[cfe-dev] Understanding BuryPointer and leak detection

Manuel Klimek klimek at google.com
Mon Nov 10 21:26:34 PST 2014


 On Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 23:58 Sean Silva <chisophugis at gmail.com> wrote:

Manuel, have you guys run into this sort of leak due to defaulting to
-disable-free before? It certainly seems like really unexpected behavior
for clang as a library.

 Yep. We're not using libclang though and the libtooling entry points
enable all cleanup.


-- Sean Silva

On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 9:43 AM, Mike Lewis <mikel at arena.net> wrote:

Ha, good catch. Turns out -disable-free is one of the command arguments
generated by the driver code somewhere in the
clang::driver::Driver::BuildCompilation() pipe… looks like
Clang::ConstructJob().



This seems problematic for anyone using the library for multiple
compilations (as is my situation) due to the implicit leakage. From the
code it looks like this behavior goes away if
Compilation::isForDiagnostics() returns true, but I have no idea what the
other side effects of that check might be.





Any advice would be appreciated!







- Mike











*From:* Sean Silva [mailto:chisophugis at gmail.com]
*Sent:* Friday, November 07, 2014 8:24 PM
*To:* Mike Lewis
*Cc:* cfe-dev at cs.uiuc.edu
*Subject:* Re: [cfe-dev] Understanding BuryPointer and leak detection



My understanding is that all uses of BuryPointer should be somehow guarded
by getFrontendOpts().DisableFree (or CodeGenOpt.DisableFree); can you see
if DisableFree is somehow being set? Check FrontendAction::EndSourceFile.



There is also a FIXME for some "resetAndLeak*" calls not guarded by
DisableFree in FrontendAction::EndSourceFile, but unless you're doing
something with AST files from libclang (is that possible?) those shouldn't
be an issue.



On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 9:18 AM, Mike Lewis <mikel at arena.net> wrote:

Hi all,



I’m experimenting with libclang on Windows as a mechanism for runtime
compilation of C code. So far results are encouraging, but I’m encountering
a lot of rogue memory usage the longer the host app runs (and the more
Clang code I call). Right now I’m relying on the Visual C++ CRT leak check
functionality to monitor memory leakage; it’s crude and simplistic but
highly reliable once you compensate for a couple of quirks. I should state
up-front that I can confirm my results of leakage using other tools as well.



The CRT leak check is finding several hundred KB of leaks each time I
compile a module using the embedded Clang. Strategic placement of memory
breakpoints suggests that the bulk of these are due to things that are
(directly or otherwise) owned by something that eventually winds up handed
off to the BuryPointer() function.



I’ve skimmed the list history for the origins of BuryPointer, but I have to
confess I’m still rather confused. From an outsider’s perspective, it seems
like BuryPointer is just a way to work around having to actually clean up
resources that have nontrivial ownership semantics. I gather that the
purpose is to make the memory **look** like it isn’t leaked by ensuring
that the pointers are still reachable. However, this doesn’t really change
the fact that the memory is essentially no longer owned by anything
(semantically) and is, at least conceptually, a genuine leak.



Given that my experiments show memory usage increasing linearly with the
number of times I invoke libclang to do a compilation, I’m guessing that
this is actually a genuine problem and that BuryPointer() is papering over
the symptoms for certain leak checking tools.





So, three questions:



- Is my understanding of BuryPointer() correct, or is there some complexity
I’m not seeing as an (admittedly naïve) outsider?



- Given that this represents a very real upper bound on how many times my
host app can do compilations, is there any recourse for reclaiming this
memory in some fashion?



- Would there be interest in me contributing patches to address these leaks
(and others I’ve found in both Clang and LLVM), presuming that there is
agreement that it’s a problem?









Thanks,





- Mike









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