On Tue, 8 Jul 2008, Travis E. Oliphant wrote:
> Michael Abbott wrote:
> > The attached patch fixes another reference count leak in the use of
> > PyArray_DescrFromType.
> >
> The first part of this patch is good. The second is not needed.
I don't see that. The second part of the patch addresses the case of an
early return: this means that the DECREF that occurs later on in the code
is bypassed, and so a reference leak will still occur if this early return
case occurs. Don't forget that PyArray_DescrFromType returns an
incremented reference that has to be decremented, returned or explicitly
assigned -- the DECREF obligation has to be met somewhere.
> Also, it would be useful if you could write a test case that shows what
> is leaking and how you determined that it is leaking.
Roughly
r = range(n)
i = 0
refs = 0
refs = sys.gettotalrefcount()
for i in r: float32()
print refs - sys.gettotalrefcount()
in debug mode python. This isn't quite the whole story (reference counts
can be annoyingly fluid), but that's the most of it. In trunk this leaks
2 refs per n, with the attached patch there remains one leak I haven't
chased down yet.
Is there a framework for writing test cases? I'm constructing tests just
to pin down leaks that I find in my application (uses numpy and ctypes
extensively), so they're terribly ad-hoc at the moment.
I'm chasing down leaks in a leaky application (it ate 1G over a weekend),
and numpy is just one source of leaks -- I suspec that the two reference
count leaks I've identified so far don't actually leak significant memory,
so alas my search continues...
> > Definitely not enjoying this low level code.
> What doesn't kill you makes you stronger :-)
Heh.
> But, you are correct that reference counting is a bear.
Actually, it's not the reference counting I'm grumbling about -- the rules
for reference counting are, on the whole, pretty straightforward.
_______________________________________________
Numpy-discussion mailing list
Numpy-discussion@scipy.org
http://projects.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
