Progress on the Gilectomy (Posting On Python-List Prohibited)

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 11:24 PM, CFK <cfkaran2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> When
> I draw memory usage graphs, I see sawtooth waves to the memory usage which
> suggest that the garbage builds up until the GC kicks in and reaps the
> garbage.

Interesting. How do you actually measure this memory usage? Often,
when a GC frees up memory, it's merely made available for subsequent
allocations, rather than actually given back to the system - all it
takes is one still-used object on a page and the whole page has to be
retained.

As such, a "create and drop" usage model would tend to result in
memory usage going up for a while, but then remaining stable, as all
allocations are being fulfilled from previously-released memory that's
still owned by the process.

ChrisA