Survey of 40 major C projects: only 8 rely solely on malloc/free
blaizedsouza · x · 2026-11-16
Phil Eaton's survey of memory management in 40 major C projects (paywall expired, free to read) finds only 8 projects allocate solely with malloc/free, 15 use regions at some point, 5 primarily use garbage collection, and 3 primarily use reference counting. Notably, SQLite allocates 100% manually, cURL and Redis are 94%/79% manual, and Linux and QEMU have recently adopted scope-based cleanup via compiler extensions.
More from coding & agent
- SoduWork open-sources its multi-agent enterprise workflow engine with built-in governance — LearnWithBishal · 2026-11-16
- Pixel art trees swaying in wind without animation frames: full traveling-wave technique — CatAstro_Piyush · 2026-11-16
- Uninstalled Orca left zombie hooks slowing 11 coding agents; Multica audited clean — jiayuan_jy · 2026-11-16
- Unreal Engine 5.9 demo runs in browser at 21MB, slimmed down by Claude and Codex — jradoff · 2026-11-16
- Pragma Research's Cadence agent project demoed via a talking parrot — harrydong · 2026-11-16
- Google Antigravity agent swarm recreates a Blender class project in 20 minutes as browser-runnable Three.js — gaganghotra_ · 2026-11-16