So I think I've finally plugged all my memory leaks (tip: watch out for Handlers which outlive your Activity), and overall, my apps seem to be doing pretty well in this regard. But in the last couple of days I've had a user complaining that one app is using far too much memory, and furthermore that it gets worse as the app is running longer (it has a clock widgets, so it'll stay resident in memory if things aren't too tight). He's saying it's frequently at 40-50MB, and will climb over 80MB.
Now, you and I both know that this isn't possible given the constraints of the Dalvik heap. Following up with this user, I learn that he's getting these numbers from Process Monitor Widget (PMW), and sure enough, when I install it I see something similar. I reached out to the dev of PMW, and he informs me that he's getting the figures "from the kernel process description file located @ /proc/$pid/stat." Not being a Linux kernel guy, I'm not well versed on such matters, but I'm strongly suspecting that it's not valid for Dalvik processes. For example: right now the app in question on my N1 is showing 57MB in PMW, while a heap dump in DDMS shows 3.4MB. This latter number seems quite reasonable to me, but I don't feel OK in just going back to this user and saying "PWM, and other apps of its ilk, are just wrong." That could easily develop into a "he said, she said" situation. So, I'm hoping somebody here - ideally someone on the framework team (you here, Romain? ;^) ) - can speak more authoritatively about this. And hopefully, other devs that face this situation in the future can be better equipped to deal with it. Anyone? String -- 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
