From: Elijah Newren <newren@xxxxxxxxx> The documentation for merge_incore_recursive(), modelled after merge_recursive(), notes that merge_bases will be consumed (emptied) so make a copy if you need it However, in merge_ort_internal() (which merge_incore_recursive() calls), it runs merged_merge_bases = pop_commit(&merge_bases); ... for (iter = merge_bases; iter; iter = iter->next) { ... } In other words, it only consumes the *first* entry of merge_bases, and the rest it iterates through. If it iterated through all of them, the caller could be responsible for free'ing the memory. If it consumed all of them, the current documentation would be correct and the callers would need to do nothing. The current middle ground makes it impossible for callers to avoid memory leaks, since any attempt to use the merge_bases it passes in would result in a use-after-free. It turns out this part of the code was copied from merge-recursive.c, which has had the same bug for 15.5 years. However, since we are trying to keep merge-recursive.c stable as we sunset it, let's just fix the leak in in merge_ort_internal() by having it actually consume all the elements of the merge_bases commit_list. Testing this commit against t6404 (the first testcase specifically about recursive merges) under valgrind shows that this patch fixes the following leak: 32 (16 direct, 16 indirect) bytes in 1 blocks are definitely lost \ in loss record 49 of 126 at 0x484086F: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:380) by 0x69FFEB: do_xmalloc (wrapper.c:41) by 0x6A0073: xmalloc (wrapper.c:62) by 0x52A72D: commit_list_insert (commit.c:556) by 0x47EC86: try_merge_strategy (merge.c:751) by 0x48143B: cmd_merge (merge.c:1679) by 0x40686E: run_builtin (git.c:464) by 0x406C51: handle_builtin (git.c:716) by 0x406E96: run_argv (git.c:783) by 0x40730A: cmd_main (git.c:914) by 0x4E7DFA: main (common-main.c:56) Reported-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@xxxxxxxxx> --- merge-ort.c | 10 +++++----- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/merge-ort.c b/merge-ort.c index c3197970219..83a89f9f4c4 100644 --- a/merge-ort.c +++ b/merge-ort.c @@ -4575,7 +4575,7 @@ static void merge_ort_internal(struct merge_options *opt, struct commit *h2, struct merge_result *result) { - struct commit_list *iter; + struct commit *next; struct commit *merged_merge_bases; const char *ancestor_name; struct strbuf merge_base_abbrev = STRBUF_INIT; @@ -4604,7 +4604,8 @@ static void merge_ort_internal(struct merge_options *opt, ancestor_name = merge_base_abbrev.buf; } - for (iter = merge_bases; iter; iter = iter->next) { + for (next = pop_commit(&merge_bases); next; + next = pop_commit(&merge_bases)) { const char *saved_b1, *saved_b2; struct commit *prev = merged_merge_bases; @@ -4621,7 +4622,7 @@ static void merge_ort_internal(struct merge_options *opt, saved_b2 = opt->branch2; opt->branch1 = "Temporary merge branch 1"; opt->branch2 = "Temporary merge branch 2"; - merge_ort_internal(opt, NULL, prev, iter->item, result); + merge_ort_internal(opt, NULL, prev, next, result); if (result->clean < 0) return; opt->branch1 = saved_b1; @@ -4632,8 +4633,7 @@ static void merge_ort_internal(struct merge_options *opt, result->tree, "merged tree"); commit_list_insert(prev, &merged_merge_bases->parents); - commit_list_insert(iter->item, - &merged_merge_bases->parents->next); + commit_list_insert(next, &merged_merge_bases->parents->next); clear_or_reinit_internal_opts(opt->priv, 1); } -- gitgitgadget