[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] ffv1enc: reduce stack usage.

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Tue, Sep 02, 2014 at 08:58:50PM +0200, wm4 wrote:
> On Tue,  2 Sep 2014 20:32:57 +0200
> Reimar Döffinger <Reimar.Doeffinger at gmx.de> wrote:
> > @@ -933,6 +938,7 @@ static av_cold int encode_init(AVCodecContext *avctx)
> >                  }
> >              }
> >          }
> > +        av_freep(&best_state);
> >      }
> >  
> >      if (s->version > 1) {
> 
> Is there any specific purpose to these changes? Sure, 64KB stack is
> pushing a bit, but it should be fine on all normal systems.

First, that is only true if you assume that the calling application
did not already use up all but 64 kB of stack.
As a library, every byte we use on stack is a byte the calling
application must ensure to leave free.
Plus, "normal" system depends a lot on your definition.
If you wanted to run 1000 threads on a 32 bit system, you certainly
can't use 8MB stacks like we might be used to on our systems.
Windows uses 1 MB stack by default.
Since we are a library, I think it is reasonable to say that we
definitely should not never grab more than 1/4th (and I find that rather
high personally).
That leaves us with 256kB. To keep a safety margin since we simply
don't test all paths, I would suggest testing at least for 128 kB max.
That does give us the freedom to allow 64 kB allocations if you should
find my patches too intrusive, it just feels cutting it a bit close
even on fairly common systems, not to mention that it might prevent
us from running at all on more obscure systems.
So I'd prefer to avoid it. However there is the question of which
code mess/benefit ratio we want to accept.