G
graham.keellings
hi,
I'm looking for an open source memory pool. It's for use on an
embedded system, if that makes any difference. Something with garbage
collection/defragmentation would be nice. It should have the ability
to allocate different size chunks of memory not just a single size. It
should error check for double free, etc. And it should be usable by a
mixture of C and C++ subsystems.
If I get that, I'm happy. Thank you very much.
As a bonus, I'd like to detect memory leaks, although I'm willing to
code that bit myself to get what I want (I just don't want to reinvent
the wheel of a standard memory pool).
I see two approaches to detecting leaks. Both involve the memory pool
actually allocating more memory than was requested and keeping a
secret header for itself where it stores details of the caller (file/
line number or unique ID, plus timestamp).
After each unit test I would generally expect any allocated memory to
be freed, so comapring memory pool free size at start and end of test
should suffice. If I know that the test will cause my software to
allocate but not free some memory, I can adjust for that (for
instance, Software Under Test allocates a buffer to send a message
which will be freed by recipient, or a timer data block, or similar).
So much for unit test, which ought to be straightforward. Integration
& system verification test are more complex, with lots of background
tasks running. However, in an embedded system it is uncommon for
memory to remain allocated for long. So I can create a low priority
task which runs when the system is otherwise idle and checks
timestamps, looking for memory allocated for "a suspiciously long
time", which can then be investigated to see if someone forgot to free
it. Not perfect, but more than good enough.
Any comments? And any basic, Open Source, memory pool which I can use
as a base?
Thanks in advance...
I'm looking for an open source memory pool. It's for use on an
embedded system, if that makes any difference. Something with garbage
collection/defragmentation would be nice. It should have the ability
to allocate different size chunks of memory not just a single size. It
should error check for double free, etc. And it should be usable by a
mixture of C and C++ subsystems.
If I get that, I'm happy. Thank you very much.
As a bonus, I'd like to detect memory leaks, although I'm willing to
code that bit myself to get what I want (I just don't want to reinvent
the wheel of a standard memory pool).
I see two approaches to detecting leaks. Both involve the memory pool
actually allocating more memory than was requested and keeping a
secret header for itself where it stores details of the caller (file/
line number or unique ID, plus timestamp).
After each unit test I would generally expect any allocated memory to
be freed, so comapring memory pool free size at start and end of test
should suffice. If I know that the test will cause my software to
allocate but not free some memory, I can adjust for that (for
instance, Software Under Test allocates a buffer to send a message
which will be freed by recipient, or a timer data block, or similar).
So much for unit test, which ought to be straightforward. Integration
& system verification test are more complex, with lots of background
tasks running. However, in an embedded system it is uncommon for
memory to remain allocated for long. So I can create a low priority
task which runs when the system is otherwise idle and checks
timestamps, looking for memory allocated for "a suspiciously long
time", which can then be investigated to see if someone forgot to free
it. Not perfect, but more than good enough.
Any comments? And any basic, Open Source, memory pool which I can use
as a base?
Thanks in advance...