# What to do when your Allegro program doesn't work

# Contents

- Introduction
- Part 1 - who is the culprit?
- Part 2 - when Allegro is at fault
- Part 3 - when your program crashes
- Part 4 - things people don't do (but should)
- Part 5 - asking for help
- Part 6 - learn from my mistakes
- Part 7 - wording your plea
- Part 8 - a model of perfection

# Introduction

When things go wrong, it often seems like a good idea to ask other people for help. Fortunately for people in this situation, there are many people (both Allegro developers and users) who are happy to spend their time answering support questions of this type, but there are various things you can do to make this process work more efficiently. This document describes some steps to take whenever you have a problem with an Allegro program, suggesting ways that you can try to solve it yourself, and also giving some tips about when/how to ask for help. Following these guidelines will make life easier both for the helper (because all the relevant information will be presented to them in a concise and useful way), and for the helpee (because they are more likely to get a prompt and accurate reply).

# Part 1 - who is the culprit?

Is the problem a bug in Allegro, or in your code? To find out, try running the Allegro test programs, in particular the test.exe (for graphics related problems), the play.exe (for soundcard troubles), and the entire contents of the examples directory (for anything that is going wrong). If you can't reproduce the problem with any of these, it is probably your fault, in which case you should skip to part 3 below.

If the problem is related to DOS graphics modes, you should start by getting a copy of Display Doctor from http://www.scitechsoft.com/. If this fixes the trouble, it almost certainly means that your original VESA driver was broken in some way. I'm not interested in hearing reports about problems of this type: there is nothing I can do to fix them, so I'm afraid your only option is to get a better VESA driver, for instance by downloading Display Doctor. This is now free for download from SciTech's website, but there is no longer support for it. Alternatively, you can see if there is a FreeBE/AF driver for your card (see http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/freebe/).

For Windows graphics modes, you should probably check if DirectX is installed properly on your system and if new drivers have been released for your card.

# Part 2 - when Allegro is at fault

If you still think the problem lies with Allegro, post a system report containing a description of the problem, what platform and library version you are using, your hardware specs, and a list of exactly which programs you were able to reproduce the problem with (it is important to know not only what programs had trouble, but also which ones worked correctly, if any).

Try running the test.exe program with various display drivers (any native drivers that you think might work with your card), and in various video modes, and report exactly what modes and color depths cause problems. If you are able to use any high resolutions at all, run test.exe with the Autodetect option and report the entire text that it displays in the middle of the screen.

If the problem is related to DOS graphics modes, you should also post the output from running the afinfo and vesainfo programs (the short version is enough unless you are explicitly asked to add the -v switch: all that extra data isn't usually needed).

If the problem is related to the sound system, try using the setup program to manually configure your card. You may need to manually enter the hardware parameters, and if it is an SB clone card, try selecting some earlier breed of SB card than whatever it is autodetecting (SB Pro, SB 2.0, or SB 1.0). If you are still unable to get anything working, your post should include the name and descriptions of whatever digital and MIDI sound drivers are being autodetected (this information is displayed by the play.exe program).

# Part 3 - when your program crashes

## crashes under DOS

When a djgpp program crashes, you will usually get a stack traceback looking something like:

>           Exiting due to signal SIGSEGV
>           General Protection Fault at eip=00001eca
>           [snip]

>           Call frame traceback EIPs:
>             0x00001eca
>             0x00001590
>             0x00001aea

This information tells you exactly where the crash occurred. To make sense of it, you should compile your program with debugging information (using the -g switch), and then run "symify program.exe" while this traceback is displayed onscreen. That will change the traceback to something along the lines of:

>           Call frame traceback EIPs:
>             0x00001eca   _strcpy+14
>             0x00001590   _main+56, line 7 of t.c
>             0x00001aea   ___crt1_startup+138

In this case, you can see that the crash occurred in the strcpy() function, which was called at line 7 of the main() function in the t.c source file. Now you just have to go to that line, have a look at whatever you are doing there, and change it to be correct :-)

Note: if the crash happens deep inside an Allegro function, this traceback may not be so useful. When this happens you can recompile Allegro with debugging information (see the readme file), and then link your program with the debugging library version.

Note 2: even when this crash traceback points to one of the Allegro functions, that does not necessarily mean the Allegro routine is at fault. Anything will crash if you pass it invalid parameters, so unless you can duplicate the problem in one of the Allegro example programs, you should start out by assuming that it is a case of operator error and double-check exactly what you are passing to the Allegro function.

## crashes under Linux/Unix

When your Allegro compiled Linux/Unix program crashes, you will usually get a not very meaningful message along with a core dump:

>           Shutting down Allegro due to signal #11
>           Segment violation (core dumped)

Look at your filesystem: there should be a file named core or something similar with information telling you exactly where the crash occurred. If there is no core, check your environment settings, under bash this is done with the 'ulimit -a' command. Usually 'ulimit -c unlimited' somewhere in your login scripts should work fine.

Just like with djgpp, to make sense of the core, you should compile your program with debugging information (using the -g switch), and then run the GNU debugger on it "gdb binary core". That will load the debugger, print some information about linked libraries and leave you at a prompt. Now you can get the full backtrace:

>           (gdb) backtrace
>           #0  0x08065237 in utf8_getx (s=0xbffffc5c) at ./src/unicode.c:347
>           #1  0x0806953f in ustrzcpy (dest=0x0, size=2147483646, src=0x0) at ./src/unicode.c:1770
>           #2  0x08057575 in _mangled_main () at t.c:9
>           #3  0x0806c9bf in main (argc=1, argv=0xbffffd14) at ./src/unix/umain.c:39
>           #4  0x4015414f in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6

In this case, you can see that the crash occurred in the ustrzcpy() function, which was called at line 9 of the main() function in the t.c source file. Now you just have to go to that line, have a look at whatever you are doing there, and change it to be correct :-)

Note that the crash happened deep inside an Allegro function, which is also revealed by the traceback. However, the binary was linked against a static debug version of Allegro, we wouldn't have had so much luck with a non debug or dynamically linked version.

Since gdb is an interactive debugger, you could also select a frame and check out the values of the variables, to see better who is the culprit:

>           (gdb) frame 2
>           #2  0x08057575 in _mangled_main () at t.c:9
>           9          ustrcpy(p1, p2);
>           (gdb) list
>           4
>           5       int main(void)
>           6       {
>           7          char *p1 = 0, *p2 = 0;
>           8          allegro_init();
>           9          ustrcpy(p1, p2);
>           10         return 0;
>           11      }
>           12      END_OF_MAIN()
>           (gdb) print p1
>           $1 = 0x0
>           (gdb) print p2
>           $2 = 0x0

Yuck! Playing with NULL values doesn't really pay off. Ok, while this was a slightly out-of-the-can example, you surely get the point. Remember to check out GDB's manual to learn about more useful commands and/or how to debug your program while it's running and many other things. You might also want to check out Peter Wang's "Debugging with GDB" article, featured in the ninth number of the Pixelate online magazine (http://pixwiki.bafsoft.com/).

# Part 4 - things people don't do (but should)

One of the most common errors made by programmers is to neglect to check the return value from a function that may fail. Such an error will often lead to unexpected and downright unusual errors, making for a debugging nightmare. There are many functions in and out of Allegro that may or may not work depending on varying circumstances. They are, however, nice enough to let you know whether or not they were successful through documented return values.

Whenever you call a function that might fail (most importantly set_gfx_mode(), install_sound(), and anything that loads data from the disk), it is _essential_ that you check the return code from this, and respond accordingly.

Another commonly forgotten but important tool is to use whatever option enables strict warnings for your compiler (gcc uses -Wall), when compiling your code. Any warnings reported by this option will almost certainly represent errors in your program, and should be fixed before doing anything else. When using gcc, a useful trick is to compile with the -O setting as well, because this causes gcc to examine the program's actions in more detail, enabling more useful warnings. You should normally disable optimisation while debugging, though. Although it gives better compile time warnings, it is likely to upset any debugging tools that you later try to use.

# Part 5 - asking for help

Ok, so you've tried everything described above, and your program still doesn't work. You have no idea what to do next, so it is time to cast yourself unto the mercies of the net, in hopes of finding some kind of wise man, seer, or oracle that holds an answer for your question...

The best places to ask are the Allegro mailing list (see readme.txt for details) and the Allegro.cc forums. Please remember that the mailing list is an Allegro-specific list. Problems relating to the C language or djgpp compiler belong in other forums (comp.lang.c and comp.os.msdos.djgpp respectively). The Allegro.cc forums can be found at http://www.allegro.cc/. You can usually ask any question related to Allegro here.

Both the Allegro and djgpp mailing lists are archived, and can be searched via their respective homepages. It is very likely that you will be able to find a solution to your problem by looking through the answers to past questions, which will save you needing to post a query at all.

In accordance with proper netiquette, it is assumed that when you post to any forum on the Internet you have at least consulted the relevant documentation first, if not read it in its entirety. If the problem you are having is worth asking hundreds of people the answer for, then it is certainly worth taking a few minutes to try to solve the problem yourself. Allegro is extensively and painstakingly documented and it is considered a prerequisite to posting that you have not only read the text, but examined the example programs as well.

# Part 6 - learn from my mistakes

What not to do, Part One:

>           "My program crashes. Please tell me why."

Yes, people really do sometimes send me questions like this :-) Despite years of practice I am still totally unable to read minds, so this is a very pointless thing to ask. In order to get help with a problem you must describe it in enough detail that other people will be able to understand and reproduce it: this usually means posting some of your source code.

What not to do, Part Two:

>           "I've got a problem with my program. I'm attaching a 500k zip file
>           containing ten thousand lines of source code and all the graphics and
>           sound data: can you please debug it and tell me what the trouble is?"

After wasting the time and phone bills to download such a huge file, it is unlikely that anyone will even _want_ to help you, let alone invest the amount of time it would take to read and understand such a huge mess of information. You must try to isolate a smaller chunk of code that demonstrates the trouble: the smaller you can make it, the more chance that someone will be able to help you with it. Remember that you are asking other people to do you a favour, so it is your responsibility to make this process as easy for them as you possibly can.

# Part 7 - wording your plea

The most important thing is to include code that can be compiled and tested by the person reading your message. Don't just post your entire program: try to extract a small section that includes the specific lines causing your problem, or reproduces the trouble in a simpler way (you will often find that you can locate the error yourself in the process of making this simpler version, so it is a good exercise in itself). This code should be a small but complete program that can actually be compiled and run, because it is very hard to debug incomplete code fragments.

It is best to include the code directly in the text of your email message, because it is easier for people to read this than if they have to extract it from an attachment.

Ideally your example should avoid using any external graphics and data files. It is ok to include a small (max 2k) zip containing such information, or failing that a description of what other files it needs (eg. "put a 32x32 .pcx file called 'tile.pcx' into the same directory as the program). If there is no way that you can simplify things this far, you should upload the program and data to a website and then just post that URL in your message.

You should say what compiler options you used to build the program. These should include extra warnings. If you use gcc, post the list of compiler switches you used.

Describe what you intended this program to do (it may not be instantly obvious to other people), and also what it really does when you run it. There is usually no need to post the actual crash traceback (other people can duplicate this for themselves as long as they are able to compile and run your code), but you should say whether you do get such a traceback, or a lockup, or just incorrect results (and if so, in exactly what way they differ from what you were expecting). It is useful to mark your source with a comment to show what line the crash traceback points to.

Any other information that you can include may also be useful. Most importantly a brief machine description, information about any relevant drivers, and your Allegro version (please don't just say "WIP", but give the exact date if you are using anything other than an official numbered release).

# Part 8 - a model of perfection

For reference, here is an example of what I would consider to be an ideal problem report:

>        I'm having some trouble using the hicolor video modes in my program,
>        although they work fine with the Allegro tests. I'm using Allegro 4.0
>        with MinGW 3.1.0 (gcc version 3.3.1) on a Pentium 1.2GHz, running under
>        Windows 2000 and an ATi Radeon 7000 videocard.

>        This program is supposed to select a 640x480 16 bit resolution, draw a
>        blue rectangle near the top left corner of the screen, and then wait for
>        a keypress before quitting, but I just get a General Protection Fault
>        when I run it.

>        I compile it using "gcc -Wall t.c -o t.exe -lalleg", and don't get any
>        warnings.

>        --- cut here, t.c ---

>        #include <stdio.h>
>        #include <allegro.h>

>        void main()
>        {
>           BITMAP *bmp = screen;

>           install_keyboard();

>           if (set_gfx_mode(GFX_AUTODETECT, 640, 480, 0, 0) != 0) {
>              printf("Error setting video mode\n");
>              return;
>           }

>           set_color_depth(16);

>           /* crashes during this rectangle call! */
>           rectfill(bmp, 32, 32, 64, 64, 0x001F);

>           readkey();
>        }