Re: [PATCH v4 1/4] Avoid Coverity warning about unfree()d git_exec_path()

[Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 1:33 PM, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> This patch was originally only to appease Coverity, but it actually *does*
> plug a very real memory leak: previously, *every* call to git_exec_path()
> *possibly* returned a newly-malloc()ed buffer. Now, the first call will
> store that pointer in a static variable and reuse it later.
>
> Could you maybe help me with improving the commit message?

As someone not familiar with that area of code, this explained it
enough for me to understand, so maybe:

    exec_cmd: do not leak via git_exec_path

    Every call to git_exec_path() possibly returned a newly-malloc()ed
    buffer. Now, the first call will allocate the buffer and subsequent
    calls return a pointer to it, which then prevents leaking memory
    on each call.

The return value of a "const char *" hints to the caller, that the memory
is not owned by the caller, do we need to be explicit there (i.e. a comment
declaring the memory ownership? Probably not.)

Thanks,
Stefan