Thanks for the replies. I checked that finish() is called for the activity when the user presses the back button.
> why do you expect the system to close the Activity and free the memory Well basically because if I want to do some background processing (playing music, tracking location etc.) while the user is doing other things I would want my process to use memory as little as possible so that the system wouldn't kill it. But if my UI i.e. Activities stay in the memory even when they are not used it makes the background process more likely to be killed. I also tried using some memory extensive apps (Maps, Browser, Camera) but the system still didn't free the activities of my app. > if you are somehow measuring things incorrectly. That might be the case. So here is a brief explanation. 1. The sample app that I'm running can be found from: http://users.tkk.fi/~mristima/android/service_test.tar 2. I start the app 3. To check the memory consumption I run: adb shell dumpsys meminfo com.android.service_test. 4. I press the back button 5. From DDMS I force GC for system_process and my app process 6. Finally I run adb shell dumpsys meminfo com.android.service_test again. Is there something wrong or strange here?? Also what is interesting, is that using android 1.1 (AVD) as a target, all the activities are freed from memory but in 1.5 they are not. I'm really baffled about this, so it would be great to have some kind of explanation for this, or to understand what I'm doing wrong. -Mika On Oct 21, 1:10 am, Dianne Hackborn <[email protected]> wrote: > I am pretty sure the standard music app doesn't leak, so I wonder if you are > somehow measuring things incorrectly. > > > > > > On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 2:11 AM, Mika <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi Dianne, > > > This is what I assumed also. Do you have any ideas where the leak > > could be in the sample app that I posted? I also checked the music > > player app with meminfo and it behaves similarly leaving activities in > > memory even after the ui is closed and system_process and > > com.android.music processes are GCed from DDMS. I also tested with 1.1 > > SDK and Emulator and there everything works as presumed and no > > activities stay in memory after they are closed. > > > -Mika > > > On Oct 15, 7:56 pm, Dianne Hackborn <[email protected]> wrote: > > > If you press back and let the system finish the activity, all references > > to > > > it will be gone, so though your process is there after it GCs the > > resources > > > (views etc) associated with the activity should be gone. If you still > > see > > > them after you know the process has GCed, then you have a leak in your > > app. > > > > On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 7:57 AM, String <[email protected] > > >wrote: > > > > > On Oct 15, 3:08 pm, Mika <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > So the problem is quite simple. I start a Service from an Activity, > > > > > the user presses back, the Activity goes away and the Service stays > > > > > running in the background. However the activity (and it's views) > > still > > > > > stay in memory. > > > > > Feature. It's central to the Android architecture that activities > > > > aren't killed by the system until their resources are needed > > > > elsewhere. The idea, I think, is that if the user goes back into your > > > > activity before that happens, it's ready and waiting. > > > > > Some good discussion of it in this thread: > > > > >http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/threa. > > .. > > > > > String > > > > -- > > > Dianne Hackborn > > > Android framework engineer > > > [email protected] > > > > Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to > > > provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such > > > questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see > > and > > > answer them. > > -- > Dianne Hackborn > Android framework engineer > [email protected] > > Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to > provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such > questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and > answer them. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
