microsoft / microsoft/mimalloc

Avoiding mi_cfree on mac interpose mode

Open
#313 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
C
Stars
13.4k
Forks
1.2k
Avg merge
4d 45m
Merged PRs (30d)
13

Description

I think you might just need to interpose malloc_default_zone too. This is what asan ends up doing, among other things (I suspect the other things it interposes are related to asan's functionality): https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/350fafabe9d3bda75e80bf077303eb5a09130b53/compiler-rt/lib/sanitizer_common/sanitizer_malloc_mac.inc#L85

You also can try `__attribute__((constructor(0)))` to try to get loaded earlier than with normal `__attribute__((constructor))`. Not sure if that matters for shared libs, probably not, but it can help for static linking.

This is a somewhat messy commit (includes unrelated whitespace changes, XXX comments, and doesn't reuse the existing interpose stuff) that does these and seems to work for me. https://github.com/thomcc/mimalloc/commit/52b5237028a27644ffc4e8a671d7b884a2fa7379

Unfortunately, IDK how to trigger the bad behavior that lead to you using mi_cfree in the first place, so IDK if it fixes it. That said, if you want I can PR it.

Still it's a bummer that doing this in a statically linked build isn't viable how it is on other unixes...

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 reading compiler-rt/lib/sanitizer_common/sanitizer_malloc_mac.inc at the linked malloc_default_zone interposition code, then compare the proposed mimalloc commit 52b5237028a27644ffc4e8a671d7b884a2fa7379. Determine whether the interposition and constructor changes prevent the reported mi_cfree behavior, noting that the issue does not provide a way to reproduce it.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c, macos
Domain
operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.