Memory leak in 2.12.1

[Jeff Baker]

Thanks.
That was the plan if no-one happened to remember.

Nick Clifton wrote:

> Hi Jeff,
> 
> 
>>If it helps refresh anyones memory, it was fixed somewhere between 
>>2.13.2 and 2.14.
> 
> 
> Sorry it does not ring any bells. :-(
> 
> 
> 
>>>We build one set of binutils (minus ld and gas, which do not show
> 
> this 
> 
>>>problem) that target x86, but also have powerpc, mips, arm and sh 
>>>enabled.  If you attempt to use any of the secondary targetting (arm,
> 
> 
>>>sh, ppc, mips) utils on a static library it will very quickly exhaust
> 
> 
>>>your system memory.  It doesn't matter in which order you specify the
> 
> 
>>>targets.  If you configure with '--target=powerpc-nto-qnx 
>>>--enable-targets="mips-nto-qnx sh-nto-qnx i386-nto-qnx arm-nto-qnx"',
> 
> 
>>>then powerpc is fine and the rest show this behaviour.
> 
> 
> 
> My best suggestion would be to use a binary-chop method to locate the 
> patch that fixed the bug.  It is quite an involved process but I have 
> used it successfully before.  The steps are as follows:
> 
>    0.  Create a local copy of the CVS repository.  (The sourceware 
> repository supports rsync).
> 
>    1.  Create a script to do this following:
> 
>       A.  Pick a start date, eg the 2.13.2 release date, and check out a
> 
> copy of the sources using your local archive.  It also helps if you can 
> do this on a ramdisk to speed things up.
> 
>       B.  Test this checked out copy for the bug.  Since you are 
> concerned with running out of memory you will probably want to use 
> something like ulimit to make sure that the build process does not bring
> 
> your machine to a halt.
> 
>    2.  The first time through the test should fail.  Now pick a known 
> good date, eg the 2.14 release, and repeat step 1.  The test should 
> pass.  Now you have two dates and you can the binary chop algorithm to 
> narrow down to the exact day when a patch was checked in to fix the
> problem.
> 
> Cheers
>    Nick
>