The way I've usually addressed this is to either add an option to the library
that changes the default behavior from strdup to passing the address with the
expectation of const.
Either by adding const style prototypes/functions, or by using some mechanism to
change the behavior of all of the functions.
My biggest concern is the potential retrofit of existing apps that expect the
current behavior.. but I agree with many of the submitters.. popt really should
be sending const points and then the app needs to strdup.
--Mark
Jeff Johnson wrote:
I happen to have a valgrind trace on my screen that shows the issue
==25160==
==25160== 49 bytes in 1 blocks are still reachable in loss record 2 of 2
==25160== at 0x4005BDC: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:195)
==25160== by 0x314D9A: poptGetNextOpt (popt.c:1203)
==25160== by 0x40697CD: rpmcliInit (poptALL.c:751)
==25160== by 0x804AC45: main (rpmqv.c:385)
==25160==
The "memory leak" is actually a POPT design feature. Every string
returned from POPT is malloc'd so that an application
can do whatever it wishes with the string without
worrying about side effects of fiddling with the memory.
Unfortunately, POPT is mostly not used correctly, and the expectation is
Hey POPT handles argv strings, I shouldn't _HAVE_ to manage those!?!
I get a tedious bug report every couple of months from otherwise honest
attempts to use valgrind for application "squeaky clean" memory auditing.
Should this behavior be changed in POPT 2.0? It's a 1-liner change to remove
a strdup() somewhere, but the change does have profound (but minor, who
actually cares about a 49b 1-time memory leak these days) ramifications.
Meanwhile I'm way tired of explaining why its _NOT_ a memory leak, but rather
buggy use of POPT.
Opinions welcomed.
73 de Jeff
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