Removal of dlmalloc?

Removal of dlmalloc?

[Ahmad Fatoum]

Hi,

We have a TLSF implemenation in barebox for >= 13 years now and it has
more features than dlmalloc like multiple pools and KASAN integration.

I think it's thus time to retire the dlmalloc we inherited from U-Boot.

Unfortunately, TLSF was not the default in the config, even though the
most common configs select it. I'd thus suggest we remove dlmalloc
altogether after v2025.06.0 is tagged.

Thoughts? Objections?

Cheers,
Ahmad

Re: Removal of dlmalloc?

[Sascha Hauer]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2025 at 12:51:31PM +0100, Ahmad Fatoum wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We have a TLSF implemenation in barebox for >= 13 years now and it has
> more features than dlmalloc like multiple pools and KASAN integration.
> 
> I think it's thus time to retire the dlmalloc we inherited from U-Boot.
> 
> Unfortunately, TLSF was not the default in the config, even though the
> most common configs select it. I'd thus suggest we remove dlmalloc
> altogether after v2025.06.0 is tagged.
> 
> Thoughts? Objections?

No objections from my side.

The only reason for me to enable dlmalloc from time to time was that I
suspected some bug in the allocator, but it never actually turned out to
be a bug in the allocator. Now with Kasan we have far better memory
debugging facilities than back in those days, so yes, I think it's time
to schedule removal of dlmalloc.

Sascha

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