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Diffstat (limited to 'docs/devel/style.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | docs/devel/style.rst | 46 |
1 files changed, 34 insertions, 12 deletions
diff --git a/docs/devel/style.rst b/docs/devel/style.rst index 8b0bdb3570..260e3263fa 100644 --- a/docs/devel/style.rst +++ b/docs/devel/style.rst @@ -385,17 +385,37 @@ avoided. Low level memory management =========================== -Use of the malloc/free/realloc/calloc/valloc/memalign/posix_memalign +Use of the ``malloc/free/realloc/calloc/valloc/memalign/posix_memalign`` APIs is not allowed in the QEMU codebase. Instead of these routines, -use the GLib memory allocation routines g_malloc/g_malloc0/g_new/ -g_new0/g_realloc/g_free or QEMU's qemu_memalign/qemu_blockalign/qemu_vfree -APIs. - -Please note that g_malloc will exit on allocation failure, so there -is no need to test for failure (as you would have to with malloc). -Calling g_malloc with a zero size is valid and will return NULL. - -Prefer g_new(T, n) instead of g_malloc(sizeof(T) ``*`` n) for the following +use the GLib memory allocation routines +``g_malloc/g_malloc0/g_new/g_new0/g_realloc/g_free`` +or QEMU's ``qemu_memalign/qemu_blockalign/qemu_vfree`` APIs. + +Please note that ``g_malloc`` will exit on allocation failure, so +there is no need to test for failure (as you would have to with +``malloc``). Generally using ``g_malloc`` on start-up is fine as the +result of a failure to allocate memory is going to be a fatal exit +anyway. There may be some start-up cases where failing is unreasonable +(for example speculatively loading a large debug symbol table). + +Care should be taken to avoid introducing places where the guest could +trigger an exit by causing a large allocation. For small allocations, +of the order of 4k, a failure to allocate is likely indicative of an +overloaded host and allowing ``g_malloc`` to ``exit`` is a reasonable +approach. However for larger allocations where we could realistically +fall-back to a smaller one if need be we should use functions like +``g_try_new`` and check the result. For example this is valid approach +for a time/space trade-off like ``tlb_mmu_resize_locked`` in the +SoftMMU TLB code. + +If the lifetime of the allocation is within the function and there are +multiple exist paths you can also improve the readability of the code +by using ``g_autofree`` and related annotations. See :ref:`autofree-ref` +for more details. + +Calling ``g_malloc`` with a zero size is valid and will return NULL. + +Prefer ``g_new(T, n)`` instead of ``g_malloc(sizeof(T) * n)`` for the following reasons: * It catches multiplication overflowing size_t; @@ -409,8 +429,8 @@ Declarations like are acceptable, though. -Memory allocated by qemu_memalign or qemu_blockalign must be freed with -qemu_vfree, since breaking this will cause problems on Win32. +Memory allocated by ``qemu_memalign`` or ``qemu_blockalign`` must be freed with +``qemu_vfree``, since breaking this will cause problems on Win32. String manipulation =================== @@ -485,6 +505,8 @@ In addition, QEMU assumes that the compiler does not use the latitude given in C99 and C11 to treat aspects of signed '<<' as undefined, as documented in the GNU Compiler Collection manual starting at version 4.0. +.. _autofree-ref: + Automatic memory deallocation ============================= |