Could anyone give a short info on tracking refcounting bugs?

["marcin saepia net" <marcin saepia net>]

Dear all,

I am googling for a tool for debugging refcount bugs in my GObject-based apps.

I've found refdbg, but unfortunately, on ubuntu 12.04 instructions
from this readme [1] do not work. There is only one package,
libglib2.0-0-refdbg which seems to be just a GLib build with slightly
changed configure options, and it is obviously libglib not libgobject.

So I've compiled refdbg by myself.



It throws errors...

$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/refdbg refdbg src/myapp -c
config.xml
/usr/bin/refdbg: 113: /usr/bin/refdbg: Syntax error: Bad for loop variable

...but I've found that it just prepends command with
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/librefdbg.so



but running it manually also gives an error

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/librefdbg.so
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/refdbg refdbg src/myapp -c
config.xml

RefDbg 1.2 init

(process:447): RefDbg-CRITICAL **: LD_PRELOAD function override not
working. Need to build glib with --disable-visibility? (See README),
aborting..


I've found that ubuntu's libglib2.0-0-refdbg package builder appends
only --disable-Bsymbolic option to glib, and --disable-visibility was
intentionally removed according to its debian changelog.

So I've manually updated debian/rules to rebuild the package and add
--disable-visibility but glib's configure scripts throws an error

configure: WARNING: unrecognized options: --disable-visibility

I am stuck.



What am I doing wrong?

Is there any civilized way to debug GObject refcount bugs?


What exactly means "intercepted" in the last sentence from official
"Debugging reference count problems" page from docs [2]?


Thank you in advance,

Marcin Lewandowski

[1] http://refdbg.sourceforge.net/README
[2] http://developer.gnome.org/gobject/stable/tools-refdb.html