[Haskell-cafe] FFI nested structs - malloc - free

[Michael Jones]

Alexey,

That is an interesting insight. I suppose there are C API like that.

In my case, the FFI calls ioctl, which calls i2cdev_ioctl, which calls i2cdev_ioctl_rdwr.

The only function that can assume anything about the structure is i2cdev_ioctl_rdwr, which as you can see below copies the data, but does not free it.

So in this particular case, I need the FFI to free it.

On the other hand, I could write a wrapper in C that frees the structure if that is the way FFI is supposed to be used.

Does anyone know if there is a FFI solution that would not require a wrapper?

Mike

static noinline int i2cdev_ioctl_rdrw(struct i2c_client *client,
		unsigned long arg)
{
	struct i2c_rdwr_ioctl_data rdwr_arg;
	struct i2c_msg *rdwr_pa;
	u8 __user **data_ptrs;
	int i, res;

	if (copy_from_user(&rdwr_arg,
			   (struct i2c_rdwr_ioctl_data __user *)arg,
			   sizeof(rdwr_arg)))
		return -EFAULT;



On May 4, 2015, at 10:40 PM, Alexey Shmalko <rasen.dubi at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> Disclaimer: I haven't worked much with FFI, so I'd like someone
> confirmed my words.
> 
> Seems that allocated memory in your example is supposed to be freed
> from inside C. It's not a memory leak.
> 
> If I understand correctly documentation [1], malloc/free are just a
> simple wrappers around C's malloc/free. It's mallocForeignPtr that
> sets finalizer.
> 
> Best regards,
> Alexey Shmalko
> 
> [1]: https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/7.8.3/docs/html/users_guide/ffi-ghc.html
>  
> On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 6:45 AM, Proclivis <mike at proclivis.com> wrote:
>> I should have mentioned GHC 7.8.3 Ubuntu 64bit
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>>> On May 4, 2015, at 9:42 PM, Proclivis <mike at proclivis.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> FFI Gurus,
>>> 
>>> I created a c2hs FFI of a nested C structure, where struct A has a pointer to a struct B. To do so, I used a malloc, but I am unsure if the memory will be freed when the resulting Ptr is freed.
>>> 
>>> The example at this link uses the same technique, so it will serve as an example.
>>> 
>>> https://github.com/ifesdjeen/haskell-ffi-tutorial/blob/master/src/Example.hsc
>>> 
>>> Line 48 and 51 do the malloc and assign the pointer in the struct, from inside a Storable poke implementation.
>>> 
>>> But, there is no explicit free, nor a finalizer.
>>> 
>>> Will the memory be freed when the Ptr of the Storable is freed?
>>> 
>>> If it is, it implies that some magic keeps track of mallocs inside a poke, and creates finalizers. Or, this example leaks. If it leaks, how do I create a finalizer from inside a poke implementation?
>>> 
>>> Mike
>>> 
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