Re: [PATCH v2 01/20] merge-recursive: fix minor memory leak in error condition

> Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> Returning before freeing the allocated buffer is suboptimal; as with
>> elsewhere in the same function, make sure buf gets free'd.
> 
> I do not have a real objection to the patch text, but the above
> justification does not make much sense to me.  The original code
> returned an error when buf is NULL, so there is no leak returning
> directly, without jumping to free_buf: label (whose only effect is
> to free(buf) and return the value in ret).
> 
> The real value of this change is it may future-proof the codepath by
> making sure that everybody after an error goes to the same place to
> free all resources---which happens to be only buf in the current
> code, but this change allows it to change in the future, where some
> additional resources may have been allocated before the call to
> read_object_file() and freed after free_buf: label.