Give Python a debug-mode pymalloc, much as sketched on Python-Dev.

When WITH_PYMALLOC is defined, define PYMALLOC_DEBUG to enable the debug
allocator.  This can be done independent of build type (release or debug).
A debug build automatically defines PYMALLOC_DEBUG when pymalloc is
enabled.  It's a detected error to define PYMALLOC_DEBUG when pymalloc
isn't enabled.

Two debugging entry points defined only under PYMALLOC_DEBUG:

+ _PyMalloc_DebugCheckAddress(const void *p) can be used (e.g., from gdb)
  to sanity-check a memory block obtained from pymalloc.  It sprays
  info to stderr (see next) and dies via Py_FatalError if the block is
  detectably damaged.

+ _PyMalloc_DebugDumpAddress(const void *p) can be used to spray info
  about a debug memory block to stderr.

A tiny start at implementing "API family" checks isn't good for
anything yet.

_PyMalloc_DebugRealloc() has been optimized to do little when the new
size is <= old size.  However, if the new size is larger, it really
can't call the underlying realloc() routine without either violating its
contract, or knowing something non-trivial about how the underlying
realloc() works.  A memcpy is always done in this case.

This was a disaster for (and only) one of the std tests:  test_bufio
creates single text file lines up to a million characters long.  On
Windows, fileobject.c's get_line() uses the horridly funky
getline_via_fgets(), which keeps growing and growing a string object
hoping to find a newline.  It grew the string object 1000 bytes each
time, so for a million-character string it took approximately forever
(I gave up after a few minutes).

So, also:

fileobject.c, getline_via_fgets():  When a single line is outrageously
long, grow the string object at a mildly exponential rate, instead of
just 1000 bytes at a time.

That's enough so that a debug-build test_bufio finishes in about 5 seconds
on my Win98SE box.  I'm curious to try this on Win2K, because it has very
different memory behavior than Win9X, and test_bufio always took a factor
of 10 longer to complete on Win2K.  It *could* be that the endless
reallocs were simply killing it on Win2K even in the release build.

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Include/Python.h b/Include/Python.h
index 9724fb7..d1ffc73 100644
--- a/Include/Python.h
+++ b/Include/Python.h
@@ -61,6 +61,15 @@
 
 #include "pyport.h"
 
+/* Debug-mode build with pymalloc implies PYMALLOC_DEBUG.
+ *  PYMALLOC_DEBUG is in error if pymalloc is not in use.
+ */
+#if defined(Py_DEBUG) && defined(WITH_PYMALLOC) && !defined(PYMALLOC_DEBUG)
+#define PYMALLOC_DEBUG
+#endif
+#if defined(PYMALLOC_DEBUG) && !defined(WITH_PYMALLOC)
+#error "PYMALLOC_DEBUG requires WITH_PYMALLOC"
+#endif
 #include "pymem.h"
 
 #include "object.h"