portable-dlmalloc

Portable Fork of Doug Lea's malloc Implementation.

Introduction

This code is originally implemented by Doug Lea. The original source code is no longer available from the FTP URL listed in the website, but you can still find it through Wayback Machine.

This repository serves as a fork so that dlmalloc can be ported to any arbitrary platforms modularly.

This repository also contains a Rust crate so that you can use portable-dlmalloc in almost anywhere.

Rust Crate

This repository is published to crates.io.
You may add this crate in your no_std projects.

Port To Your Platform

To port dlmalloc to your platform, implement the following procedures:

• custom_mmap/custom_munmap: Allocate and free pages from the system. mmap should return (void*)-1 to indicate failure instead of NULL. munmap should return 0 to indicate success, and -1 to indicate failure.

   void* custom_mmap(size_t length);
   int custom_munmap(void* ptr,size_t length);

• custom_direct_mmap: Extend the allocated pages. This is optional. Return (void*)-1 to indicate failure/no-support.

   void* custom_direct_mmap(size_t length);

• init_lock/final_lock/acquire_lock/release_lock: Implement thread-safety for dlmalloc. The minimal implementation can be a simple spinlock. You can leave the implementations empty for this set of routines if you do not need thread-safety.

   void init_lock(void* *lock);	// Initialize the mutex.
   void final_lock(void* *lock);	// Finalize the mutex.
   void acquire_lock(void* *lock);	// Acquire the mutex.
   void release_lock(void* *lock);	// Release the mutex.

• custom_abort: Implement abort() routine. dlmalloc calls custom_abort() when internal assertion fails. You may use panic here.

   void custom_abort(void);

• dprintf2: Implement debug-printer, which can trace file-name and line-numbers, for dlmalloc. Note that the format specifiers are implementation-specific. For example, you might have to use %a to print ASCII-strings in EDK2. You do not have to implement dprintf2 if you won't debug malloc.c.

   int dprintf2(const char* src_fn,const int src_ln,const char* fmt,...);

  If you need to print stuff in malloc.c codes, just use the dprintf macro.

• memcpy/memset: I suppose no explanations are needed for these two. dlmalloc uses these two routines, but they can be easily implemented. Some embedded SDKs may even include memcpy/memset, though they might not have malloc.

When you compile malloc.c, define the following preprocessor flags:

• PORTABLE: This flag makes dlmalloc call custom_mmap, custom_munmap and custom_direct_mmap functions. This flag is required to port dlmalloc to your platform.
• NO_MALLOC_STATS=1: This flag forbids dlmalloc from outputting debug messages. Otherwise, you will have to implement dprintf2.
• USE_LOCKS=2: This flag makes dlmalloc call init_lock, final_lock, acquire_lock and release_lock functions. This flag is required to port dlmalloc to your platform while ensuring thread-safety. Otherwise, define USE_LOCKS=0.
• USE_DL_PREFIX: This flags makes all routines from dlmalloc has dl prefix so that you can avoid name-conflict issues.
• DEFAULT_GRANULARITY: This constant determines the size granularity when dlmalloc calls custom_mmap. The default is 64KiB.

Note: the following samples with Custom Port do not keep track of allocated pages. There will be unreleased pages after your program quits even if you freed all allocated buffers. If you port dlmalloc to programs that are volatile to its address-space (e.g.: Kernel-Mode drivers, pluggable dynamic libraries), you have to keep track of allocated pages and release them before you quit.

Samples

This chapter describes how to build samples with dlmalloc library. Note that this chapter emphasizes on the given samples. If you wish to port dlmalloc to your platform, it's recommended to check out Port to Your Platform section, which provides the generalized guide for building the portable dlmalloc. You should be able to use this generalized guide if you are familiar with your compiler suite / build system.

Build for Windows with Internal Port

Download Windows Driver Kit 7.1 (WDK-7600) and install to default location in C: drive.

Execute compchk_win7x64.bat (Debug/Check version, optimizations are disabled) and compfre_win7x64.bat (Release/Free version, optimizations are enabled) to build DLLs. The DLL has dependencies on msvcrt.dll and kernel32.dll, which are present in most Windows systems. The DLL exports both dlmalloc and malloc, just in case you might encounter name conflicts. This file is ready-to-use.

This option will build dlmalloc into a very small binary size. Note that mmap and munmap emulations via VirtualAlloc and VirtualFree are already implemented by Doug Lea.

The dlmalloc.dll can be directly used.

See sample.c for details.

Build for Windows with Custom Port

Download Enterprise Windows Driver Kit for Windows 11, version 24H2 with Visual Studio Build Tools 17.10.5 (EWDK-26100) and mount it to V: drive. You may use WinCDEmu to mount ISO images.

Execute compchk_win11x64.bat (Debug/Check version, optimizations are disabled) and compfre_win11x64.bat (Release/Free version, optimizations are enabled) to build static libraries and corresponding samples.

This option serves as a basic sample for implementing necessary routines for thread-safe dlmalloc. This sample uses Windows SRWLock to act as a lightweight mutex.

The dlmalloc.lib can be directly used in anywhere, as long as the program uses MSVC ABI and PE-COFF executable format.

See port_win.c for details.

Build for UEFI with Custom Port

Download Enterprise Windows Driver Kit for Windows 11, version 24H2 with Visual Studio Build Tools 17.10.5 (EWDK-26100) and mount it to V: drive. You may use WinCDEmu to mount ISO images.

Clone the EDK-II-Library recursively and create the EDK2_PATH environment variable pointing to the EDK-II-Library.

Execute compchk_uefix64.bat (Debug/Check version, optimizations are disabled) and compfre_uefix64.bat (Release/Free version, optimizations are enabled) to build static libraries and corresponding samples.

This option serves as a basic sample for implementing necessary routines for thread-safe dlmalloc on UEFI platform. This sample implements a TAS spinlock to act as a mutex.

See port_uefi.c for details.

Build for Rust with Custom Port

Install Rust with target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.

Execute:

cargo build --all

This option serves as a basic sample for utilizing dlmalloc as the Rust global allocator.

When you implement port functions, make sure you append #[no_mangle] extern "C" prefix on your function. For example:

#[no_mangle] extern "C" fn custom_abort()->!

Note that print! (as well as println!) macro from rust std has allocation behaviors! To be precise, both std::fmt::Arguments::to_string() and std::io::stdout().write() have allocation behaviors! Therefore, this sample provides a naprint! macro for you to trace allocation operations without recursion. Be careful, the naprint! macro cannot handle formatted output larger than 512 bytes!
Therefore, if you use print!/println! in dlmalloc port routines, you will find your program being deadlocked, as SRWLock does not support recursive locking.

License

This repository is under the MIT license.
If you do not want to obey the MIT license, just use the original dlmalloc implementation instead. It is in the Public Domain.