lib/PublicInbox/ViewVCS.pm | 5 +++++

diff --git a/lib/PublicInbox/ViewVCS.pm b/lib/PublicInbox/ViewVCS.pm
index 63e503d8f33066df1593d360dbe7b1cb2a16264b..85edf22fb6ccd2000cbc107c74ceb4d0d052b0ef 100644
--- a/lib/PublicInbox/ViewVCS.pm
+++ b/lib/PublicInbox/ViewVCS.pm
@@ -26,6 +26,11 @@ 	require PublicInbox::HlMod;
 	PublicInbox::HlMod->new;
 };
 
+# we need to trigger highlight::CodeGenerator::deleteInstance
+# in HlMod::DESTROY before the rest of Perl shuts down to avoid
+# a segfault at shutdown
+END { $hl = undef };
+
 my %QP_MAP = ( A => 'oid_a', B => 'oid_b', a => 'path_a', b => 'path_b' );
 my $max_size = 1024 * 1024; # TODO: configurable
 my $enc_utf8 = find_encoding('UTF-8');