Memory Safety
Guidelines for managing memory safely in Mosaic using RAII, custom allocators, and diagnostic tools.
Memory safety is a hot topic in modern software development—and with good reason. C++ gives us immense power, but with power comes responsibility. In Mosaic, we recognize that C++ can be safe and maintainable if the right preventive measures are in place.
Principles of Safe Memory Management
Section titled “Principles of Safe Memory Management”We strongly discourage manual memory management wherever possible. Instead, we rely on:
- Custom allocators: Inspired by Zig-style memory management, these provide deterministic and controlled memory usage without sacrificing performance.
- RAII-based wrappers: We wrap C-style code and resources in RAII classes to guarantee proper acquisition and release, making leaks and double frees much less likely.
By adhering to these principles, we reduce the chances of undefined behavior while maintaining the performance and flexibility that game engine development demands.
Diagnosis and Safety Checks
Section titled “Diagnosis and Safety Checks”Mosaic comes equipped with robust tools for memory diagnosis. Our CMakePresets.json includes profiles for MSVC and Clang Address Sanitizers, making it easy to run memory-safe builds with minimal setup.
We recommend running these diagnostic modes every time you work with manual memory management or complex inheritance hierarchies. This ensures that:
- All destructors are properly virtualized and overridden.
- No resource leaks or use-after-free issues exist.
- Ownership rules are followed consistently across the codebase.
Practical Advice
Section titled “Practical Advice”- Prefer smart pointers (
std::unique_ptr,std::shared_ptr) for dynamic objects. - Use custom allocators for large pools of objects where performance and control are important.
- Wrap C-style resources (file handles, GPU buffers, sockets) in RAII classes immediately.
- Run Address Sanitizer builds frequently, not just as a one-time check.
By combining preventive design and diagnostic tooling, Mosaic achieves a high standard of memory safety without compromising the flexibility and performance that C++ provides.