re: Issue https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2685
re: PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/2179
As noted in PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/2179,
the old code did not allow for reclaiming instances of types,
nor for properly copying them. That PR provided new functions
capable of reclaiming/copying instances of arbitrary types.
However, as noted by Issue https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2685, using these
most general functions resulted in a significant performance
degradation, even for common cases.
This PR attempts to mitigate the cost of using the general
reclaim/copy functions in two ways.
First, the previous functions operating at the top level by
using ncid and typeid arguments. These functions were augmented
with equivalent versions that used the netcdf-c library internal
data structures to allow direct access to needed information.
These new functions are used internally to the library.
The second mitigation involves optimizing the internal functions
by providing early tests for common cases. This avoids
unnecessary recursive function calls.
The overall result is a significant improvement in speed by a
factor of roughly twenty -- your mileage may vary. These
optimized functions are still not as fast as the original (more
limited) functions, but they are getting close. Additional optimizations are
possible. But the cost is a significant "uglification" of the
code that I deemed a step too far, at least for now.
## Misc. Changes
1. Added a test case to check the proper reclamation/copy of complex types.
2. Found and fixed some places where nc_reclaim/copy should have been used.
3. Replaced, in the netcdf-c library, (almost all) occurrences of nc_reclaim_copy with calls to NC_reclaim/copy. This plus the optimizations is the primary speed-up mechanism.
4. In DAP4, the metadata is held in a substrate in-memory file; this required some changes so that the reclaim/copy code accessed that substrate dispatcher rather than the DAP4 dispatcher.
5. Re-factored and isolated the code that computes if a type is (transitively) variable-sized or not.
6. Clean up the reclamation code in ncgen; adding the use of nc_reclaim exposed some memory problems.
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/541
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/1208
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2078
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2041
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2143
For a long time, there have been known problems with the
management of complex types containing VLENs. This also
involves the string type because it is stored as a VLEN of
chars.
This PR (mostly) fixes this problem. But note that it adds new
functions to netcdf.h (see below) and this may require bumping
the .so number. These new functions can be removed, if desired,
in favor of functions in netcdf_aux.h, but netcdf.h seems the
better place for them because they are intended as alternatives
to the nc_free_vlen and nc_free_string functions already in
netcdf.h.
The term complex type refers to any type that directly or
transitively references a VLEN type. So an array of VLENS, a
compound with a VLEN field, and so on.
In order to properly handle instances of these complex types, it
is necessary to have function that can recursively walk
instances of such types to perform various actions on them. The
term "deep" is also used to mean recursive.
At the moment, the two operations needed by the netcdf library are:
* free'ing an instance of the complex type
* copying an instance of the complex type.
The current library does only shallow free and shallow copy of
complex types. This means that only the top level is properly
free'd or copied, but deep internal blocks in the instance are
not touched.
Note that the term "vector" will be used to mean a contiguous (in
memory) sequence of instances of some type. Given an array with,
say, dimensions 2 X 3 X 4, this will be stored in memory as a
vector of length 2*3*4=24 instances.
The use cases are primarily these.
## nc_get_vars
Suppose one is reading a vector of instances using nc_get_vars
(or nc_get_vara or nc_get_var, etc.). These functions will
return the vector in the top-level memory provided. All
interior blocks (form nested VLEN or strings) will have been
dynamically allocated.
After using this vector of instances, it is necessary to free
(aka reclaim) the dynamically allocated memory, otherwise a
memory leak occurs. So, the recursive reclaim function is used
to walk the returned instance vector and do a deep reclaim of
the data.
Currently functions are defined in netcdf.h that are supposed to
handle this: nc_free_vlen(), nc_free_vlens(), and
nc_free_string(). Unfortunately, these functions only do a
shallow free, so deeply nested instances are not properly
handled by them.
Note that internally, the provided data is immediately written so
there is no need to copy it. But the caller may need to reclaim the
data it passed into the function.
## nc_put_att
Suppose one is writing a vector of instances as the data of an attribute
using, say, nc_put_att.
Internally, the incoming attribute data must be copied and stored
so that changes/reclamation of the input data will not affect
the attribute.
Again, the code inside the netcdf library does only shallow copying
rather than deep copy. As a result, one sees effects such as described
in Github Issue https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2143.
Also, after defining the attribute, it may be necessary for the user
to free the data that was provided as input to nc_put_att().
## nc_get_att
Suppose one is reading a vector of instances as the data of an attribute
using, say, nc_get_att.
Internally, the existing attribute data must be copied and returned
to the caller, and the caller is responsible for reclaiming
the returned data.
Again, the code inside the netcdf library does only shallow copying
rather than deep copy. So this can lead to memory leaks and errors
because the deep data is shared between the library and the user.
# Solution
The solution is to build properly recursive reclaim and copy
functions and use those as needed.
These recursive functions are defined in libdispatch/dinstance.c
and their signatures are defined in include/netcdf.h.
For back compatibility, corresponding "ncaux_XXX" functions
are defined in include/netcdf_aux.h.
````
int nc_reclaim_data(int ncid, nc_type xtypeid, void* memory, size_t count);
int nc_reclaim_data_all(int ncid, nc_type xtypeid, void* memory, size_t count);
int nc_copy_data(int ncid, nc_type xtypeid, const void* memory, size_t count, void* copy);
int nc_copy_data_all(int ncid, nc_type xtypeid, const void* memory, size_t count, void** copyp);
````
There are two variants. The first two, nc_reclaim_data() and
nc_copy_data(), assume the top-level vector is managed by the
caller. For reclaim, this is so the user can use, for example, a
statically allocated vector. For copy, it assumes the user
provides the space into which the copy is stored.
The second two, nc_reclaim_data_all() and
nc_copy_data_all(), allows the functions to manage the
top-level. So for nc_reclaim_data_all, the top level is
assumed to be dynamically allocated and will be free'd by
nc_reclaim_data_all(). The nc_copy_data_all() function
will allocate the top level and return a pointer to it to the
user. The user can later pass that pointer to
nc_reclaim_data_all() to reclaim the instance(s).
# Internal Changes
The netcdf-c library internals are changed to use the proper
reclaim and copy functions. It turns out that the places where
these functions are needed is quite pervasive in the netcdf-c
library code. Using these functions also allows some
simplification of the code since the stdata and vldata fields of
NC_ATT_INFO are no longer needed. Currently this is commented
out using the SEPDATA \#define macro. When any bugs are largely
fixed, all this code will be removed.
# Known Bugs
1. There is still one known failure that has not been solved.
All the failures revolve around some variant of this .cdl file.
The proximate cause of failure is the use of a VLEN FillValue.
````
netcdf x {
types:
float(*) row_of_floats ;
dimensions:
m = 5 ;
variables:
row_of_floats ragged_array(m) ;
row_of_floats ragged_array:_FillValue = {-999} ;
data:
ragged_array = {10, 11, 12, 13, 14}, {20, 21, 22, 23}, {30, 31, 32},
{40, 41}, _ ;
}
````
When a solution is found, I will either add it to this PR or post a new PR.
# Related Changes
* Mark nc_free_vlen(s) as deprecated in favor of ncaux_reclaim_data.
* Remove the --enable-unfixed-memory-leaks option.
* Remove the NC_VLENS_NOTEST code that suppresses some vlen tests.
* Document this change in docs/internal.md
* Disable the tst_vlen_data test in ncdump/tst_nccopy4.sh.
* Mark types as fixed size or not (transitively) to optimize the reclaim
and copy functions.
# Misc. Changes
* Make Doxygen process libdispatch/daux.c
* Make sure the NC_ATT_INFO_T.container field is set.
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/1373 (partial)
* Mark some global constants be const to indicate to make them easier to track.
* Hide direct access to the ncrc_globalstate behind a function call.
* Convert dispatch tables to constants (except the user defined ones)
This has some consequences in terms of function arguments needing to be marked
as const also.
* Remove some no longer needed global fields
* Aggregate all the globals in nclog.c
* Uniformly replace nc_sizevector{0,1} with NC_coord_{zero,one}
* Uniformly replace nc_ptrdffvector1 with NC_stride_one
* Remove some obsolete code
This is a follow up to PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/1173
Sorry that it is so big, but leak suppression can be complex.
This PR fixes all remaining memory leaks -- as determined by
-fsanitize=address, and with the exceptions noted below.
Unfortunately. there remains a significant leak that I cannot
solve. It involves vlens, and it is unclear if the leak is
occurring in the netcdf-c library or the HDF5 library.
I have added a check_PROGRAM to the ncdump directory to show the
problem. The program is called tst_vlen_demo.c To exercise it,
build the netcdf library with -fsanitize=address enabled. Then
go into ncdump and do a "make clean check". This should build
tst_vlen_demo without actually executing it. Then do the
command "./tst_vlen_demo" to see the output of the memory
checker. Note the the lost malloc is deep in the HDF5 library
(in H5Tvlen.c).
I am temporarily working around this error in the following way.
1. I modified several test scripts to not execute known vlen tests
that fail as described above.
2. Added an environment variable called NC_VLEN_NOTEST.
If set, then those specific tests are suppressed.
This should mean that the --disable-utilities option to
./configure should not need to be set to get a memory leak clean
build. This should allow for detection of any new leaks.
Note: I used an environment variable rather than a ./configure
option to control the vlen tests. This is because it is
temporary (I hope) and because it is a bit tricky for shell
scripts to access ./configure options.
Finally, as before, this only been tested with netcdf-4 and hdf5 support.
The identifier typename is apparently a reserved word in C++.
It is used as a fieldname in the ALignment struct in
include/ncoffsets.h.
Change the field name to type_name in ncoffsets.h
and also in libdispatch/doffsets.c, which uses that field.
Specific changes:
1. Add dap4 code: libdap4 and dap4_test.
Note that until the d4ts server problem is solved, dap4 is turned off.
2. Modify various files to support dap4 flags:
configure.ac, Makefile.am, CMakeLists.txt, etc.
3. Add nc_test/test_common.sh. This centralizes
the handling of the locations of various
things in the build tree: e.g. where is
ncgen.exe located. See nc_test/test_common.sh
for details.
4. Modify .sh files to use test_common.sh
5. Obsolete separate oc2 by moving it to be part of
netcdf-c. This means replacing code with netcdf-c
equivalents.
5. Add --with-testserver to configure.ac to allow
override of the servers to be used for --enable-dap-remote-tests.
6. There were multiple versions of nctypealignment code. Try to
centralize in libdispatch/doffset.c and include/ncoffsets.h
7. Add a unit test for the ncuri code because of its complexity.
8. Move the findserver code out of libdispatch and into
a separate, self contained program in ncdap_test and dap4_test.
9. Move the dispatch header files (nc{3,4}dispatch.h) to
.../include because they are now shared by modules.
10. Revamp the handling of TOPSRCDIR and TOPBUILDDIR for shell scripts.
11. Make use of MREMAP if available
12. Misc. minor changes e.g.
- #include <config.h> -> #include "config.h"
- Add some no-install headers to /include
- extern -> EXTERNL and vice versa as needed
- misc header cleanup
- clean up checking for misc. unix vs microsoft functions
13. Change copyright decls in some files to point to LICENSE file.
14. Add notes to RELEASENOTES.md
