[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 133503] Memory usage increases after file open/file close but not in 4.2

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133503

--- Comment #5 from Buovjaga <ilmari.lauhakangas at libreoffice.org> ---
(In reply to Telesto from comment #4)
> (In reply to Buovjaga from comment #3)
> > Again, rule of thumb: "Is it catastrophic?" - no, so let's close.
> 
> To be or not to be. A bug is only a bug if "catastrophic"? So we can ignore
> crashes.. mostly not ending catastrophic :-). Is it catastrophic if
> LibreOffice would disappear as Openoffice did? Would human kind not survive?
> Or is the world being blown apart by some asteroid, erasing humankind a
> catastrophic? Is there catastrophe without any human surviving it? Was it a
> catastrophic for the dinosaur to extincts.. did the have a problem with it..
> What did they do to prevent it? Why did the fail?

Crashing is exactly the sort of catastrophic outcome I was referring to.

The point was: if you are not dealing with a catastrophic out-of-memory
situation and you do not understand, why a decision was made regarding resource
use, there is no need to report it. The reports I closed yesterday were clearly
about using a cache or an allocator. The results would have been alarming, if
we were talking about a sudden increase of 2GB used mem per operation.

> Also at the one end.. people are working on making LibreOffice work on
> tables/phones (image handling).. See
> https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=130768
> on the other hand we are doing as if memory can be used freely.. bug 130768
> is a waste of effort.. you can also say.. why should LibreOffice adapt..
> blame the phone maker.. with those silly specs.. and blame users should ask
> for phones which a capable to run LibreOffice.. Another perspective: wait
> until a phone gets released which can run LibreOffice.. 

Again, like I mentioned in another report, being able to achieve stuff in
memory is BETTER for tablets and phones, because it uses way less POWER and
thus gives better battery life.

The commits from the reports I closed yesterday were about improving
performance by taking advantage of memory. There is nothing wrong with tweaking
resource use (CPU vs. mem) to achieve a desired outcome.

Quoting Miklos from bug 133667:
"if somebody is interested, we could look at if it's possible to use less
memory while maintaining the same performance, I didn't investigate this
direction so far."

So the question is essentially: is perfect the enemy of the good? At some
point, you have to stop solving a problem. There is no point in turning every
single task into a PhD dissertation. New innovations may arrive and bring
unexpected improvements, but there is no value in creating reports in the hope
that some future advance in computer science will bring some marginal benefit.

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