Trying new software testing methods
Today I tried to get an overview of the code coverage with our testcases using gcov but failed because it is not possible to compile shared libs with the needed compilerflags '-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage' and link them to an executable.
It always complains about a "hidden symbol `__bb_init_func' in /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i486-linux/3.3.3/libgcc.a(_bb.oS) is referenced by DSO". Strange, and all information I found regarding this is a post which tells about problems with gcov and dynamic c++ libraries.
The proposed solution there doesn't work, at least not for me.
I gave up on gcov and tried another tool, Valgrind and this worked immediately and gave me quite a list of leaks and uninitialized memory in our applications. And almost all are direct visible in the code if you know what to search for. But I doubt we could have found them without an automated tool.