DEV Community: Yuki Kimoto

Enabling AddressSanitizer (ASan) in Makefile.PL for Linux Environments

Yuki Kimoto — Wed, 13 May 2026 01:03:09 +0000

Note: This method is designed for Linux systems where LD_PRELOAD is available.
AddressSanitizer (ASan) is a powerful tool for detecting memory corruption in C/C++ code. When developing Perl XS modules, you can integrate ASan support directly into your Makefile.PL to make debugging seamless.

Add the 'asan-on-linux' Option

First, use GetOptions to provide a dedicated flag for ASan. This allows users to enable memory sanitization explicitly. We also set up a temporary directory to store ASan's detailed log files.

use Getopt::Long;
use File::Path 'mkpath';

GetOptions('asan-on-linux' => \my $asan_on_linux);

my @ccflags;
my @ldflags;
my $asan_logs_dir = ".tmp/asan_logs";

if ($asan_on_linux) {
    push @ccflags, "-fsanitize=address", "-fno-omit-frame-pointer";
    push @ldflags, "-fsanitize=address";
    
    mkpath $asan_logs_dir unless -d $asan_logs_dir;
}

Automate Library Preloading via Makefile Macros

Since the standard perl binary isn't typically compiled with ASan, we must ensure libasan.so is correctly preloaded before the interpreter starts. By using the macro parameter in WriteMakefile, we can automate this process for make test.

use Config;

WriteMakefile(
    NAME              => 'My::Module',
    CCFLAGS           => "$Config{ccflags} " . join(' ', @ccflags),
    LDDLFLAGS         => "$Config{lddlflags} " . join(' ', @ldflags),
    # ...
    macro => {
        $asan_on_linux ? (
            'override FULLPERL' => qq|LD_PRELOAD=\$\$($Config{cc} -print-file-name=libasan.so) ASAN_OPTIONS="log_path=$asan_logs_dir/asan.log:exitcode=0" $^X|
        ) : (),
    },
);

How to Handle Memory Issues

When ASan is enabled, the behavior depends on the type of memory issue:

Memory Corruption: Issues like buffer overflows or use-after-free will cause a Segmentation Fault (Segfault) immediately. When this happens, you must fix the code until all tests pass without crashing.
Memory Leaks: Unlike corruption, memory leaks do not cause a crash. To find them, you must check the logs after running your tests.

ASan generates a separate log file for each process. To efficiently find both corruption reports and leaks related to your specific module, use the following Perl one-liner (Replace My::Module with your module's name):

perl -00 -ne 'print "--- File: $ARGV ---\n$_\n" if /My::Module/' .tmp/asan_logs/* > .tmp/asan_summary.log

This command uses Perl's "paragraph mode" (-00) to extract the entire stack trace, allowing you to see exactly where the issue (crash or leak) was triggered in your native code.

Appendix: Platform Compatibility

macOS (Untested Hint)

On macOS, you might try DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES instead of LD_PRELOAD. However, System Integrity Protection (SIP) often prevents preloading into system binaries like /usr/bin/perl. You would likely need to use a perl installed via perlbrew or plenv.

Windows (Not Supported)

This mechanism is not applicable to Windows. Windows lacks LD_PRELOAD, and memory sanitization requires a fundamentally different configuration, typically involving a specially compiled perl interpreter.

Author: Yuki Kimoto

Hacking Makefile.PL: How to Force Parallel Builds and Tests (The GNU Make Way)

Yuki Kimoto — Fri, 08 May 2026 04:30:56 +0000

If you are developing a large-scale Perl module or a native extension (XS/SPVM), build and test times can become a bottleneck. While we often manually pass -jN to make, I wanted a way to bake parallel execution directly into the Makefile.PL.

Today, I want to share a rather "aggressive" hack to achieve parallel builds and tests by injecting logic into WriteMakefile.

The Snippet

WriteMakefile(
  macro => {
    # Force parallel builds
    MAKEFLAGS => "-j$jobs",
    
    # Inject parallel test execution by overriding TEST_VERBOSE
    # Constraints for Windows shell compatibility (pwsh/cmd.exe):
    # 1. The entire command is wrapped in double quotes.
    # 2. No backslashes (\) to avoid escape hell.
    # 3. No dollar signs ($) to prevent pwsh variable expansion.
    # 4. No nested parentheses to avoid pwsh tokenization errors.
    # 5. Only '();. are used for maximum safety.
    # 6. Minimal symbols to avoid edge cases in shell parsing.
    'override TEST_VERBOSE' => "scalar (eval chr(36) . q(ENV{HARNESS_OPTIONS}='j$jobs'), 0)",
  },
);

How it works

Parallel Build (MAKEFLAGS): This sets the -j flag for GNU Make. Please note that this only works with gmake.
Parallel Test Hack (override TEST_VERBOSE): This is the "dirty" part. I’m hijacking the TEST_VERBOSE macro, which is usually intended for toggling verbose output. By using eval and chr(36) (to avoid the $ symbol which causes pain in PowerShell), I’m forcing the HARNESS_OPTIONS environment variable to be set to j$jobs just as the test suite starts.

The constraints in the comments ensure that this string remains "shell-safe" even on Windows (cmd.exe or PowerShell), avoiding backslashes and nested parentheses that usually break the build.

Is there a better way?

I’ll be honest: this works, but I’m not sure if it’s the "best" or "right" way to do it. It feels like a brilliant hack, but hacking TEST_VERBOSE to set environment variables is definitely not what the ExtUtils::MakeMaker authors intended.

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

Is there a built-in WriteMakefile option that handles parallel tests natively?
Have you found a cleaner way to pass HARNESS_OPTIONS through the generated Makefile without shell-escaping hell?

If you have a more "canonical" approach, please let me know in the comments!

SPVM standard modules on CPAN

Yuki Kimoto — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 04:01:06 +0000

There are SPVM standard modules on CPAN.

SPVM::Callback::MapExpand

SPVM::Comparator::Double

SPVM::Comparator::Float

SPVM::Comparator::Int

SPVM::Comparator::Long

SPVM::Comparator::String

SPVM::EqualityChecker

SPVM::EqualityChecker::Address

SPVM::EqualityCheckable

SPVM::Error

SPVM::Error::Compile

SPVM::Error::FieldNotSpecified

SPVM::Error::MethodCallNotPermitted

SPVM::Error::NotSupported

SPVM::Error::System

SPVM::Error::Unicode::InvalidUTF8

SPVM::Immutable::ByteList

SPVM::Immutable::DoubleList

SPVM::Immutable::FloatList

SPVM::Immutable::IntList

SPVM::Immutable::LongList

SPVM::Immutable::ShortList

SPVM::Immutable::StringList

SPVM::Native::BasicType

SPVM::Native::ClassFile

SPVM::Native::ClassVar

SPVM::Native::Compiler

SPVM::Native::Env

SPVM::Native::Field

SPVM::Native::Method

SPVM::Native::MethodCall

SPVM::Native::Runtime

I started to develope SPVM::Mojolicious

Yuki Kimoto — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:50:27 +0000

I started to develope SPVM::Mojolicious.

I released SPVM::Mojolicious on CPAN.

This is an early release.This project is incomplete.

We plan to make most Mojolicious features available.

As SPVM features, we'll be able to create groutines, threads, and executables.

How to create Mac GUI applications in SPVM?

Yuki Kimoto — Sun, 08 Dec 2024 22:54:18 +0000

How to create Mac GUI applications in SPVM?

See the following content.

Mac GUI Applications

SPVM can now create a Mac GUI application. It is an executable file. you can execute it.

% spvmcc -o mac_hello_world mac_hello_world.spvm
% ./mac_hello_world

An alert dialog is shown.

How to create a parallel echo server using goroutines in SPVM?

Yuki Kimoto — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 05:59:12 +0000

How to create a parallel echo server using goroutines in SPVM?

I write a parallel echo server using SPVM::IO::Socket::IP and goroutines, channels, select in SPVM::Go.

See the following test code.

run_echo_server_go

How to generate an executable file for an AI program using SPVM ?

Yuki Kimoto — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 04:59:31 +0000

Wouldn't you like to output a single executable file from your AI program? Then, you can run the AI program just by copying the executable file to the Raspberry Pi. Here's how to achieve this using SPVM. Here's an example of image recognition using MINIST as an example of AI using deep learning.

SPVM program

This is an AI program to recognize images using MINIST data.

It is writen by SPVM and SPVM::R.

Install dependent modules.

cpanm SPVM
cpanm SPVM::Errno
cpanm SPVM::File::Basename
cpanm SPVM::File::Spec
cpanm SPVM::FindBin
cpanm SPVM::Math
cpanm SPVM::Regex
cpanm SPVM::Sys
cpanm SPVM::Time::Local
cpanm SPVM::Time::Piece
cpanm SPVM::IO
cpanm SPVM::R

Execute an SPVM program.

spvm -I network_lib/SPVM my_minist_app.spvm

Generate an executable file and execute it.

spvmcc -I network_lib/SPVM -o my_minist_app my_minist_app.spvm

./my_minist_app

I'm not an AI expert, but if you are, I think you can modify this.

If you're interested in parallelization using threads and goroutines, see also:

GitPrep has some new features and bug fixes.

Yuki Kimoto — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 23:30:18 +0000

GitPrep has some new features and bug fixes.

GitPrep - Github

GitPrep is portable Github-like system, which can be installed and hosted on your own Unix/Linux server.

SPVM::R - A Port of The R Language Features.

Yuki Kimoto — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 00:15:36 +0000

R class in SPVM is a port of the R language features.

Features

N-dimensional arrays and their operations, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, modulo(or remainder), sum, max, min, mean, cumulative sum, cumulative product, trigonometric functions, exponential functions, log functions.
Support of sequence creation, repetition, slice, order, sort of a n-dimensional array.
Various types of n-dimensional arrays(byte, short, int, long, float, double, float complex, double complex, string, variable-length string, datetime).
Support of NA representation.
Data frame and its operations.
Support of slice(subset), order, sort of a data frame.

Tutorial

SPVM::R Tutorial

Modules

N-Dimension Array

N-Dimension Array Operations

Matrix Operations

Data Frame

Utilities

R::Util

Wiki

SPVM::R Wiki

Repository

SPVM::R - Github

SPVM::Resource::Eigen released

Yuki Kimoto — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 23:22:40 +0000

SPVM::Resource::Eigen, a SPVM resource for the C++ library Eigen that can calculate the matrix operations required by AI/Deep Learning, has been released.

SPVM::Resource::Eigen - CPAN

Perl v5.40.0 is released

Yuki Kimoto — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 04:54:35 +0000

Perl v5.40.0 is released.

https://github.com/Perl/perl5/releases/tag/v5.40.0

SPVM Documentation

Yuki Kimoto — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 02:02:30 +0000

This is the SPVM Documentation.

Tutorial

SPVM Tutorial

Documents

All SPVM Documents

Exchange APIs

Exchange APIs

DEV Community: Yuki Kimoto

Enabling AddressSanitizer (ASan) in Makefile.PL for Linux Environments

Add the 'asan-on-linux' Option

Automate Library Preloading via Makefile Macros

How to Handle Memory Issues

Appendix: Platform Compatibility

macOS (Untested Hint)

Windows (Not Supported)

Hacking Makefile.PL: How to Force Parallel Builds and Tests (The GNU Make Way)

The Snippet

How it works

Is there a better way?

SPVM standard modules on CPAN

I started to develope SPVM::Mojolicious

How to create Mac GUI applications in SPVM?

How to create a parallel echo server using goroutines in SPVM?

How to generate an executable file for an AI program using SPVM ?

SPVM program

GitPrep has some new features and bug fixes.

SPVM::R - A Port of The R Language Features.

Features

Tutorial

Modules

N-Dimension Array

N-Dimension Array Operations

Matrix Operations

Data Frame

Utilities

Wiki

Repository

SPVM::Resource::Eigen released

Perl v5.40.0 is released

SPVM Documentation

Tutorial

Documents

Exchange APIs

Builder APIs

Commands