Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!cam-eng!nhr
From: nhr@eng.cam.ac.uk (Neil Russell)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Garbage Collection
Summary: GC memory leak
Message-ID: <1991May28.202104.27332@eng.cam.ac.uk>
Date: 28 May 91 20:21:04 GMT
Sender: Neil Russell
Organization: Cambridge University Engineering Department, UK
Lines: 20
Nntp-Posting-Host: dsl.eng.cam.ac.uk

I'm currently experiencing problems with garbage collection -- it doesn't
appear to work.  I have a program which has an image size of about
1.5 Mb after it has built the main data structures during the initialisation
phase and then shouldn't consume much memory for permanent structures
subsequently.  However its image grows at about 30kb every 10 seconds
or so until the point is reached where it has consumed all the available
memory on the machine! (many Mb).  I'm pretty sure I've got GC switched on.

Are there any known bugs with the GC run-time system. Is there a maximum
rate at which dead objects are created which it can cope with?  The only
thing I can think of which might confuse it and give rise to a memory
leak is using `Copy' on ARRAY objects -- this causes the `area' of
the target array to be unreferenced, though this shouldn't be a problem
if `area' refers to a "normal" Eiffel object.

We run Eiffel V2.3 level 4 under SunOS on a Sparc 2. I would be grateful
for any assistance/pointers,

Neil  Russell
E-mail: nhr@uk.ac.cam.eng