[xmlsec] xmlsec library, memory allocation and initialization

[Marius Kjeldahl]

Hi all (and Aleksey)...

I'm embedding libxml2 and xmlsec into lua (http://www.lua.org/) and plan on using this for various applications dealing with secure credit card transactions.

Lua (and most other scripting languages) uses different memory management than the explicit alloc/free found in lower level languages, and ideally I would like to avoid introducing "c-style" memory management in the scripting part of the application.

In lua, it is possible to add something called "metatables" to objects (in general) and "userdata" (which is memory allocated by the lua memory allocater which can be garbage collected automatically).

If xmlsec would separate memory allocation from initialization, supporting garbage collection (and other methods, like reference counting that perl use) would be quite easy.

In xmlsec the method xmlSecSimpleKeysMngrCreate currently does BOTH memory allocation and initialization. This means it is difficult to allocate the memory from within lua (to enable garbage collection). Ideally, one could split that function into two other functions:

xmlSecSimpleKeysMngrAlloc which allocates the memory

and

xmlSecSimpleKeysMngrInit which initialize it

Then xmlSecSimpleKeysMngrCreate would simply call both of them in order and behave just like before.

These changes throughout the xmlsec library would probably help getting xmlsec into more scriptable cores like Lua, Perl and more, and would ease memory and object management considerably under those higher level languages.

Any other ideas on how to accomplish something similar? I'm writing more and more applications using script languages these days, and I am getting spoiled with avoiding explicit memory management.

--
Mvh, Marius Kjeldahl

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