Subject: Re: [PATCH] submodule--helper: replace malloc with xmalloc

From: Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2026 13:22:03 +0100

On Tue, Mar 10, 2026 at 05:40:13PM +0530, Siddharth Shrimali wrote:
> The submodule_summary_callback() function currently uses a raw malloc()
> which could lead to NULL pointer dereference.
> 
> Standardize this by replacing malloc() with xmalloc() for error handling.
> Also, remove the unnecessary type cast and use sizeof(*temp) instead of
> struct name in xmalloc to improve maintainability of the code.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Siddharth Shrimali <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  builtin/submodule--helper.c | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/builtin/submodule--helper.c b/builtin/submodule--helper.c
> index 143f7cb3cc..f3e132888f 100644
> --- a/builtin/submodule--helper.c
> +++ b/builtin/submodule--helper.c
> @@ -1160,7 +1160,7 @@ static void submodule_summary_callback(struct diff_queue_struct *q,
>  
>  		if (!S_ISGITLINK(p->one->mode) && !S_ISGITLINK(p->two->mode))
>  			continue;
> -		temp = (struct module_cb*)malloc(sizeof(struct module_cb));
> +		temp = xmalloc(sizeof(*temp));
>  		temp->mod_src = p->one->mode;
>  		temp->mod_dst = p->two->mode;
>  		temp->oid_src = p->one->oid;

Yup, looks good to me, and all the other while-at-it changes are
sensible, as well. Thanks!

Patrick