[tahoe-dev] Debugging memory leaks with guppy

[Paul Hummer]

On 10/21/2010 06:13 PM, Francois Deppierraz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been recently experiencing memory leaks in Tahoe-LAFS during
> operations such as 'tahoe deep-check --add-lease --repair' or while
> using the FTP/SFTP frontend¹.
>
> While I was researching different ways to debug memory leaks in Python,
> I learned about a tool named Heapy which provides a heap analysis
> toolset which is part of the Guppy² Programming Environment.
>
The Bazaar team has also developed a tool called Meliae[1] that does a
good job at this as well, but it was written because Heapy just wasn't
cutting the mustard for figuring out where memory was being allocated. 
John Arbash Meinel, the main developer, wrote a blog post with some
examples on using meliae[2].

The Launchpad team has been using meliae to find memory leaks in their
server processes, and I would say they've done so with much success.

[1] https://edge.launchpad.net/meliae
[2] http://jam-bazaar.blogspot.com/2009/11/memory-debugging-with-meliae.html

Cheers,
Paul