Minimalist Memory Allocator in C (smalloc)

This project is a proof-of-concept for a minimalist memory allocator (smalloc) designed to allocate and deallocate memory dynamically within a fixed-size memory buffer. It uses a compact metadata system to track memory usage and is capable of functioning without an operating system.

For a detailed explanation of the design, implementation, and use cases, check out the article on smalloc.

Getting Started

Building the Project

Run the following commands to build and test the allocator:

# Build the project
make

# Run tests
make test

Visualizing Memory Dumps

The tools provided can visualize the status array from memory dumps:

• CLI Viewer: Build and run the viewer.c tool:

  ./viewer dumps/<dump_file>

• HTML Viewer: Open tools/viewer.html in your browser and load the dump file.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

More Information

For an in-depth look into the allocator, its internals, and examples, visit the accompanying article.