Re: [PATCH 1/2] Add note on MALLOC_MMAP_* environment variables

[Siddhesh Poyarekar <siddhesh at sourceware dot org>]

On Tuesday 11 October 2016 11:48 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:
> I wasn't here for the origin of those variables, I'm just thinking that
> we use a leading underscore elsewhere to mean "not official" so the
> trailing underscore here might have similar intent.

I agree, that may have been the intent.  However what happened
afterwards (i.e. their widespread use and the lack of communication to
the contrary from the then maintainers) have invalidated that intent
IMO.  What's more, other important sources (the man pages, Red Hat
product documentation) document these environment variables and that
gives them as much a sense of credibility as anything else.

> And if we decide they're official (and/or always have been), should we
> add in variants without underscores to be the official ones?

I'll be adding in tunables, which would become the 'official' versions
of these envvars.  Tunables come with the disclaimer that they may
disappear/reappear in releases, but I don't think we will do that for
the malloc tunables in practice.

> So I guess the next step is to have someone in authority (or consensus?)
> decide if those variables are "official" or not, and if they should
> become so if not.

It is usually consensus.

Siddhesh