[Valgrind-users] Memory pool support

[Robert W. <rj...@du...>]

Hi all,

I've made an experimental patch for the CVS head to support memory
pool-based custom allocators.  These are allocators that malloc or mmap
one or more large pools of memory and parcel it out in small chunks.=20
The main motivation for adding this was to allow all memory in a
particular pool to be freed in one go.  This is pretty difficult to do
with the existing custom allocator support, but is fairly popular with
the memory pool mechanisms I've seen.

This is still work in progress, so there's a few missing pieces.  For a
start, chunks allocated in a pool do not get leak checked yet.  Also, I
haven't tested the individual chunk free mechanism very much (as opposed
to the "free an entire pool" mechanism, which I have tested.)  It has
support for red-zones, too, but I haven't tested these at all either.

You can find it here:

  http://www.durables.org/software/valgrind

You can see an example of it being used in the test-case I created for
it: memcheck/tests/mempool.c

Please send me feedback or drop me a mail if you have any questions
about how to use it.  The motivation for creating this was a pool-based
allocator in some software I work on at my job, so it may be skewed
towards assumptions I made based on that.  If there's other pool-based
mechanisms that this doesn't appear to support, please let me know.

Regards,
 Robert.

--=20
Robert Walsh
Amalgamated Durables, Inc.  -  "We don't make the things you buy."
Email: rj...@du...