Merge remote-tracking branch 'kwolf/for-anthony' into staging

[mirror_qemu.git] / HACKING

diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING
index 6ba9d7e7402718d3a042e0026fd7b275e8dd6b1c..471cf1d1970959e95ba18aa8abd798bb5240d95b 100644 (file)
--- a/HACKING
+++ b/HACKING
@@ -77,11 +77,13 @@ avoided.
 
 Use of the malloc/free/realloc/calloc/valloc/memalign/posix_memalign
 APIs is not allowed in the QEMU codebase. Instead of these routines,
-use the replacement qemu_malloc/qemu_mallocz/qemu_realloc/qemu_free or
-qemu_vmalloc/qemu_memalign/qemu_vfree APIs.
+use the GLib memory allocation routines g_malloc/g_malloc0/g_new/
+g_new0/g_realloc/g_free or QEMU's qemu_vmalloc/qemu_memalign/qemu_vfree
+APIs.
 
-Please note that NULL check for the qemu_malloc result is redundant and
-that qemu_malloc() call with zero size is not allowed.
+Please note that g_malloc will exit on allocation failure, so there
+is no need to test for failure (as you would have to with malloc).
+Calling g_malloc with a zero size is valid and will return NULL.
 
 Memory allocated by qemu_vmalloc or qemu_memalign must be freed with
 qemu_vfree, since breaking this will cause problems on Win32 and user
@@ -108,7 +110,7 @@ int qemu_strnlen(const char *s, int max_len)
 There are also replacement character processing macros for isxyz and toxyz,
 so instead of e.g. isalnum you should use qemu_isalnum.
 
-Because of the memory management rules, you must use qemu_strdup/qemu_strndup
+Because of the memory management rules, you must use g_strdup/g_strndup
 instead of plain strdup/strndup.
 
 5. Printf-style functions
@@ -120,6 +122,3 @@ gcc's printf attribute directive in the prototype.
 This makes it so gcc's -Wformat and -Wformat-security options can do
 their jobs and cross-check format strings with the number and types
 of arguments.
-
-Currently many functions in QEMU are not following this rule but
-patches to add the attribute would be very much appreciated.