Subject: Re: [PATCH v7 1/4] help: use list_aliases() for alias listing

From: Jacob Keller <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2026 14:21:54 -0800

On 2/18/2026 1:57 PM, Jonatan Holmgren wrote:
> help.c has its own get_alias() config callback that duplicates the
> parsing logic in alias.c. Consolidate by teaching list_aliases() to
> also store the alias values (via the string_list util field), then
> use it in list_all_cmds_help_aliases() instead of the private
> callback.
> 
> This preserves the existing error checking for value-less alias
> definitions by checking in alias.c rather than help.c.
> 
> No functional change intended.
> 
This results in a memory leak with git --list-cmds=alias:

==2244105==ERROR: LeakSanitizer: detected memory leaks

Direct leak of 1453 byte(s) in 37 object(s) allocated from:
     #0 0x7f9e268e0ca0 in strdup (/lib64/libasan.so.8+0xe0ca0) (BuildId: 
25975f766867e9e604dc5a71a8befeaed3301942)
     #1 0x00000115997b in xstrdup ../wrapper.c:43
     #2 0x000000841299 in config_alias_cb ../alias.c:62
     #3 0x00000098df73 in git_config_include ../config.c:429
     #4 0x000000973616 in get_value ../config.c:919
     #5 0x000000973616 in git_parse_source ../config.c:1114
     #6 0x000000973616 in do_config_from ../config.c:1341
     #7 0x000000975f5a in do_config_from_file ../config.c:1370
     #8 0x000000980c9b in git_config_from_file_with_options ../config.c:1393
     #9 0x0000009827fe in do_git_config_sequence ../config.c:1556
     #10 0x0000009827fe in config_with_options ../config.c:1615
     #11 0x00000098313d in read_early_config ../config.c:1670
     #12 0x000000841935 in list_aliases ../alias.c:81
     #13 0x00000080b12f in list_cmds ../git.c:102
     #14 0x00000080b12f in handle_options ../git.c:336
     #15 0x00000080d570 in cmd_main ../git.c:955
     #16 0x00000044a54f in main ../common-main.c:9
     #17 0x7f9e25e105b4 in __libc_start_call_main 
(/lib64/libc.so.6+0x35b4) (BuildId: 
2b5beec0fd24fe9c9f43eddfdd5facf0b8a1b805)
     #18 0x7f9e25e10667 in __libc_start_main@@GLIBC_2.34 
(/lib64/libc.so.6+0x3667) (BuildId: 
2b5beec0fd24fe9c9f43eddfdd5facf0b8a1b805)
     #19 0x00000044c944 in _start 
(/home/jekeller/libexec/git-core/git+0x44c944) (BuildId: 
674cf04ebc1da782eede3c3be79a0c15f372df4c)

SUMMARY: AddressSanitizer: 1453 byte(s) leaked in 37 allocation(s).

This leak occurs because you now copy and store the value of the alias 
in the util element, but the call of list_aliases() in list_cmd() 
doesn't clean these up, since its string_list_clear passes 0 to the 
free_util argument.

The following fixed it for me:

diff --git c/git.c i/git.c
index 744cb6527e06..aeb099ab1162 100644
--- c/git.c
+++ i/git.c
@@ -119,7 +119,7 @@ static int list_cmds(const char *spec)
         }
         for (size_t i = 0; i < list.nr; i++)
                 puts(list.items[i].string);
-       string_list_clear(&list, 0);
+       string_list_clear(&list, 1);
         return 0;
  }