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Add a paragraph about obmalloc turning up bugs in extension modules

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Mention the new ports
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Andrew M. Kuchling 2001-03-23 03:52:46 +00:00
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Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex
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@ -751,8 +751,24 @@ memory overhead. The allocator uses C's \function{malloc()} function
to get large pools of memory, and then fulfills smaller memory to get large pools of memory, and then fulfills smaller memory
requests from these pools. It can be enabled by providing the requests from these pools. It can be enabled by providing the
\longprogramopt{with-pymalloc} option to the \program{configure} script; see \longprogramopt{with-pymalloc} option to the \program{configure} script; see
\file{Objects/obmalloc.c} for the implementation details. \file{Objects/obmalloc.c} for the implementation details.
Contributed by Vladimir Marangozov.
Authors of C extension modules should test their code with the object
allocator enabled, because some incorrect code may break, causing core
dumps at runtime. There are a bunch of memory allocation functions in
Python's C API that have previously been just aliases for the C
library's \function{malloc()} and \function{free()}, meaning that if
you accidentally called mismatched functions, the error wouldn't be
noticeable. When the object allocator is enabled, these functions
aren't aliases of \function{malloc()} and \function{free()} any more,
and calling the wrong function to free memory will get you a core
dump. For example, if memory was allocated using
\function{PyMem_New()}, it has to be freed using
\function{PyMem_Del()}, not \function{free()}. A few modules included
with Python fell afoul of this and had to be fixed; doubtless there
are more third-party modules that will have the same problem.
The object allocator was contributed by Vladimir Marangozov.
\item The speed of line-oriented file I/O has been improved because \item The speed of line-oriented file I/O has been improved because
people often complain about its lack of speed, and because it's often people often complain about its lack of speed, and because it's often
@ -827,6 +843,9 @@ code.
\item The size of the Unicode character database was shrunk by another \item The size of the Unicode character database was shrunk by another
340K thanks to Fredrik Lundh. 340K thanks to Fredrik Lundh.
\item Some new ports were contributed: MacOS X (by Steven Majewski),
Cygwin (by Jason Tishler); RISCOS (by Dietmar Schwertberger).
\end{itemize} \end{itemize}
And there's the usual list of minor bugfixes, minor memory leaks, And there's the usual list of minor bugfixes, minor memory leaks,