How to check memory leaks in ROS nodes

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Hello everyone,

I am trying to run valgrind in a somewhat complex node (an OMPL planner with Octomap and Actionlib). For this, I am running the node as:

valgrind --log-file=test.txt --leak-check=yes --track-origins=yes ./devel/lib/planner/planner goal_pose:=/move_base_simple/goal collision_map:=/octomap_full

It runs so slow I cannot test anything without spending some hours (although it works fast when running without valgrind).

Anyway, if I close the node killing it (Ctrl+C), I get many errors in the valgrind report. Some of them are:

==3227== HEAP SUMMARY:
==3227==     in use at exit: 2,407,249 bytes in 85 blocks
==3227==   total heap usage: 1,713,622 allocs, 1,713,537 frees, 280,743,319 bytes allocated
==3227== 
==3227== 28 bytes in 1 blocks are possibly lost in loss record 12 of 82
==3227==    at 0x4C2B0E0: operator new(unsigned long) (in /usr/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-linux.so)
==3227==    by 0x704D208: std::string::_Rep::_S_create(unsigned long, unsigned long, std::allocator<char> const&) (in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.19)
==3227==    by 0x704DDCA: std::string::_Rep::_M_clone(std::allocator<char> const&, unsigned long) (in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.19)
==3227==    by 0x704DE63: std::string::reserve(unsigned long) (in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.19)
==3227==    by 0x8733CF2: log4cxx::helpers::Transcoder::decode(std::string const&, std::string&) (in /usr/lib/liblog4cxx.so.10.0.0)
==3227==    by 0x86EB77A: log4cxx::LogManager::getLogger(std::string const&) (in /usr/lib/liblog4cxx.so.10.0.0)
==3227==    by 0x86E6185: log4cxx::Logger::getLogger(char const*) (in /usr/lib/liblog4cxx.so.10.0.0)
==3227==    by 0x81BEE79: ros::console::impl::initialize() (in /opt/ros/indigo/lib/librosconsole_log4cxx.so)
==3227==    by 0x55C40B0: ros::console::initialize() (in /opt/ros/indigo/lib/librosconsole.so)
==3227==    by 0x55C1DFC: ??? (in /opt/ros/indigo/lib/librosconsole.so)
==3227==    by 0x4010139: call_init.part.0 (dl-init.c:78)
==3227==    by 0x4010222: _dl_init (dl-init.c:36)
==3227== 
==3227== 28 bytes in 1 blocks are possibly lost in loss record 13 of 82
==3227==    at 0x4C2B0E0: operator new(unsigned long) (in /usr/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-linux.so)
==3227==    by 0x704D208: std::string::_Rep::_S_create(unsigned long, unsigned long, std::allocator<char> const&) (in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.19)
==3227==    by 0x704E930: char* std::string::_S_construct<char const*>(char const*, char const*, std::allocator<char> const&, std::forward_iterator_tag) (in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.19)
==3227==    by 0x704ED47: std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >::basic_string(char const*, std::allocator<char> const&) (in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.19)
==3227==    by 0x86DCE10: log4cxx::Level::getAll() (in /usr/lib/liblog4cxx.so.10.0.0)
==3227==    by 0x86D31E6: log4cxx::Hierarchy::Hierarchy() (in /usr/lib/liblog4cxx.so.10.0.0)
==3227==    by 0x86EB4C4: log4cxx::LogManager::getLoggerRepository() (in /usr/lib/liblog4cxx.so.10.0.0)
==3227==    by 0x86EB700: log4cxx::LogManager::getLoggerLS(std::string const&) (in /usr/lib/liblog4cxx.so.10.0.0)
==3227==    by 0x86EB785: log4cxx::LogManager::getLogger(std::string const&) (in /usr/lib/liblog4cxx.so.10 ...