dynamic memory allocation

[Stephen Leake <Stephen.Leake@gsfc.nasa.gov>]

I'm trying to convince my project that dynamic memory allocation is a
bad idea in an embedded software system (a satellite control system, in
this case). 

They are proposing a message passing scheme where sending tasks allocate
buffers for each message from a heap, and receiving tasks deallocate. I
have suggested that the heap could become fragmented (the buffers are
NOT all the same size). They say "we'll just test it thoroughly".

Can anyone provide a reference to a book or study article that says this
is bad? To me it seems obvious, and the general tone in this newsgroup
is that it's obvious. I have a couple books on realtime embedded design,
and they don't even bother to mention dynamic allocation -
unfortunately, that makes it hard to say "see, this book says it's bad".

On the other side, are there any discussions of how to test such a
system, to show that it does not become fragmented? Or a book on
designing dynamic memory allocation algorithms to avoid fragmentation?

Thanks for any help,

-- 
- Stephe