esp-idf: spinlock_acquire assertion fail (IDFGH-10048)

Answers checklist.

• I have read the documentation ESP-IDF Programming Guide and the issue is not addressed there.
• I have updated my IDF branch (master or release) to the latest version and checked that the issue is present there.
• I have searched the issue tracker for a similar issue and not found a similar issue.

General issue report

I’ve been using ESP-IDF v4.4 (but I have updated to the latest release, v4.4-dev-3540-g4e03a9c34c - I can’t use anything after v4.4 because websockets were removed) on my ESP32-S3 DevkitC-1 N32R8V and have been having no problems. But suddenly, with no changes other than rebuilding ESP-IDF, I now get frequent crashes from spinlock_acquire. I get the following error message:

assert failed: spinlock_acquire spinlock.h:122 (result == core_id || result == SPINLOCK_FREE)

In some cases I get a different error from compare_set.h, which appears to come from a function called just prior to the assertion in spinlock_acquire. There’s no error message for this other than a panic message and a stack trace including compare_set at the top:

Guru Meditation Error: Core  0 panic'ed (StoreProhibited). Exception was unhandled.
...
0x403805cd - compare_and_set_native
    at /home/devin/Desktop/netsblox-vm-esp32/.embuild/espressif/esp-idf/release-v4.4/components/esp_hw_support/include/soc/compare_set.h:25
0x403834e9 - vPortEnterCritical
    at /home/devin/Desktop/netsblox-vm-esp32/.embuild/espressif/esp-idf/release-v4.4/components/freertos/port/xtensa/include/freertos/portmacro.h:578
0x40383516 - multi_heap_malloc_impl
    at /home/devin/Desktop/netsblox-vm-esp32/.embuild/espressif/esp-idf/release-v4.4/components/heap/multi_heap.c:186
0x403769bb - heap_caps_malloc_base
    at /home/devin/Desktop/netsblox-vm-esp32/.embuild/espressif/esp-idf/release-v4.4/components/heap/heap_caps.c:175
0x40376a0c - heap_caps_malloc_default
    at /home/devin/Desktop/netsblox-vm-esp32/.embuild/espressif/esp-idf/release-v4.4/components/heap/heap_caps.c:230
0x403842a5 - malloc
    at /home/devin/Desktop/netsblox-vm-esp32/.embuild/espressif/esp-idf/release-v4.4/components/newlib/heap.c:24
...

It seems that it’s calling compare_and_set_native, which may be incorrect because I have SPI RAM support enabled and accessibe through malloc. Altohugh it looks like this is specifically an error caused by dynamic allocation, rather than the mutex lock. However, it seems the common thread between these issues is the compare_and_set function. Possibly related to #9120 since I am also using SPI RAM on an ESP32-S3.

The specific interaction that causes this is when I perform an HTTPS request to the device with the https server component, which then writes to NVS. It may be some complex interaction between these. The problem occurs in general with some, but not all, dynamic allocations with malloc (more details below). Also, because it only started doing this recently, I think it is likely some (relatively) recent change to the ESP-IDF v4.4 release. I’ve reverted my version of ESP-IDF back to the version when my project was last working (from a clean build), and the problem persists (more details below).