v flag you can get the exact execution gcov command. It may help to understand what happens.
2. In my case, specifying gcov version helped to solve the issue: gcovr --gcov-executable gcov-7

Trevethick