Shameless plug:

This generally discusses the lack of RAII in C (towards the end), and what to do about it:

https://floooh.github.io/2019/09/27/modern-c-for-cpp-peeps.h...

...and this presents a (reasonably runtime-safe) general memory management strategy using tagged-index-handles instead of pointers:

https://floooh.github.io/2018/06/17/handles-vs-pointers.html

The gist is basically:

- don't allocate small chunks of memory all over the code base, instead move memory management into few centralized systems, and let those systems own all memory they allocate

- don't use pointers as public "object references", instead use "tagged index handles"

- don't use "owning pointers" at all, use pointers only as short-lived "immutable borrow references"