Re: [musl] The heap memory performance (malloc/free/realloc) is significantly degraded in musl 1.2 (compared to 1.1)

[Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>]

* Szabolcs Nagy:

> unlike musl those implementations don't return exact size nor have the
> same security and memory fragmentation guarantees, so bad comparision.
>
> tcmalloc:
>   // Returns the actual number N of bytes reserved by tcmalloc for the pointer
>   // p.  This number may be equal to or greater than the number of bytes
>   // requested when p was allocated.
>   //
>   // This function is just useful for statistics collection.  The client must
>   // *not* read or write from the extra bytes that are indicated by this call.
>
> jemalloc:
>       <para>The <function>malloc_usable_size()</function> function
>       returns the usable size of the allocation pointed to by
>       <parameter>ptr</parameter>.  The return value may be larger than the size
>       that was requested during allocation.  The
>       <function>malloc_usable_size()</function> function is not a
>       mechanism for in-place <function>realloc()</function>; rather
>       it is provided solely as a tool for introspection purposes.  Any
>       discrepancy between the requested allocation size and the size reported
>       by <function>malloc_usable_size()</function> should not be
>       depended on, since such behavior is entirely implementation-dependent.

These implementations are buggy or at least mis-documented.  The
interface contract is clearly that for that particular object, the extra
bytes in the allocation are available for reading and writing.  It is
not guaranteed that the allocator will always provide the same number of
extra bytes for the same requested size, but they must be there for the
allocation being examined.  It's even in the name of the function!

Thanks,
Florian