Resource leaks in libiconv 1.16 about libiconv-utf8mac HOT 2 CLOSED

https://github.com/noloader/Build-Scripts/blob/master/patch/iconv.patch.old

This patch is not required. All allocated resources are freed by the kernel on terminating a process.

from libiconv-utf8mac.

This patch is not required.

Not true for two reasons.

First, It is reported as a memory leak by analysis tools. The memory leak subsequently breaks the program that is trying to run because some memory checkers abort on the first leak.

It is so bad on GNU systems that I cannot run basic tools and get through testing. libiconv fails, ncurses fails, bash fails, make fails. Scripts and programs stop working because of the aborts during testing.

In fact, because so many programs depend on libiconv and gettext, Autotools configuration fails so we can never move on to actually building tools like bash and make. The packages fail to configure.

Second, managed languages, like Java and .Net, load and unload shared objects multiple times during the course of program execution. The memory leaks accumulate over the lifetime of the program.

Android phones really suffer (2). Android apps using JNI often suffer resource exhaustion because libraries like libiconv, ncurses and OpenSSL are so sloppy with their cleanup.

from libiconv-utf8mac.