Give Python a debug-mode pymalloc, much as sketched on Python-Dev.
When WITH_PYMALLOC is defined, define PYMALLOC_DEBUG to enable the debug
allocator. This can be done independent of build type (release or debug).
A debug build automatically defines PYMALLOC_DEBUG when pymalloc is
enabled. It's a detected error to define PYMALLOC_DEBUG when pymalloc
isn't enabled.
Two debugging entry points defined only under PYMALLOC_DEBUG:
+ _PyMalloc_DebugCheckAddress(const void *p) can be used (e.g., from gdb)
to sanity-check a memory block obtained from pymalloc. It sprays
info to stderr (see next) and dies via Py_FatalError if the block is
detectably damaged.
+ _PyMalloc_DebugDumpAddress(const void *p) can be used to spray info
about a debug memory block to stderr.
A tiny start at implementing "API family" checks isn't good for
anything yet.
_PyMalloc_DebugRealloc() has been optimized to do little when the new
size is <= old size. However, if the new size is larger, it really
can't call the underlying realloc() routine without either violating its
contract, or knowing something non-trivial about how the underlying
realloc() works. A memcpy is always done in this case.
This was a disaster for (and only) one of the std tests: test_bufio
creates single text file lines up to a million characters long. On
Windows, fileobject.c's get_line() uses the horridly funky
getline_via_fgets(), which keeps growing and growing a string object
hoping to find a newline. It grew the string object 1000 bytes each
time, so for a million-character string it took approximately forever
(I gave up after a few minutes).
So, also:
fileobject.c, getline_via_fgets(): When a single line is outrageously
long, grow the string object at a mildly exponential rate, instead of
just 1000 bytes at a time.
That's enough so that a debug-build test_bufio finishes in about 5 seconds
on my Win98SE box. I'm curious to try this on Win2K, because it has very
different memory behavior than Win9X, and test_bufio always took a factor
of 10 longer to complete on Win2K. It *could* be that the endless
reallocs were simply killing it on Win2K even in the release build.
diff --git a/Include/Python.h b/Include/Python.h
index 9724fb7..d1ffc73 100644
--- a/Include/Python.h
+++ b/Include/Python.h
@@ -61,6 +61,15 @@
#include "pyport.h"
+/* Debug-mode build with pymalloc implies PYMALLOC_DEBUG.
+ * PYMALLOC_DEBUG is in error if pymalloc is not in use.
+ */
+#if defined(Py_DEBUG) && defined(WITH_PYMALLOC) && !defined(PYMALLOC_DEBUG)
+#define PYMALLOC_DEBUG
+#endif
+#if defined(PYMALLOC_DEBUG) && !defined(WITH_PYMALLOC)
+#error "PYMALLOC_DEBUG requires WITH_PYMALLOC"
+#endif
#include "pymem.h"
#include "object.h"