# Garbage-collection question OR ruby-gnome bug? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [May 10, 2006, 7:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/garbage-collection-question-or-ruby-gnome-bug/60099 "2006-05-10T07:09:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![cam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/bbe5ce/32.png) [@cam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cam)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2006, 7:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/garbage-collection-question-or-ruby-gnome-bug/60099/1 "2006-05-10T07:09:36Z")
Hi, My friend and I have been writing an application that makes extensive use of gdkpixbuf’s, but they never get de-allocated. I’m not entirely sure how the garbage-collector works internally in ruby, but my program quickly grows to over 114M pretty routinely. My friend wrote a simple demonstration script: require ‘gtk2’ Gtk.init path = ARGV.pop raise “Pass a large image on the command line” unless path puts “Look at how much memory I’m using, then press enter” gets #1 buf = Gdk::Pixbuf.new( path ) puts “Now I’ve allocated the pixbuf, I should be using more memory.” puts “Hit enter to dereference the pixbuf.” gets #2 buf = nil puts “Done. Press enter to exit.” gets #3 Ok, here’s the memory usage between various stages: 1: 1000 17271 0.3 2.4 15744 9312 pts/5 S+ 23:03 0:00 ruby pixbuf.rb 2: 1000 17271 0.3 4.1 22448 16228 pts/5 S+ 23:03 0:00 ruby pixbuf.rb 3: 1000 17271 0.3 4.1 22448 16228 pts/5 S+ 23:03 0:00 ruby pixbuf.rb Now this example is much more trivial than the program we’re trying to right, but they’re both having this issue w/ the pixbuf’s never being de-allocated. Is this a known bug? Is there something we can do to force the GC to take care of them? Thanks, Cameron M. ---
**Author:** ![cam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/bbe5ce/32.png) [@cam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cam)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2006, 9:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/garbage-collection-question-or-ruby-gnome-bug/60099/2 "2006-05-10T09:08:29Z")
2006/5/10, Cam [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid): > path = ARGV.pop > > Now this example is much more trivial than the program we’re trying to > right, but they’re both having this issue w/ the pixbuf’s never being > de-allocated. Is this a known bug? Is there something we can do to > force the GC to take care of them? I can only say something about your short demo piece because I don’t have the other code. It’s quite unlikely that you see the GC kick in before program termination here. GC kicks in when the interpreter decides to do it - not necessarily soon after an object has become unreachable. This is really only a problem if you have a long running version and it keeps using more memory over time. I suggest you modify your script by removing lines with “gets” and put the whole thing in a loop say 10,000 times. Then watch how memory usage develops. If it’s linearly increasing your chances are that there is a bug in Gdk or you’re using it the wrong way (i.e. do not release Gdk resources as required by the lib). HTH robert ---
**Author:** ![cam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/bbe5ce/32.png) [@cam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cam)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2006, 9:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/garbage-collection-question-or-ruby-gnome-bug/60099/3 "2006-05-10T21:44:09Z")
Hey, On 5/10/06, Robert K. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > resources as required by the lib). > I had thought about the GC not having time to free up the resources, > but I assumed that the GC would start doing its magic whenever the > program was idle. Anyway, the real program is much more complex than > this, and it should be having plenty of time for GC. Is it common for > a library to require releasing of resources? I will look into that > further, although I don’t _think_ i saw anything about that in the > docs. Thanks, Cameron M.