Compiling Valgrind for Mac OS X

I was trying to compile Valgrind (version 3.3.1 r8180, VEX r1854) for Mac OS X as per Greg Parker's instructions.

The make step failed with something like:
gcc -arch i386 -O2 -gstabs -Wmissing-prototypes -Wall -Wshadow -Wpointer-arith -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-declarations -fno-strict-aliasing -O2 -mmacosx-version-min=10.5 -gstabs -fno-stack-protector -O2 -Wno-long-long -Wno-pointer-sign -Wdeclaration-after-statement -nodefaultlibs -nostartfiles -Wl,-u,__start -Wl,-e,__start -Wl,-bind_at_load /usr/lib/dyld -arch i386 -mdynamic-no-pic -Wl,-seg1addr,0xf0080000 -Wl,-stack_addr,0xf0080000 -Wl,-stack_size,0x80000 -Wl,-pagezero_size,0xf0000000 -o memcheck-x86-darwin memcheck_x86_darwin-mc_leakcheck.o memcheck_x86_darwin-mc_malloc_wrappers.o memcheck_x86_darwin-mc_main.o memcheck_x86_darwin-mc_translate.o memcheck_x86_darwin-mc_machine.o memcheck_x86_darwin-mc_errors.o ../coregrind/libcoregrind_x86_darwin.a ../VEX/libvex_x86_darwin.a -lgcc ld: in ../VEX/libvex_x86_darwin.a, archive has no table of contents collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[3]: *** [memcheck-x86-darwin] Error 1 make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 make: *** [all] Error 2

I was able to fix this with:
$ ranlib VEX/libvex_x86_darwin.a

This needs to be repeated with VEX/libvex_amd64_darwin.a which'll fail the same way. Continuing with make built valgrind successfully for me.

Select Startup Disk

The most common way to select the startup disk is using the "Startup Disk" preference pane. However, there are times when you want to do this using the command line.

$ sudo bless -mount /Volumes/MY_PARTITION -setBoot

Replace MY_PARTITION with the appropriate volume name, and reboot

Reformat a disk partition

To reformat a disk partition:

$ diskutil reformat /path/to/device

or

$ diskutil reformat /Volumes/[mount point]

Which Mac Version?

Here's a quick command to figure out the version of Mac.

sw_vers -productVersion