Hi Eric. Here are some problems in RenderArena that I know of:
- Grows memory without bound - Duplicates the functionality of FastMalloc - Makes allocation error-prone (allocation in the wrong arena is sometimes a leak, sometimes a use-after-free, and sometimes a heizenbug of the two) - Makes allocation verbose (you have to thread an arena pointer everywhere) - Makes object lifetime complicated (all objects are implicitly tied to a single owner they may outlive) - Uses C-style macros and manual initialization and destruction, instead of modern WebKit C++ style You didn't mention any of these problems in your email, so I'll assume you weren't aware of them. Considering these problems now, please don't use RenderArena in more places. > Slab-allocators (i.e. RenderArena) hand out memory all from a single > region, guaranteeing (among other things) that free'd objects can only > be ever overwritten by other objects from the same pool. This makes > it much harder, for example to find a Use-After-Free of a RenderBlock > and then fill that RenderBlock's memory (and vtable pointer) with > arbitrary memory (like the contents of a javascript array). > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_allocation This is magical thinking. RenderArena is no different from FastMalloc. (1) RenderArena recycles by object size, just like FastMalloc. (2) FastMalloc is a slab allocator, just like RenderArena. (3) RenderArena grows by calling FastMalloc. Isolating object types from each other -- and specifically isolating objects of arbitrary size and contents like arrays -- is an interesting idea. RenderArena is neither necessary nor sufficient for implementing this feature. The only reason RenderArena seems isolated from other object types is social, not technical: we actively discourage using RenderArena, so few object types currently use it. > Since RenderArena is generic, the current plan to move it to WTF (as > by Chris Marrin suggested back in > http://www.mail-archive.com/webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org/msg12672.html), > clean up the code further, and investigate wider deployment (like to > the DOM tree) for the security benefit and possible perf win. > https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101087 Having dealt with the specific technical question of RenderArena, I'd like to briefly discuss the meta-level of how the WebKit project works. Sam Weinig and I both provided review feedback saying that using RenderArena more was a bad idea (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101087#c9, https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101087#c18). Nonetheless, you r+ed a patch to move in that direction, and you describe it here as the "current plan" for WebKit. I'm a little disappointed that, as individual contributors, Chris Neklar and Chris Evans didn't realize or understand the problems listed above, and didn't tackle them. However, the mistake is understandable: Chris and Chris are new to WebKit. The WebKit project has a mechanism for resolving mistakes like this: patch review. Your job as a reviewer is to understand the zeitgeist of the project, to use good judgement, and to r- patches that make mistakes like this. A bad patch is only a small nuisance. But the small nuisance turns into a major problem when you, as a reviewer, take a bad patch, mark it r+, and declare it the current direction of the project, despite the objections of two other reviewers who are senior members of the project. Geoff _______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list webkit-dev@lists.webkit.org http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo/webkit-dev
