From: Jeff King Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:09:58 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/3] setup_path(): Free temporary buffer Message-ID: <20110314200958.GC22602@sigill.intra.peff.net> In-Reply-To: <1300130318-11279-3-git-send-email-cmn@elego.de> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 08:18:37PM +0100, Carlos Martín Nieto wrote: > Make sure the pointer git_exec_path() returns is in the heap and free > it after it's no longer needed. Could you explain the motivation a bit more? From looking at the code, it looks like the situation is that git_exec_path sometimes returns a newly allocated string and sometimes not, so the caller may leak in the former case. That seems to be the fault of system_path, which sometimes allocates and sometimes does not. Should we also be fixing system_path, which is a source of leaks? Or instead converting system_path to use a static buffer? > @@ -99,10 +99,13 @@ void setup_path(void) > { > const char *old_path = getenv("PATH"); > struct strbuf new_path = STRBUF_INIT; > + char *exec_path = (char *) git_exec_path(); Ick. If it is now returning an allocated buffer that the caller is responsible for free-ing, then its declaration should drop the const in the return value. What about other callers of git_exec_path? Aren't load_command_list and list_commands leaking, too (and possibly worse, since we now always allocated memory)? -Peff