From: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com>
To: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>, phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, "Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com>,
"Jeff King" <peff@peff.net>,
"Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy" <pclouds@gmail.com>,
"Elijah Newren" <newren@gmail.com>, "Eric Wong" <e@80x24.org>
Subject: Re: To "const char *" and cast on free(), or "char *" and no cast...
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2021 10:50:29 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <00c06d4c-7e8a-2306-7278-3bc73e4cbc44@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87mtnbfk0g.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>
Hi Ævar
On 14/10/2021 20:54, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
>
> On Thu, Oct 14 2021, Phillip Wood wrote:
>
> [Changed $subject]
>
>> On 14/10/2021 01:10, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
>>> The "checkout" command is one of the main sources of leaks in the test
>>> suite, let's fix the common ones by not leaking from the "struct
>>> branch_info".
>>> Doing this is rather straightforward, albeit verbose, we need to
>>> xstrdup() constant strings going into the struct, and free() the ones
>>> we clobber as we go along.
>>
>> It's great to see these leaks being fixed. I wonder though if it would
>> be better to change the structure definition so that 'name' and 'path'
>> are no longer 'const'. That would be a better reflection of the new
>> regime.[...]
>
> I think this is the right thing to do, but I'm not quite sure. There was
> a thread at it here:
>
> https://lore.kernel.org/git/YUZG0D5ayEWd7MLP@carlos-mbp.lan/
>
> Where I chimed in and suggested exactly what you're saying here, but the
> consensus seemed to go the other way, and if you grep:
>
> git grep -F 'free((char *)'
>
> You can see that we use this pattern pretty widely.
>
>> It would also mean we could lose all the casts when freeing
>> and there would be a compiler warning if a string literal is assigned
>> to one of those fields.
>
> What compiler/set of warnings gives you a warning when you do that? I
> don't get warned on e.g.:
Oh, I think I was thinking of -Wwrite-strings but we don't have that
warning on and turning it on causes a bunch of -Wdiscarded-qualifier
warnings.
Best Wishes
Phillip
> diff --git a/builtin/checkout.c b/builtin/checkout.c
> index a32af16d5e4..d7053579bdf 100644
> --- a/builtin/checkout.c
> +++ b/builtin/checkout.c
> @@ -94 +94 @@ struct branch_info {
> - const char *name; /* The short name used */
> + char *name; /* The short name used */
> @@ -110 +110 @@ static void branch_info_release(struct branch_info *info)
> - free((char *)info->name);
> + free(info->name);
> @@ -1107 +1107 @@ static int switch_branches(const struct checkout_opts *opts,
> - new_branch_info->name = xstrdup("(empty)");
> + new_branch_info->name = "(empty)";
>
> Now, what is really useful is making it a "char * const", especially
> when hacking up these changes as you'll find all the assignments, but I
> haven't found the general use in having that make it to a submitted
> patch, since you need to assign somewhere, and those then need to be a
> str[n]cpy() (except we banned.h it) or memcpy() with a cast...
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-10-15 9:50 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-10-14 0:10 [PATCH] checkout: fix "branch info" memory leaks Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2021-10-14 9:36 ` Phillip Wood
2021-10-14 19:54 ` To "const char *" and cast on free(), or "char *" and no cast Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2021-10-14 20:22 ` Junio C Hamano
2021-10-15 10:03 ` Phillip Wood
2021-10-15 16:00 ` Junio C Hamano
2021-10-14 23:36 ` Eric Wong
2021-10-15 9:50 ` Phillip Wood [this message]
2021-10-21 20:16 ` [PATCH v2] checkout: fix "branch info" memory leaks Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2021-10-24 18:30 ` Phillip Wood
2021-11-03 11:36 ` [PATCH v3] " Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2021-11-16 18:27 ` [PATCH v4] " Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
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