Re: Memory leaks in gnome_apps

[Jason Nordwick <nordwick scam xcf berkeley edu>]

Manish Vachharajani wrote:
> 
> You seem to be correct, that it doesn't seem to matter, I have plenty of
> memory.  I was just concerned that there were no full pages being freed.
> It could potentially be a problem after an application that does a lot of
> widget allocation and freeing has been running for a long time.  If the
> pages cannot be returned to the system, then the OS must keep them in
> swap, since it doesn't know anything about what will happen when the
> memory is referenced.  This could fill up swap, unnecessarily.
> 

Not really, just becaus I sbrk() 100M, it doesn't fill up swap.  And with
memory overcommits, you are allowed to allocate more memory than you have,
just don't use it, or you'll get something killed off.

> Now, on the other hand, it is also disturbing that the application creates
> 3000 or so widgets to display the directory, then ALL of those widgets and
> associated data are freed, but only about 1/2 of it gets reused, the rest
> seems to get reallocated and never reused, why?  Does GTK+ never return to
> the same state after a widget is created and then destroyed?
> 

It is reused, just that you have fragmented memory, so you have holes in you
free list that aren't big enough for the next allocation that you want.  It
is a common problem.  Maybe somebody should look at the small allocation
code
(memory chuncks?), because the small allocated should do a better job. 
Better
yet, they should mmap the memory they require, insteadm of mallocing it, so
it
can be retured to the system.    Gtk since I can remember has alot of
memory problems for such a large project, maybe its time to go make the
allocations
better?

> Manish Vachharajani
> <mvachhar@vger.rutgers.edu>
> 

Jay
-- 
4.4 > 95
http://www.xcf.berkeley.edu