Hi Junio,
On Wed, 26 Apr 2017, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@xxxxxx> writes:
>
> > Discovered by Coverity.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@xxxxxx>
> > ---
> > builtin/cat-file.c | 1 +
> > 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
> >
> > diff --git a/builtin/cat-file.c b/builtin/cat-file.c
> > index 1890d7a6390..9af863e7915 100644
> > --- a/builtin/cat-file.c
> > +++ b/builtin/cat-file.c
> > @@ -165,6 +165,7 @@ static int cat_one_file(int opt, const char *exp_type, const char *obj_name,
> > die("git cat-file %s: bad file", obj_name);
> >
> > write_or_die(1, buf, size);
> > + free(buf);
> > return 0;
> > }
>
> This is a border-line "Meh". Just like we do not free resources
> immediately before calling die(), we can leave this as-is as the
> only thing that happens after this is a return from cmd_cat_file()
> back to main() that exits.
If you are mostly concerned about the status quo, that is true.
I am a lot more concerned with future changes, where we may easily decide
that it is time to move a file-local function out of its hiding place and
make it more usable.
>From that perspective, it is one thing to have a blatant memory leak in a
cmd_*() function, and it is an entirely different matter to have such a
leak in a function that happens to be called only from cmd_*() functions:
somebody familiar enough with Git's coding conventions (such as myself)
will *expect* cmd_*() to have leaks left and right and pay attention when
libifying that code, but be a lot less concerned about such leaks in other
functions.
And of course this concerns me more than you, as I am still trying to
drive forward the effort to convert more scripts into builtins.
So on my own behalf: thank you for accepting this patch.
Ciao,
Dscho