[Mesa-dev] [PATCH 2/2] mesa: add hard limits for the number of varyings and uniforms for the linker

[Dave Airlie]

> By this same logic, malloc should never return NULL because most apps can't
> handle it.  Instead it should mmap /dev/null and return a pointer to that.
>  That analogy isn't as far off as it may seem:  in both cases the underlying
> infrastructure has lied to the application that an operation succeeded, and
> it has given it a resource that it can't possibly use.

malloc actually hardly ever returns NULL, so probably want to pick a
more sane example.

On UNIX malloc generally hasn't returned NULL since overcommit was
invented, what happens now is some time in the future
you attempt to use a page and your app dies.

So not only has someone suggested this, but its been implemented to do
what you least want, which is crash the app.

Dave.