Memory use analysis

Memory use analysis

[mark]

I'm facing an issue with ballooning memory usage in a progam I'm writing
and having a difficult time tracking down the root cause. The stack
stays small but it uses more and more heap space until the system runs
out of memory.

Is there some kind of tool or method for getting Guile to enumerate what
objects in the heap are considered "live" by the GC? I guess the
conservative GC Guile uses doesn't explicitly keep track of every
object, but I wouldn't mind just being able to see what stuff in the
heap it *thinks* it needs to keep, and then query what kind of SCM
objects they represent.

Thanks

-- 
Mark Witmer

Re: Memory use analysis

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

mark@markwitmer.com skribis:

> Is there some kind of tool or method for getting Guile to enumerate what
> objects in the heap are considered "live" by the GC? I guess the
> conservative GC Guile uses doesn't explicitly keep track of every
> object, but I wouldn't mind just being able to see what stuff in the
> heap it *thinks* it needs to keep, and then query what kind of SCM
> objects they represent.

Not exactly what you’re asking for, but very useful: the (statprof)
module comes with ‘gcprof’, which samples the stack each time the GC
runs (info "(guile) Statprof").  It allows you to see which part of the
programs are allocating the most, roughly.

HTH,
Ludo’.

Re: Memory use analysis

[Andy Wingo]

On Tue 13 Aug 2013 20:23, mark@markwitmer.com writes:

> I'm facing an issue with ballooning memory usage in a progam I'm writing
> and having a difficult time tracking down the root cause. The stack
> stays small but it uses more and more heap space until the system runs
> out of memory.

We don't have good tools for this :(

However you can set the GC_PRINT_STATS or GC_PRINT_VERBOSE_STATS
environment variables, and perhaps that is helpful to you.

Andy
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