RoaringBitmap / RoaringBitmap/CRoaring

Mixing roaring bitmaps with different copy_on_write flag values is unsafe

Open
#97 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement
Dominant language
C
Stars
1.9k
Forks
334
Avg merge
2d 5h
Merged PRs (30d)
17

Description

See the following example. Four bitmaps are created. Copy on write is enabled for all of them, except the second. Then, the union of the bitmaps is computed in the order (((bm1 | bm2) | bm3) bm4) (the order seems to be important for the bug).

When doing the last union, a supposedly unreachable false assertion is triggered. The type of one container (after unwrapping) is not defined.

void test_multiple_union() {
    roaring_bitmap_t *bm1 = roaring_bitmap_from_range(172033, 172034, 1);
    bm1->copy_on_write = 1;
    roaring_bitmap_t *bm2 = roaring_bitmap_from_range(247243, 447339, 1);
    bm2->copy_on_write = 0;
    roaring_bitmap_t *bm3 = roaring_bitmap_from_range(23705, 95255, 1);
    bm3->copy_on_write = 1;
    roaring_bitmap_t *bm4 = roaring_bitmap_from_range(163739, 393874, 1);
    bm4->copy_on_write = 1;

    roaring_bitmap_t *tmp1 = roaring_bitmap_or(bm1, bm2);
    roaring_bitmap_t *tmp2 = roaring_bitmap_or(tmp1, bm3);
    roaring_bitmap_t *result = roaring_bitmap_or(tmp2, bm4); // ← fails here

    roaring_bitmap_free(bm1);
    roaring_bitmap_free(bm2);
    roaring_bitmap_free(bm3);
    roaring_bitmap_free(bm4);
    roaring_bitmap_free(tmp1);
    roaring_bitmap_free(tmp2);
    roaring_bitmap_free(result);
}

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by running the test_multiple_union reproduction and trace the final roaring_bitmap_or call into include/roaring/containers.h around the false assertion at line 1027. Compare container handling as copy_on_write changes across the intermediate unions; done means the reproduction no longer triggers the assertion and bitmap union behavior remains correct.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c
Domain
data
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.