> 	3) When called from the syncer itself, the softdep sync code may
> 	   may in fact allocate additional dependencies, albeit temporarily.
> 	   When its done, the total number of allocated dependencies will
> 	   have dropped, but in the meantime I may need to allocate
> 	   a few more elements, and can not fail on the hard limit.

I would just setup a private pool for exclusive use by the syncer,
with no hard limit and maybe a guaranteed minimum number of items
by priming it up front.

In fact, this type of usage is exactly what pools were invented for.

-pk