[Python-Dev] Activating pymalloc (original) (raw)

Martin v. Loewis martin@v.loewis.de
14 Mar 2002 18:54:50 +0100

"Tim Peters" <tim@zope.com> writes:

Martin, you were concerned earlier about the possibilities for tricking pymalloc into crashing the system, given that its flavor of free() takes a careful but still probabilistic guess about who (pymalloc or "the system") owns the memory being returned. Are you no longer concerned abou that?

You convinced me last time that this won't be an issue. I think you even offered some gift in case somebody runs into the problem in real life, although I forgot what that gift was :-)

I think some action needs to be taken: either the code needs to be removed from Python for that reason, or it should be activated. I doubt that the problem (if there is a problem) will get addressed from the code just sitting in the CVS. Trusting that the problem is not real, I favour activating the code. It still remains an option to turn it off should somebody be worried.

Regards, Martin