From de010910e28479f8a085f075d2651056022e3adb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Charlie Vieth <charlie.vieth@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2025 18:07:59 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] plugin/cache: remove superfluous allocations in item.toMsg
 (#7700)
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This commit removes superfluous allocations of the Answer, Ns, and Extra
slices when copying a cached a dns.Msg. The allocations are superfluous
because we immediately overwrite the newly copied slices with
filterRRSlice. It also updates filterRRSlice to pre-calculate the size
of the slice being copied into.

Benchmark results:

goos: darwin
goarch: arm64
pkg: github.com/coredns/coredns/plugin/cache
cpu: Apple M4 Pro
                 │ base.10.txt │             new.10.txt             │
                 │   sec/op    │   sec/op     vs base               │
CacheResponse-14   471.1n ± 0%   462.9n ± 2%  -1.74% (p=0.009 n=10)

                 │ base.10.txt │            new.10.txt             │
                 │    B/op     │    B/op     vs base               │
CacheResponse-14    672.0 ± 0%   656.0 ± 0%  -2.38% (p=0.000 n=10)

                 │ base.10.txt │            new.10.txt             │
                 │  allocs/op  │ allocs/op   vs base               │
CacheResponse-14    13.00 ± 0%   12.00 ± 0%  -7.69% (p=0.000 n=10)

Signed-off-by: Charlie Vieth <charlie.vieth@gmail.com>
---
 plugin/cache/cache_test.go | 11 ++++++++++-
 plugin/cache/dnssec.go     | 10 ++++++++--
 plugin/cache/item.go       |  4 ----
 3 files changed, 18 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/plugin/cache/cache_test.go b/plugin/cache/cache_test.go
index 1a4d178f2..ed1d38c41 100644
--- a/plugin/cache/cache_test.go
+++ b/plugin/cache/cache_test.go
@@ -594,16 +594,25 @@ func BenchmarkCacheResponse(b *testing.B) {
 
 	ctx := context.TODO()
 
+	// Add some answers since these need to be duplicated when
+	// serving a cached response.
+	answer := []dns.RR{
+		test.MX("miek.nl.	3601	IN	MX	1 aspmx.l.google.com."),
+		test.MX("miek.nl.	3601	IN	MX	10 aspmx2.googlemail.com."),
+	}
 	reqs := make([]*dns.Msg, 5)
 	for i, q := range []string{"example1", "example2", "a", "b", "ddd"} {
 		reqs[i] = new(dns.Msg)
 		reqs[i].SetQuestion(q+".example.org.", dns.TypeA)
+		reqs[i].Answer = answer
 	}
+	b.ResetTimer()
 
+	rw := &test.ResponseWriter{}
 	j := 0
 	for b.Loop() {
 		req := reqs[j]
-		c.ServeDNS(ctx, &test.ResponseWriter{}, req)
+		c.ServeDNS(ctx, rw, req)
 		j = (j + 1) % 5
 	}
 }
diff --git a/plugin/cache/dnssec.go b/plugin/cache/dnssec.go
index da7e1e9b3..e0059403b 100644
--- a/plugin/cache/dnssec.go
+++ b/plugin/cache/dnssec.go
@@ -6,8 +6,14 @@ import "github.com/miekg/dns"
 // If dup is true the RRs in rrs are _copied_ before adjusting their
 // TTL and the slice of copied RRs is returned.
 func filterRRSlice(rrs []dns.RR, ttl uint32, dup bool) []dns.RR {
+	n := 0
+	for _, r := range rrs {
+		if r.Header().Rrtype != dns.TypeOPT {
+			n++
+		}
+	}
+	rs := make([]dns.RR, n)
 	j := 0
-	rs := make([]dns.RR, len(rrs))
 	for _, r := range rrs {
 		if r.Header().Rrtype == dns.TypeOPT {
 			continue
@@ -20,5 +26,5 @@ func filterRRSlice(rrs []dns.RR, ttl uint32, dup bool) []dns.RR {
 		rs[j].Header().Ttl = ttl
 		j++
 	}
-	return rs[:j]
+	return rs
 }
diff --git a/plugin/cache/item.go b/plugin/cache/item.go
index c5aeccdcc..3259d4a72 100644
--- a/plugin/cache/item.go
+++ b/plugin/cache/item.go
@@ -82,10 +82,6 @@ func (i *item) toMsg(m *dns.Msg, now time.Time, do bool, ad bool) *dns.Msg {
 	m1.RecursionAvailable = i.RecursionAvailable
 	m1.Rcode = i.Rcode
 
-	m1.Answer = make([]dns.RR, len(i.Answer))
-	m1.Ns = make([]dns.RR, len(i.Ns))
-	m1.Extra = make([]dns.RR, len(i.Extra))
-
 	ttl := uint32(i.ttl(now))
 	m1.Answer = filterRRSlice(i.Answer, ttl, true)
 	m1.Ns = filterRRSlice(i.Ns, ttl, true)