I found by Valgring that some GTK+ programs leaks memory. How important it is to fix those leaks? I mean, often those programs works very well but on the other hand, one can never be sure if one wants to copy part of the leaking code to some other program. And I'm not sure if the idea of GTK+-programs is to work fast and therefore there are leaks.So if I sometimes find a memory leak in an open source program, should I fix it or are there for example efficiency issues and therefore programmers original idea was to write some small leaking code?
How important it is to fix memory leaks?
c;memory
For short running programs memory leaks are not as important; the OS will reclaim everything on termination, but they may cause other resources to not be released. However short running is relative, a leak can spiral out of control in a few hours or stack up for weeks unnoticed.My advice is to file a bug in the tracker with a proposed fix, if the lead cares he will fix it.