Re: How to debug memory leaks

[edgar]

From:   Eli Zaretskii

> It's unlikely.

Yet, it happened--more than once (did you notice that I said "my Emacs 
setup" and not "Emacs"?). The good news: it's not happening anymore :)

> I'd start by looking in your init files for any customization that 
> affects GC.
>
> Also, if you use Emacs 27.1, try the RC2 release candidate of Emacs 
> 27.2, I think it fixed a problem which could create a situation where 
> GC is prevented.

So very interesting. I did have an Emacs compiled by my system, but when 
the problem surfaced, I went for my distro's package to see if that 
would solve it (not really). When I brought moe-theme back, I disabled 
the DejaVu Sans Mono font, and Emacs behaved well. It was really loading 
the TAGS which added like 400 MB on the stack (virtual and 
resident--yeah, sounds unlikely, right?). Therefore, I went to look for 
an alternative.

I am not a fan of having a subprocess running, but after trying eglot 
with clangd, I was convinced that 150 MB more on my stack would be 
acceptable. Even more, because it goes away once the buffer is closed.

I haven't done a garbage collect, and I know that having near 750 MB in 
virtual and 140 MB in resident memory is still a lot, but it is at least 
not +4 GB in between RAM and swap.

I would next compile Emacs, but I'll settle for this right now, and get 
some work done.

Thank you, Eli and all the developers for providing the world with the 
most customisable editor ever! (sorry to Mr. Stallman for calling it an 
editor)