Re: memory leak checking

Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
> On 2019-04-22 16:50:25 -0700, Mikhail Bautin wrote:
>> What is the standard memory leak checking policy for the PostgreSQL
>> codebase? I know there is some support for valgrind -- is the test suite
>> being run continuously with valgrind on the build farm?

> Leaks are allowed if they are once-per-backend type things. There's no
> point in e.g. freeing information for timezone metadata, given that
> it'll be used for the whole server lifetime. And there's such things in
> psql too, IIRC.

I would not call the timezone data a "leak", since it's still useful, and
accessible from static pointers, right up to exit. A true leak for this
purpose is memory that's allocated but not usefully accessible, and I'd
say we discourage that; though small one-time leaks may not be worth the
trouble to get rid of.

regards, tom lane