[Python-Dev] PyGC_Collect ignores state of enabled (original) (raw)

Benjamin Peterson benjamin at python.org
Tue May 10 01:55:51 EDT 2016

Adding PyGC_CollectIfEnabled() and calling it in Py_Finalize is probably fine. I don't think the contract of PyGC_Collect itself (or gc.collect() for that matter) should be changed. You might want to disable GC but invoke it yourself.

On Mon, May 9, 2016, at 19:13, Łukasz Langa wrote:

Is this deliberate? Could we change it for 3.6 so PyGCCollect does take enabled into account?

Context: we’re experimenting with disabling the gc entirely for some workloads because it doesn’t fare too well with Copy-on-Write on Linux. What ends up happening is that disabling the gc actually drops memory usage significantly if you’re using hundreds of the same processes on one box :-) However, because of PyGCCollect() called in PyFinalize(), during interpreter shutdown the collection is done anyway, Linux does CoW and the memory usage spikes. Which is ironic on process shutdown. -- Lukasz Langa | Facebook Production Engineer | The Ministry of Silly Walks (+1) 650-681-7811

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