On Tuesday 12 February 2008 13:17, Bernd Schmidt wrote:
> The __uc_malloc patch was a bit sloppy about the libc_hidden_proto
> conventions in uClibc; as a result, more relocations than necessary are
> generated for libc.so. The patch below fixes that.
>
> Before I apply this, I wanted to start a discussion about whether
> __uc_malloc is a good idea at all. Space savings are all well and good,
> but these come at a cost in reliability.
There is no cost in reliability.
Face it: if you have no free memory - you have no free memory.
Just allocating a big static object (like des.c was doing)
cannot magically guarantee that you will have this memory.
It just shifts failure to some other place - program might fail to load,
or hit malloc failure earlier in other plase, because des.c ate 70k.
Anyone who codes in C a lot usually gets a habitual "feeling"
that this is safe:
char buf[10000];
this is safe too:
void f() {
char buf[10000];
....
}
and this is not:
void g() {
char *buf = malloc(10000); /* might fail */
...
}
but think about it again: first two cases cannot be 100.00% safe too -
otherwise it would mean that your system can "produce" arbitrary amounts
of free memory! This is not true! _All_ these things require memory,
they just fail differently!
First one: failure to load on NOMMU, death via swap storm on MMU
Second: stack overflow
Third: depends on how program author coded NULL check.
> A number of libc functions can
> now call exit, even though this is not documented and not expected by
> any programs that call them.
This is not exactly true. They can exit *if* program author did not
install alternative handler for __uc_malloc failure.
Clever handler can e.g. exit gracefully, or free some kind of "emergency pool",
show message box "Low on memory" and let user close GUI app cleanly.
> Personally, I think all the __uc_malloc patches should be reverted.
Hope my explanation of __uc_malloc chaged your mind.
Also, the patch below *definitely* is an improvement, right?
--- /trunk/uClibc/libc/misc/ttyent/getttyent.c 2007/07/30 16:55:05 19346
+++ trunk/uClibc/libc/misc/ttyent/getttyent.c 2007/07/30 17:02:06 19347
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@
#include <ctype.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <malloc.h>
#ifdef __UCLIBC_HAS_THREADS__
#include <pthread.h>
#endif
@@ -132,9 +133,7 @@
return (NULL);
if (!line) {
- line = malloc(BUFSIZ);
- if (!line)
- abort();
+ line = __uc_malloc(BUFSIZ);
}
__STDIO_ALWAYS_THREADLOCK(tf);
--
vda
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