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authorNeal Norwitz <nnorwitz@gmail.com>2005-11-20 23:58:38 (GMT)
committerNeal Norwitz <nnorwitz@gmail.com>2005-11-20 23:58:38 (GMT)
commit7bcabc60a36eb5910bd162d54ece449f5249bbcd (patch)
treecef5c71fedb71b1e9d24df5f58bded565ba1691d /Misc
parent4aef41ffe7bee84f3b6440f4d76099cd030d058b (diff)
downloadcpython-7bcabc60a36eb5910bd162d54ece449f5249bbcd.zip
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Fix a few more memory leaks
Document more info about the benefits of configuring without pymalloc when running valgrind
Diffstat (limited to 'Misc')
-rw-r--r--Misc/README.valgrind16
1 files changed, 15 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Misc/README.valgrind b/Misc/README.valgrind
index 8e480e9..157bdc3 100644
--- a/Misc/README.valgrind
+++ b/Misc/README.valgrind
@@ -12,6 +12,19 @@ Misc/valgrind-python.supp. Second, you must do one of the following:
* Uncomment the lines in Misc/valgrind-python.supp that
suppress the warnings for PyObject_Free and PyObject_Realloc
+If you want to use Valgrind more effectively and catch even more
+memory leaks, you will need to configure python --without-pymalloc.
+PyMalloc allocates a few blocks in big chunks and most object
+allocations don't call malloc, they use chunks doled about by PyMalloc
+from the big blocks. This means Valgrind can't detect
+many allocations (and frees), except for those that are forwarded
+to the system malloc. Note: configuring python --without-pymalloc
+makes Python run much slower, especially when running under Valgrind.
+You may need to run the tests in batches under Valgrind to keep
+the memory usage down to allow the tests to complete. It seems to take
+about 5 times longer to run --without-pymalloc.
+
+
Details:
--------
Python uses its own small-object allocation scheme on top of malloc,
@@ -21,7 +34,8 @@ Valgrind may show some unexpected results when PyMalloc is used.
Starting with Python 2.3, PyMalloc is used by default. You can disable
PyMalloc when configuring python by adding the --without-pymalloc option.
If you disable PyMalloc, most of the information in this document and
-the supplied suppressions file will not be useful.
+the supplied suppressions file will not be useful. As discussed above,
+disabling PyMalloc can catch more problems.
If you use valgrind on a default build of Python, you will see
many errors like: