2010/9/30 <boost-request@lists.boost.org>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:17:40 -0400 From: Frank Mori Hess <frank.hess@nist.gov>
a Fedora user has reported a potential memory leak in Boost.Thread (see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=627875 for details), detected with Valgrind in (at least) versions 1.41.0 and 1.44.0.
Apparently, as per https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=627875#c7, it seems there is a bug in Boost Thread.
As I'm not a specialist in that area, I prefer to hand it over to more savvy developers on the list. Do not hesitate to answer directly on Bugzilla.
As far as I can tell, the "fix" for this "bug" is to insure some per-thread memory is freed just before the entire program exits? The only point to doing that would be to quiet valgrind.
Maybe the reason posix threads don't invoke their per-thread data
destructors is that it is pointless? I mean to say they don't invoke when the thread is killed due to the main thread exiting.
What do you think of Bart's suggestion in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=627875#c9 (i.e., adding "some comments in the two source files libs/thread/src/pthread/once.<https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/browser/trunk/libs/thread/src/pthread/once.cpp> cpp<https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/browser/trunk/libs/thread/src/pthread/once.cpp>and libs/thread/src/pthread/<https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/browser/trunk/libs/thread/src/pthread/thread.cpp> thread.cpp<https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/browser/trunk/libs/thread/src/pthread/thread.cpp>, that even when an application exit()s normally it is possible that the destructor is not invoked, together with the a reference to the POSIX specs that explain this behavior, e.g., http://opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/_Exit.html#tag_16_01_03... )? I've looked into the Gmane archive of the Boost developer list ( http://search.gmane.org/?query=thread+memory+leak&group=gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel), and that issue has been raised several times during (at least) the last six years, with sometimes the same recommendation: to add some comments in the source code. For instance, http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/145329/focus=145333, http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/96846/focus=97232, http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/187881/focus=187893. Regards Denis