From: lidongyan <502024330056@smail.nju.edu.cn>
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2025 15:50:35 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Allocate msg only after fatal checks to avoid leaks
Message-ID: <089E9F89-5B21-4035-B500-8255622DA92A@smail.nju.edu.cn>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqcyb672mc.fsf@gitster.g>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes：
> 
> lidongyan <502024330056@smail.nju.edu.cn> writes:
> 
>> Alex via GitGitGadget <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes：
>>> 
>>> From: jinyaoguo <guo846@purdue.edu>
>>> 
>>> In parse_reuse_arg, we previously called xmalloc and strbuf_init
>>> before resolving the ref and reading the object, leading to a
>>> leaked msg on die() paths. This change moves the allocation of
>> 
>> A memory leak on the die() path shouldn't be considered a real leak,
>> right? Since the OS will clean up all memory once the process
>> terminates, explicitly freeing msg isn't necessary in this case.
> 
> It may not matter in practice, but I think the leak checking
> machinery like sanitizers would still complain, so I view efforts on
> plugging such leaks in the error code paths more about decluttering
> the leak checker output to help us spot the real leaks.

Makes sense. However, inserting a free-like statement in die() would be
messier than using goto, since each die() has a unique message and we
need to free stuff at each die().