I don't understand the difference between MEM_RELEASE and MEM_DECOMMIT in the Windows VirtualFree function.
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MEM_RELEASE will free the mapping completely like munmap on Linux, making the address space usable for other things.
MEM_DECOMMIT will release the memory but hold onto the reserve address space like clobbering a mapping with mmap + MAP_FIXED + PROT_NONE on Linux.
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What does "hold onto" mean in this context? Does it mean the process continues to reserve the memory but the content pages are discarded?
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Or does it mean the process continues to reserve the memory AND the pointer but the content is invalidated?
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It has the memory mapping but you can't use the memory because it's not committed, i.e. it can't assign pages to it if you touch it. It's just like having PROT_NONE mappings on Linux. The reason this exists is because Windows is designed around memory accounting, not overcommit.
Linux has a memory accounting mode via /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory and it just treats fresh PROT_NONE mappings the way Windows does MEM_RESERVE mappings.
Not really a way to do MEM_DECOMMIT on Linux other than clobbering with a new PROT_NONE mapping via mmap with MAP_FIXED.
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If you purge all the pages from it on Linux with madvise + MADV_DONTNEED and then mprotect it back to PROT_NONE, the kernel still counts it against you for memory accounting. Have to clobber it with a fresh mapping to get a MEM_DECOMMIT equivalent which works fine but is odd.