Subject: [PATCH] config: do not leak excludes_file

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2024 11:11:12 -0700

The excludes_file variable is marked "const char *", but all the
assignments to it are made with a piece of memory allocated just
for it, and the variable is responsible for owning it.

When "core.excludesfile" is read, the code just lost the previous
value, leaking memory.  Plug it.

The real problem is that the variable is mistyped; our convention
is to never make a variable that owns the piece of memory pointed
by it as "const".  Fixing that would reduce the chance of this kind
of bug happening, and also would make it unnecessary to cast the
constness away while free()ing it, but that would be a much larger
follow-up effort.

Reported-by: Rubén Justo <[email-masked]>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
---
 config.c         | 4 +++-
 t/t7300-clean.sh | 1 +
 2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/config.c b/config.c
index eebce8c7e0..ae3652b08f 100644
--- a/config.c
+++ b/config.c
@@ -1584,8 +1584,10 @@ static int git_default_core_config(const char *var, const char *value,
 	if (!strcmp(var, "core.askpass"))
 		return git_config_string(&askpass_program, var, value);
 
-	if (!strcmp(var, "core.excludesfile"))
+	if (!strcmp(var, "core.excludesfile")) {
+		free((char *)excludes_file);
 		return git_config_pathname(&excludes_file, var, value);
+	}
 
 	if (!strcmp(var, "core.whitespace")) {
 		if (!value)
diff --git a/t/t7300-clean.sh b/t/t7300-clean.sh
index 1f7201eb60..0aae0dee67 100755
--- a/t/t7300-clean.sh
+++ b/t/t7300-clean.sh
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 
 test_description='git clean basic tests'
 
+TEST_PASSES_SANITIZE_LEAK=true
 . ./test-lib.sh
 
 git config clean.requireForce no
-- 
2.44.0-501-g19981daefd