[BusyBox] Re: ifconfig: Clean up. [PATCH]

[Shaun Jackman]

On 7/26/05, Paul Fox <pgf at brightstareng.com> wrote:
>  > If CLEAN_UP is undefined, it shouldn't affect the binary size at all.
>  > If CLEAN_UP is defined, it cleans up the resources the applet has
>  > allocated, namely file descriptors in this case.
> 
> and why do we care about closing file descriptors?
> 
> perhaps i should just ask the bigger question:  when would one use
> CONFIG_FEATURE_CLEAN_UP?  why?  is there a busybox configuration where
> exit-time leaks are an issue?

This makes it possible to use utilities that detect resource leaks by
checking that at program exit all resources have been deallocated.

I'll mention that in my case -- even though as far as I know no one
else is using this -- I'm using a forkless busybox that imitates
fork/exit using setjmp/longjmp. The upside is that fork is never
called (woot!); the downside is that you don't get automatic resource
deallocation by program exit for free.

Cheers,
Shaun