2 ms·

"malloc" is a weakly-bound symbol that can be overridden, on every system I've used. I don't know if some standard defines it to be weak. Anyway the point is th

"malloc" is a weakly-bound symbol that can be overridden, on every system I've used. I don't know if some standard defines it to be weak. Anyway the point is that malloc is not necessarily a call to the C standard library function. It can be anything.

sylware 2y ago
"weakly-bound symbol" implies your a using a complex runtime library/binary format (like ELF). A portable and clean design for a library is to allow to override the internal allocator via the API (often part of the init function call). Look at vulkan3D which does many things right and doing this very part right. On the other side, you have some parts of the ALSA lib API which still requires to use the C lib free (may be obsolete though).
- jeffbee 2y ago
  No, it doesn't mean that, because malloc can be replaced at build-time as well. But I agree that interfaces should avoid doing their own allocations and should let the caller dictate it.
  - sylware 2y ago
    Look at vulkan3D which does it right(TM).
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
The linker doesn't try to resolve symbols it's already seen while static linking. This doesn't require a weak linkage flag for overriding system library functions since libc is linked at the end by default when static linking or at runtime when dynamic.