[GHC] #698: GHC's internal memory allocator never releases memory back to the OS

[GHC]

#698: GHC's internal memory allocator never releases memory back to the OS
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    Reporter:  guest             |        Owner:  igloo           
        Type:  bug               |       Status:  new             
    Priority:  low               |    Milestone:  6.12 branch     
   Component:  Runtime System    |      Version:  6.4.1           
    Severity:  normal            |   Resolution:                  
    Keywords:                    |   Difficulty:  Moderate (1 day)
    Testcase:  N/A               |           Os:  Linux           
Architecture:  Unknown/Multiple  |  
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Changes (by guest):

 * cc: gwern0 at gmail.com (added)

Comment:

 I second Bulat's comment. This is *very* important for long-running
 servers. Consider the Gitit wiki server. There are a few pages like
 'Recent changes' which get the entire revision history; each time this
 happens, the memory usage goes up a bit - even though even last bit of the
 history will get discarded once the page has been constructed and sent off
 to the client. (We've checked for memory leaks.) This is especially
 problematic when Gitit is being used, surprisingly enough, as a web host,
 since typically this is done on virtualized slices or is otherwise
 resource-constrained. It looks bad for wiki.darcs.net that an idling gitit
 takes 31% of RAM.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/698#comment:9>
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