Re: [naviserver-devel] make memcheck / valgrind

[Vasiljevic Z. <zv...@ar...>]

On 19.11.2008, at 16:45, Bernd Eidenschink wrote:

> ==3781== LEAK SUMMARY:
> ==3781==    definitely lost: 72 bytes in 5 blocks.
> ==3781==    indirectly lost: 120 bytes in 10 blocks.
> ==3781==      possibly lost: 139,672,920 bytes in 2,504 blocks.
> ==3781==    still reachable: 8,944,636 bytes in 1,508 blocks.
> ==3781==         suppressed: 0 bytes in 0 blocks.
>


Valgrind manual tells:

"possibly lost" means your program is probably leaking memory,
     -> unless you're doing funny things with pointers <-

(Other memtools like Purify do the same)

So we have few real leaks. Most of it is due to some external
extension that allocates something, then points into the alocated
block and then releases the memory. This could mean a leak/growth
but must not be. To find if this is true, kick "top" and observe
how the process virtual size behaves when you repeatedly hit your
pages (or use ab to simulate load). If this grows obviously and
increasingly as the requesst commence, then you have a leak.

I would say that naviserver is reasonably leak-free under most
circumstances, Tcl 8.4 as well. I can also speak for some extensions
like Tdom, Xotcl. We use them *extensively* and have absolutely
no memory issues (ok, perhaps we do, but not like the above).