On Wed, 29 Jul 2026 at 22:07, "Tristan Partin" <[email protected]> wrote: > The counted_by[0] compiler attribute is fairly new. It was added in GCC > 15 and Clang 18. It has been used fairly extensively in the Linux > kernel[0]. > > To summarize the benefits of the attribute: > > - Runtime bounds checking with -DFORTIFY_SOURCE=3 and -fsanitize-bounds > - Accurate reporting of __builtin_dynamic_object_size() > > While we don't use __builtin_dynamic_object_size(), I think the runtime > bounds checking improvements are easily worth the little bit of effort > to add the attribute in various locations and review the code. I think > it will improve things for buildfarm animals using ASan due to expanded > coverage. > > Adding this attribute to the codebase was previously proposed back in > 2024[1], but the thread never got any traction. I figured that I would > try again, but bring some patches this time. I figured that I would > start small, and then after people agree that it has value, I can look > into adding the attribute in many more places. > > [0]: > https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Common-Attributes.html#index-counted_005fby > [1]: > https://people.kernel.org/gustavoars/how-to-use-the-new-counted_by-attribute-in-c-and-linux > [2]: > https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/me3p282mb3166210cde36bd485b703bf6b6...@me3p282mb3166.ausp282.prod.outlook.com >
+1 for this idea. > -- > Tristan Partin > PostgreSQL Contributors Team > AWS (https://aws.amazon.com) -- Regards, Japin Li ChengDu WenWu Information Technology Co., Ltd.
