svn commit: trunk/uClibc/extra/Configs

landley at uclibc.org landley at uclibc.org
Mon Oct 27 22:02:54 UTC 2008


Author: landley
Date: 2008-10-27 15:02:54 -0700 (Mon, 27 Oct 2008)
New Revision: 23824

Log:
Explain what malloc simple is good for, and what it isn't good for.


Modified:
   trunk/uClibc/extra/Configs/Config.in


Changeset:
Modified: trunk/uClibc/extra/Configs/Config.in
===================================================================
--- trunk/uClibc/extra/Configs/Config.in	2008-10-27 21:30:39 UTC (rev 23823)
+++ trunk/uClibc/extra/Configs/Config.in	2008-10-27 22:02:54 UTC (rev 23824)
@@ -442,14 +442,17 @@
 config MALLOC_SIMPLE
 	bool "malloc-simple"
 	help
-	  "malloc-simple" was written from scratch for uClibc, and is the
-	  simplest possible (and therefore smallest) malloc implementation.
-	  This uses only the mmap() system call to allocation memory, and does
-	  not use the brk() system call at all, making it a fine choice for
-	  MMU-less systems with very limited memory.  It is rather dumb, and
-	  certainly isn't the fastest.  But it is 100% standards compliant,
-	  thread safe, and very small.
+	  "malloc-simple" is trivially simple and slow as molasses.  It
+	  was written from scratch for uClibc, and is the simplest possible
+	  (and therefore smallest) malloc implementation.
 
+	  This uses only the mmap() system call to allocate and free memory,
+	  and does not use the brk() system call at all, making it a fine
+	  choice for MMU-less systems with very limited memory.  It's 100%
+	  standards compliant, thread safe, very small, and releases freed
+	  memory back to the OS immediately rather than keeping it in the
+	  process's heap for reallocation.  It is also VERY SLOW.
+
 config MALLOC_STANDARD
 	bool "malloc-standard"
 	depends on ARCH_USE_MMU




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