[HACKERS] Coverity reports looking good

2006-08-20 Thread Martijn van Oosterhout
I thought I'd like to report that right now the Coverity reports are
looking good. There are no issues detected in either the backend code
or the ECPG library. For the latter I'd like the thank Joachim Wieland
and Michael Meskes for getting ECPG into shape.

Whats basically left is a large number of memory leaks in frontend
applications such as pg_dump, initdb, pg_ctl, etc. These haven't ever
really been a priority (buildACLCommands is really bad in this
respect).

Some examples can be found here:
http://svana.org/kleptog/temp/pgsql-bin.xml

If someone wants to make a serious attempt at tackling them, I can
provide an updated list.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout   kleptog@svana.org   http://svana.org/kleptog/
 From each according to his ability. To each according to his ability to 
 litigate.


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Re: [HACKERS] Coverity reports looking good

2006-08-20 Thread Michael Meskes
On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 03:49:24PM +0200, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
 Whats basically left is a large number of memory leaks in frontend
 applications such as pg_dump, initdb, pg_ctl, etc. These haven't ever
 really been a priority (buildACLCommands is really bad in this
 respect).
 ...
 If someone wants to make a serious attempt at tackling them, I can
 provide an updated list.

If my time permits I'm willing to look into these a little bit as I now
know a little bit about Coverity reports. And since I found that these
reports not only show potential memory leaks (which I don't worry about
much in short lived frontend apps) they sometimes point to bugs that may
cause real problems.

I just had a small look at one in pg_dump.c. However, it seems the line
numbers are completely different from my CVS snapshot. Are the Coverity
reports you listed up-to-date?

Michael
-- 
Michael Meskes
Email: Michael at Fam-Meskes dot De, Michael at Meskes dot (De|Com|Net|Org)
ICQ: 179140304, AIM/Yahoo: michaelmeskes, Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [HACKERS] Coverity reports looking good

2006-08-20 Thread Tom Lane
Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog@svana.org writes:
 Whats basically left is a large number of memory leaks in frontend
 applications such as pg_dump, initdb, pg_ctl, etc. These haven't ever
 really been a priority (buildACLCommands is really bad in this
 respect).

Well, if Coverity's idea of good programming practice is that every
program must explicitly free everything it ever malloced before it
terminates, then I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree.  The
above is nothing but make-work as far as programs with short intended
runtimes go.  A leak in psql would be interesting if it can accumulate
across command-execution cycles, but I have zero interest in cleaning
up any of the programs mentioned above.

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Coverity reports looking good

2006-08-20 Thread Andrew Dunstan



Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:

I thought I'd like to report that right now the Coverity reports are
looking good. There are no issues detected in either the backend code
or the ECPG library. For the latter I'd like the thank Joachim Wieland
and Michael Meskes for getting ECPG into shape.

Whats basically left is a large number of memory leaks in frontend
applications such as pg_dump, initdb, pg_ctl, etc. These haven't ever
really been a priority (buildACLCommands is really bad in this
respect).

Some examples can be found here:
http://svana.org/kleptog/temp/pgsql-bin.xml

If someone wants to make a serious attempt at tackling them, I can
provide an updated list.


  


At least in the case of initdb, when I was coding it I was perfectly 
well aware that there would be memory leaks - and the code contains a 
comment to the effect that cleaning them up isn't worth the trouble.


I think we can be more liberal in programs that are not long-lived and 
won't continue to leak more and more memory.


cheers

andrew

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Re: [HACKERS] Coverity reports looking good

2006-08-20 Thread Michael Meskes
On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 11:52:53AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
 Well, if Coverity's idea of good programming practice is that every
 program must explicitly free everything it ever malloced before it
 terminates, then I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree.  The

I don't think Coverity even knows how long a program may run.

But while I agree that freeing all memory is not needed in a short
running program, I still think we should examine those reports because
they may show some real bugs. At least this is what happened to some
degree in ecpg.

Michael
-- 
Michael Meskes
Email: Michael at Fam-Meskes dot De, Michael at Meskes dot (De|Com|Net|Org)
ICQ: 179140304, AIM/Yahoo: michaelmeskes, Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [HACKERS] Coverity reports looking good

2006-08-20 Thread mark
On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 11:52:53AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
 Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog@svana.org writes:
  Whats basically left is a large number of memory leaks in frontend
  applications such as pg_dump, initdb, pg_ctl, etc. These haven't ever
  really been a priority (buildACLCommands is really bad in this
  respect).
 Well, if Coverity's idea of good programming practice is that every
 program must explicitly free everything it ever malloced before it
 terminates, then I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree.  The
 above is nothing but make-work as far as programs with short intended
 runtimes go.  A leak in psql would be interesting if it can accumulate
 across command-execution cycles, but I have zero interest in cleaning
 up any of the programs mentioned above.

Each of the reported issues should be investigated, for however short, to
see whether it is intentional or not.

For example, if the memory is allocated within a loop, or which the bounds
are not fixed, even a short running program can benefit from being fixed.

If it is just configuration data represented in memory, created once,
who cares... :-)

Cheers,
mark

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