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| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex | 23 |
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex index beca069..d54dd5b 100644 --- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex +++ b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex @@ -751,8 +751,24 @@ memory overhead. The allocator uses C's \function{malloc()} function to get large pools of memory, and then fulfills smaller memory requests from these pools. It can be enabled by providing the \longprogramopt{with-pymalloc} option to the \program{configure} script; see -\file{Objects/obmalloc.c} for the implementation details. -Contributed by Vladimir Marangozov. +\file{Objects/obmalloc.c} for the implementation details. + +Authors of C extension modules should test their code with the object +allocator enabled, because some incorrect code may break, causing core +dumps at runtime. There are a bunch of memory allocation functions in +Python's C API that have previously been just aliases for the C +library's \function{malloc()} and \function{free()}, meaning that if +you accidentally called mismatched functions, the error wouldn't be +noticeable. When the object allocator is enabled, these functions +aren't aliases of \function{malloc()} and \function{free()} any more, +and calling the wrong function to free memory will get you a core +dump. For example, if memory was allocated using +\function{PyMem_New()}, it has to be freed using +\function{PyMem_Del()}, not \function{free()}. A few modules included +with Python fell afoul of this and had to be fixed; doubtless there +are more third-party modules that will have the same problem. + +The object allocator was contributed by Vladimir Marangozov. \item The speed of line-oriented file I/O has been improved because people often complain about its lack of speed, and because it's often @@ -827,6 +843,9 @@ code. \item The size of the Unicode character database was shrunk by another 340K thanks to Fredrik Lundh. +\item Some new ports were contributed: MacOS X (by Steven Majewski), +Cygwin (by Jason Tishler); RISCOS (by Dietmar Schwertberger). + \end{itemize} And there's the usual list of minor bugfixes, minor memory leaks, |