A Bottom-Up Approach to Go after Leaks

Pattern to debug resource leaks

We have already described what leaks are in detail. We’ll now describe how we can diagnose them. Debugging leaks extends beyond simply identifying the allocation responsible for the leak. Our objective is to determine why the allocated resource is not being freed. This entails identifying the code path designed to release the allocation and comprehending the reasons for its omission.

A well-optimized resource management process ensures the release of all allocated or acquired resources within the code. Therefore, if a leak is detected, it suggests an imbalance between the number of “acquire” and “release” function calls.

To diagnose this, we must identify the “acquire” functions lacking corresponding “release” functions and investigate the factors contributing to the absence of release invocations. We will ...