Re: gnu malloc vs. system malloc on OpenBSD
On Sat, May 16, 1998 at 09:44:08PM +0200, Hans Guenter Weigand wrote:
Gnu-malloc, which is used by default, calls brk() and sbrk(). The
OpenBSD
man page says about these functions:
"The brk and sbrk functions are historical curiosities left over from ear-
lier days before the advent of virtual memory management."
So I thought it might be a good idea to try --with-system-malloc. But
with this option the build fails with the following output, after building
all .elc files and dumping xemacs two times.
I haven't really looked at the backtrace, but this time the answer is
easy.
There are two usual ways to get new memory[1] for a program under
Unix:
- (s)brk
- anonymous mmap
Using only the first approach is necessary to be able to dump the
executable. For thread safety reasons, modern mallocs use the second
approach. Hence your crash.
Note that Kyle's portable dumper will remove this requirement.
OG.
[1] Purists would say "virtual memory addressing space" or something
else as involved ;-)