[C++] crash using IceUtil::Timer

[MKroehnert]

Hi,

we are exploring the possibility to use Ice in our next software project.

However, we ran across several application crashes which we could boil down to a single line using IceUtil::Timer and it looks like this:

#include <IceUtil/Timer.h>

int main() {
    IceUtil::Timer timer;
    return 0;
}

When compiled on OS X 10.6.8 against Ice-3.4.2 (precompiled version) this program crashes with a segmentation fault.

The corresponding gdb backtrace looks like this:

#0  0x00007fff5fbff740 in ?? ()
#1  0x000000010078271e in startHook (arg=0x7fff5fbff6b0) at Thread.cpp:407
#2  0x00007fff802d7fd6 in _pthread_start ()
#3  0x00007fff802d7e89 in thread_start ()

We tried to run it on Linux but got a slightly different error (using Ice-3.4.1):

test: /Ice/include/IceUtil/Mutex.h:256: IceUtil::Mutex::~Mutex(): Assertion `rc == 0' failed.
Aborted.

I will check against Ice-3.4.2 tomorrow (I know about the support policy).

Any help or insight on this would be appreciated.

Best regards,

Manfred

[mes]

Hi Manfred,

Welcome to the forum.

The IceUtil::Timer class is a reference-counted class, which is implied by its inheritance from IceUtil::Shared. As you have seen, bad things will happen if you attempt to allocate an instance of such a class on the stack.

Here is how you should be allocating an instance:

IceUtil::TimerPtr timer = new IceUtil::Timer;

The TimerPtr type is a smart pointer for instances of Timer.

Best regards,
Mark

[MKroehnert]

Hello Mark,

thanks for your fast response.

Now that you mention the reference counting the solution seems obvious.
Somehow we must have overlooked this problem.

Best regards,

Manfred