In a huge C++ builder 2010 application with several DLL's being built and linked etc. What would be the best way to trace down memory leaks that accumulate over a long period of time? Say that the application has to be running for a week or something on the target machine before it becomes an issue. Let's assume that there is no profiling application available like AQ Time or something similar. Just using the standard IDE and perhaps some code.
My initial idea was to write a macro to use in all classes that keeps track of the number of instances and space used of each class type to start with.
The RTL uses FastMM as its memory manager. FastMM supports memory leak reporting and tracing. The native version of FastMM that is included in the RTL is a stripped down version, but it does support minimal leak reporting. You can set the RTL's global ReportMemoryLeaksOnShutdown variable to true at run-time and FastMM will generate a basic leak report when the app is closed. For more advanced usage, you can download the full version of FastMM and add it to your app, which will replace the RTL's native version. You can then configure FastMM as desired.