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[Python-Dev] refleak hunting fun!

Mark Hammond mhammond at skippinet.com.au
Fri Aug 15 15:05:52 EDT 2003 
> <Brett's potentially ignorant newbie questions follow>
>
> Is there any reason not to add Michael's code to regrtest.py (or at
> least get it to the point of where it could be added)?
> Finding leaks as
> part of running a test would be nice.  We could even have a set in
> regrtest.py that stored tests known to throw the test off (because of
> caching or whatever).  Obviously testing would be option that
> is off by

I added some reference count leak tests to the pyxpcom test suite.  The
general strategy was to run a test once, count the references, then run the
tests n (for a large n) more times.  The first run before starting to count
reduces the effect of caches.  Then only a "few" leaked references is likely
to be related to the environment, whereas >n leaked references is likely to
be a real leak.

It seems to be working fairly well, and trapped a number of old and new
leaks.

Mark.
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