ghc releasing memory during compilation

[Ketil Malde]

I think I complained earlier about '+RTS -MxxxM' not being respected,
but was unable to reproduce the issue.  I just saw this again, my
process was, I thought, limited to 800M heap, but, just before I gave
up and killed the process, 'top' told me:

  18580 ketil     18   0 1762m 945m  256 D  3.0 93.5  33:52.81 rbr

So it used more than double the amount of memory.

However, running the same executable with the same -M option on a
different computer, it stayed firmly at

  32139 ketil     25   0  779M 779M   872 R    99.8  9.9  16:17   0 rbr

Apparently, there is some subtle difference between the two systems
that causes the RTS's heap limitation to fail.  The uname -a on the
two systems say:

-M works:  

  Linux ... 2.4.21-32.0.1.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed May 25 13:51:11 EDT 2005 x86_64 x86_64
x86_64 GNU/Linux

-M fails:  

  Linux ... 2.6.9-22.EL #1 Sat Oct 8 17:48:27 CDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Let me know if there's any other information I can supply.

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants