[maemo-developers] Python memory use (was: [maemo-developers] Maemo 2.0 final release available)

[From: Ruda Moura]

Hello!

On Mon, 2006-07-10 at 16:38 +0300, ext Tommi Komulainen wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-07-10 at 09:15 -0300, ext Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri wrote:
> > On 7/10/06, Tommi Komulainen <tommi.komulainen at nokia.com> wrote:
> > >      2. memory consumption
> > >      4. run-time speed?
> > 
> > These are not an issue, really. Since python does garbage collect, in
> > the long run it may show even more memory efficient than pure C, which
> > may leak.
> 
> Memory leaks in C are fixable, just takes some effort. OTOH the python
> interpreter / wrapper overhead are not.

They are fixable but requires a lot of time to find and fix it, in the
meanwhile your program is leaking. It's a trade-off.

> I've also been told that python
> never releases memory back to the system, though that ought to be
> fixable.

No, the GC of Python releases and objetos are not in use anymore.
Only in a very few situations this doesn't happens. About memory usage,
it's possible to setup GC to release memory more often than the default.

BR

--
Rudá Moura