Are memory leaks ever ok? [closed]

Answer 1

I agree with vfilby – it depends. In Windows, we treat memory leaks as relatively serous bugs. But, it very much depends on the component.

For example, memory leaks are not very serious for components that run rarely, and for limited periods of time. These components run, do theire work, then exit. When they exit all their memory is freed implicitly.

However, memory leaks in services or other long run components (like the shell) are very serious. The reason is that these bugs 'steal' memory over time. The only way to recover this is to restart the components. Most people don't know how to restart a service or the shell – so if their system performance suffers, they just reboot.

So, if you have a leak – evaluate its impact two ways

1. To your software and your user's experience.
2. To the system (and the user) in terms of being frugal with system resources.
3. Impact of the fix on maintenance and reliability.
4. Likelihood of causing a regression somewhere else.

Foredecker