C++ operator new on Windows

[seanmiddleditch]

While #85 makes this somewhat moot for me right now, it appears that overriding operator new in C++ on Windows is incomplete in mimalloc.

There's an #if 0 around the code in alloc-override-win.c that appears to be necessary to patch the operators. It's not documented why that's there.

Further, not all modern overloads of new are patched as of C++17. For example, there does not appear to be any patching for the std::align_val_t overloads, despite the mimalloc documentation.

[daanx]

Thanks! Overriding the C++ operators is never necessary as they use malloc/free under the hood. Currently we only override them when compiling with a C++ compiler and only on macOS/Unix systems. The dynamic overriding on Windows is also still in flux so we disable it for now -- we might enable it again in the future for performance reasons.

[seanmiddleditch]

Overriding the C++ operators is never necessary as they use malloc/free under the hood

As discussed in #26, there is no such guarantee. Assuming new invokes malloc is relying on implementation-specific behavior within the standard library.

Even where it does... why would I want the align_val_t overloads of new to invoke malloc (and be forced to over-allocate and align within the block) rather than invoking an appropriate alignment-aware allocation entry point in the allocator?

[daanx]

I agree Sean. I just pushed an update to the C++ overriding on Linux/BSD which is more complete and added the sized deletes on Windows. On windows there is still the #if 0 since we are actively working on an improved version. You can use #if 1 if you like -- it is as yet disabled since we observed problems on some (large) programs and it needs more investigation; for most programs it should be fine though :-)