[Swfdec] memory profiling on swfdec

[Benjamin Otte]

Hey,

We've solved this by using a smart memory profiling tool, which knows
if memory should or should not be freed and this tool is valgrind. THe
magic command line I'm using is:
G_SLICE=always-malloc GST_REGISTRY_FORK=no valgrind --leak-check=full
--leak-resolution=high player/.libs/lt-swfplay test.swf
That will give you quite a bit of output on stderr, so it might be
useful to redirect it to a file. Only stuff which is marked as
"definitely lost" is memleak, "possibly lost" often is not (but might
be).

For added fun you can add --show-reachable=yes to get all the in-use
memory listed, too.

Cheers,
Benjamin


On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 6:13 AM, zou lunkai <zoulunkai at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Now I'v some trouble on  profiling swfdec, which uses glib heavily.
> The problem is that the gobject system registers many new types but
> never free them before program exiting. It is said that it's the OS
> responsibility to recycle those memory used by the gobject type
> system. But my memory checkers(profiling tools) don't like that. Any
> memory allocated during program executing but not freed before program
> exiting is marked as a "memory leak".  So after a single run of
> swfdec, the profiling reports gave hundreds of "memory leaks" in the
> report.  Many of them are happened inside the glib,  though glib
> designers think they are not real "memory leaks" since they would be
> collected right after program exiting anyway.  The difficulty here is
> it's hard to check which are real "memory leaks". Because memory
> leaks(if any) caused by swfdec are mixed together with those caused by
> glib in the final reports.
>
> I'v googled related issue with glib, and it's seemed to be common
> problem with glib based apps and memory profilers.  You guys have
> designed the smart GC mechanism in swfdec, so I guess you should have
> some good tips on profiling the memory leaks.  Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks ahead.
>
> --zou
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