config: fix leaks from git_config_get_string_const()

There are two functions to get a single config string:

  - git_config_get_string()

  - git_config_get_string_const()

One might naively think that the first one allocates a new string and
the second one just points us to the internal configset storage. But
in fact they both allocate a new copy; the second one exists only to
avoid having to cast when using it with a const global which we never
intend to free.

The documentation for the function explains that clearly, but it seems
I'm not alone in being surprised by this. Of 17 calls to the function,
13 of them leak the resulting value.

We could obviously fix these by adding the appropriate free(). But it
would be simpler still if we actually had a non-allocating way to get
the string. There's git_config_get_value() but that doesn't quite do
what we want. If the config key is present but is a boolean with no
value (e.g., "[foo]bar" in the file), then we'll get NULL (whereas the
string versions will print an error and die).

So let's introduce a new variant, git_config_get_string_tmp(), that
behaves as these callers expect. We need a new name because we have new
semantics but the same function signature (so even if we converted the
four remaining callers, topics in flight might be surprised). The "tmp"
is because this value should only be held onto for a short time. In
practice it's rare for us to clear and refresh the configset,
invalidating the pointer, but hopefully the "tmp" makes callers think
about the lifetime. In each of the converted cases here the value only
needs to last within the local function or its immediate caller.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/connect.c b/connect.c
index e0d5b9fee0..3a555611d6 100644
--- a/connect.c
+++ b/connect.c
@@ -1052,7 +1052,7 @@ static const char *get_ssh_command(void)
 	if ((ssh = getenv("GIT_SSH_COMMAND")))
 		return ssh;
 
-	if (!git_config_get_string_const("core.sshcommand", &ssh))
+	if (!git_config_get_string_tmp("core.sshcommand", &ssh))
 		return ssh;
 
 	return NULL;
@@ -1071,7 +1071,7 @@ static void override_ssh_variant(enum ssh_variant *ssh_variant)
 {
 	const char *variant = getenv("GIT_SSH_VARIANT");
 
-	if (!variant && git_config_get_string_const("ssh.variant", &variant))
+	if (!variant && git_config_get_string_tmp("ssh.variant", &variant))
 		return;
 
 	if (!strcmp(variant, "auto"))