Re: Memory leak in nodeAgg

On Mon, 2007-08-06 at 18:52 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Hmm.  Good catch, but I can't help wondering if this is just the tip
> of the iceberg.  Should *every* MemoryContextReset be
> MemoryContextResetAndDeleteChildren?

Yeah, the same thought occurred to me. Certainly having the current
behavior as the default is error-prone: it's quite easy to leak child
contexts on Reset. Perhaps we could redefine Reset to mean
ResetAndDeleteChildren, and add another name for the current Reset
functionality. ResetAndPreserveChildren, maybe?

> If we redefined MemoryContextReset to be the same as
> MemoryContextResetAndDeleteChildren, it'd be possible to keep the
> headers for child contexts in their parent context, thus easing
> traffic in TopMemoryContext, and perhaps saving a few pfree cycles
> when resetting the parent

The fact that MemoryContextCreate allocates the context header in
TopMemoryContext has always made me uneasy, so getting rid of that would
be nice. I wonder if there's not at least *one* place that depends on
the current Reset behavior, though...

> Anyone want to investigate what happens if we make MemoryContextReset
> the same as MemoryContextResetAndDeleteChildren?

Sure, I'll take a look, but I'll apply the attached patch in the mean
time (above cleanup is probably 8.4 material anyway).

-Neil