Subject: Re: [PATCH] pack-redundant: fix memory leak when open_pack_index() fails

From: Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:14:41 +0100

On Sat, Feb 21, 2026 at 04:08:59PM +0530, Sahitya Chandra wrote:
> diff --git a/builtin/pack-redundant.c b/builtin/pack-redundant.c
> index e4ecf774ca..86749bb7e7 100644
> --- a/builtin/pack-redundant.c
> +++ b/builtin/pack-redundant.c

It's arguably not really worth it to work on git-pack-redundant(1)
as it's deprecated and dies unless you pass "--i-still-use-this". But
the fix is small enough, so it doesn't hurt much, either.

> @@ -546,8 +546,10 @@ static struct pack_list * add_pack(struct packed_git *p)
>  	l.pack = p;
>  	llist_init(&l.remaining_objects);
>  
> -	if (open_pack_index(p))
> +	if (open_pack_index(p)) {
> +		llist_free(l.remaining_objects);
>  		return NULL;
> +	}

Right. The confusing part here is that `llist_init()` doesn't only
initialize the data structure as its name might suggest, but it also
ends up allocating memory. It would be great do adjust this interface to
clarify, but that is certainly out of scope for this patch series.

By the way, can't we avoid the memory allocation altogether by
reordering the code so that we try to open the pack before we allocate
memory?

Thanks!

Patrick