Hi Jeff, do you have a particular alternative in mind? Certainly SmartHeap is a non-starter because it is proprietary. I actually did look for alternatives before sending out this proposal, but from what I've seen, there isn't exactly an abundance of well-tested, widely used and stable malloc implementations with heap profiling features, i.e. I'm not aware of any besides tcmalloc and jemalloc.
I also don't think having a native windows build is as important as being well-tested, because either the build just works (perfect), or it doesn't work and the feature will be disabled in windows, then people are in exactly the same position as they were before, in particular they can still use windows-native heap profiling solutions if they want. On the other hand, if we decide on some obscure malloc, there is a much higher chance of accidentally introducing subtle bugs for the people who enable the feature. Best regards, Benno On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 5:41 PM, Jeff Coffler < jeff.coff...@microsoft.com.invalid> wrote: > The fact that Firefox works with jemalloc isn't necessarily indicative. I, > for one, would like to avoid dependencies on Cygwin for Mesos. We don't > need it today, and we're building an awful lot. > > (Interesting that you brought up SASL-based auth - that's currently in the > process of being ported - natively - to Windows.) > > There are many options for memory allocators that run both on Linux and > Windows. For example, I've used SmartHeap in the past, and that works well > on UNIX, Linux, Windows, and more. (That's commercial; I'm not sure it's > free for open source products or not.) I'm not necessarily suggesting > SmartHeap, I'm just pointing out that there are native options for both > Linux and Windows that are well ported and work everywhere. > > Before we decide on using jemalloc, I'd like to see someone look at memory > allocators and see if there's one we can use (i.e. free) that's natively > supported both on Linux and Windows without jumping through hoops (like > Cygwin for builds). If there are native choices, we should look at those > much more aggressively than an option that doesn't work well on Windows. > > /Jeff > > -----Original Message----- > From: Till Toenshoff [mailto:toensh...@me.com] > Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 6:27 PM > To: dev@mesos.apache.org > Subject: Re: [Proposal] Use jemalloc as default memory allocator for Mesos > > It appears that jemalloc does support Windows (64bit) > See: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url= > https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fjemalloc%2Fjemalloc%2Fblob% > 2Fdev%2Fmsvc%2FReadMe.txt&data=02%7C01%7CJeff.Coffler%40microsoft.com% > 7C1cb6c56ba96f401a8d6108d4f00f660e%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011 > db47%7C1%7C0%7C636397396315954606&sdata=e6RrlOXc% > 2B9BAY0FwBx3UMKElg3S5SCgZXKVYKGSAfQE%3D&reserved=0 < > https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url= > https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fjemalloc%2Fjemalloc%2Fblob% > 2Fdev%2Fmsvc%2FReadMe.txt&data=02%7C01%7CJeff.Coffler%40microsoft.com% > 7C1cb6c56ba96f401a8d6108d4f00f660e%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011 > db47%7C1%7C0%7C636397396315954606&sdata=e6RrlOXc% > 2B9BAY0FwBx3UMKElg3S5SCgZXKVYKGSAfQE%3D&reserved=0> > > tcmalloc on the other hand appears to only offer a minimal variant on > Windows. > See: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url= > https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fgperftools%2Fgperftools& > data=02%7C01%7CJeff.Coffler%40microsoft.com%7C1cb6c56ba96f401a8d6108d4f00f > 660e%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0% > 7C636397396315954606&sdata=rz1OflD81bHoGkSpw7JinsVKLjpGK9 > Lso546GnfP5L8%3D&reserved=0 <https://na01.safelinks. > protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com% > 2Fgperftools%2Fgperftools&data=02%7C01%7CJeff.Coffler%40microsoft.com% > 7C1cb6c56ba96f401a8d6108d4f00f660e%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011 > db47%7C1%7C0%7C636397396315954606&sdata=rz1OflD81bHoGkSpw7JinsVKLjpGK9 > Lso546GnfP5L8%3D&reserved=0> - grep for "COMPILING ON NON-LINUX SYSTEMS” > See: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url= > https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fgperftools%2Fgperftools% > 2Fblob%2Fmaster%2FINSTALL&data=02%7C01%7CJeff.Coffler%40microsoft.com% > 7C1cb6c56ba96f401a8d6108d4f00f660e%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011 > db47%7C1%7C0%7C636397396315954606&sdata=WcU72HYzVMao7yF7LJ7Ks% > 2Bdv0P7zhjE%2BM6cKIOfa488%3D&reserved=0 <https://na01.safelinks. > protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com% > 2Fgperftools%2Fgperftools%2Fblob%2Fmaster%2FINSTALL& > data=02%7C01%7CJeff.Coffler%40microsoft.com%7C1cb6c56ba96f401a8d6108d4f00f > 660e%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0% > 7C636397396315954606&sdata=WcU72HYzVMao7yF7LJ7Ks% > 2Bdv0P7zhjE%2BM6cKIOfa488%3D&reserved=0> - grep for “Windows (MSVC, > Cygwin, and MinGW)" > > So both options rely on Cygwin or MinGW for building - a requirement that > the Mesos build itself does not have and proves your point of stuff not > really “just working” at least when it comes to the build step of those > packages. > > Seems that without trying it, we won’t find out if jemalloc works as hoped > on Windows for us - the Firefox project results however are encouraging. On > the other hand, if it doesn’t work, we could simply decide to disable it on > Windows just like some other Mesos features will remain disabled on that > platform unless someone decides to port them - e.g. SASL based authn. > > > On Aug 25, 2017, at 3:28 PM, Benno Evers <bev...@mesosphere.com> wrote: > > > > Hi Jeff, > > > > from looking around on the internet, it seems like Firefox builds with > > jemalloc on all platforms, and I've also seen reports of people > > successfully using tcmalloc heap profiling on windows. I'm afraid I > > don't currently have a Windows machine with development environment > > set up, so I can't provide direct user experience. > > > > In the worst case, we would have to disable jemalloc-support on > > windows, but I hope it won't be necessary. > > > > Since you probably have more experience with memory management on > > windows, is there a reason to suspect that it should or shouldn't work? > > > > Best regards, > > Benno > > > > On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 6:16 PM, Jeff Coffler < > > jeff.coff...@microsoft.com.invalid> wrote: > > > >> Hi Benno, > >> > >> What's the availability of both jemalloc and tcmalloc on the Windows > >> platform? Do the products work there properly? > >> > >> There are solutions that I know work on Windows (from past work I've > >> done). I'm unsure about either jemalloc and tcmalloc, however. > >> > >> Thanks, > >> > >> /Jeff > >> > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: Benno Evers [mailto:bev...@mesosphere.com] > >> Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 3:16 AM > >> To: dev@mesos.apache.org > >> Subject: Re: [Proposal] Use jemalloc as default memory allocator for > >> Mesos > >> > >> Hi Alexander, > >> > >> in general, jemalloc and tcmalloc are very similar, and seem to be > >> taking ideas from each other (in fact the jeprof executable started > >> as a copy of pprof and there are still references the pprof > >> documentation in some > >> comments) > >> > >> From what I've seen, the main difference is that the profiling seems > >> better-suited to multi-threaded programs, in particular the profile > >> file format includes per-thread memory statistics and the profiling > >> features can be turned on and off individually per thread. From an > >> API perspective, all settings can be accessed by the mallctl() > >> function, while it seems that tcmalloc requires some options to be > >> set by environment variable ( > >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url= > >> https%3A%2F%2Fgperftools.github.io%2Fgperftools% > >> 2Fheapprofile.html&data=02%7C01%7CJeff.Coffler%40microsoft.com% > >> 7Ccb0bfb1eb3e242c0dd4108d4e946d709%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011 > >> db47%7C1%7C0%7C636389937852256730&sdata=IQeb2% > >> 2BpcrWRQ8yvdTgOEHfyplgC36dy73nnXswdPamo%3D&reserved=0). Finally, I > >> also found the documentation to be more thorough. > >> > >> But again, the two are very similar, so I think the main decision > >> here isn't whether to choose jemalloc or tcmalloc but whether to > >> switch to a custom memory allocator that has support for profiling heap > memory usage. > >> > >> > >> On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 4:26 PM, Alexander Rojas > >> <alexan...@mesosphere.io> > >> wrote: > >> > >>> Hi Benno, > >>> > >>> This does sound like a great addition to Mesos. Can you however > >>> explain how jemalloc is better than tcmalloc? I think that for such > >>> important change, we probably need some more information. > >>> > >>> Your comment in MESOS-7876 mentions that we already have tcmalloc > >>> since it is part of gperftools, so I would like to have a whole > >>> picture of the advantages and disadvantages of both options. > >>> > >>> Alexander Rojas > >>> alexan...@mesosphere.io > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>>> On 18. Aug 2017, at 12:49, Benno Evers <bev...@mesosphere.com> wrote: > >>>> > >>>> Hi all, > >>>> > >>>> I would like to propose bundling jemalloc as a new dependency under > >>>> `3rdparty/`, and to link Mesos against this new memory allocator by > >>>> default. > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> # Motivation > >>>> > >>>> The Mesos master and agent binaries are, ideally, very long-running > >>>> processes. This makes them susceptible to memory issues, because > >>>> even small leaks have a chance to build up over time to the point > >>>> where they become problematic. > >>>> > >>>> We have seen several such issues on our internal Mesos > >>>> installations, for example > >>>> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fis > >>>> s > >>>> ues.apache.org%2Fjira%2Fbrowse%2FMESOS-7748&data=02%7C01%7CJeff.Cof > >>>> f > >>>> ler%40microsoft.com%7Ccb0bfb1eb3e242c0dd4108d4e946d709%7C72f988bf86 > >>>> f > >>>> 141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636389937852266742&sdata=L016YGyEkK > >>>> 5 > >>>> 0WtvhgSNS%2FT5ntkkd9qINorRI2Utp5lk%3D&reserved=0 > >>>> or https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url= > >> https%3A%2F%2Fissues.apache.org%2Fjira%2Fbrowse%2FMESOS- > >> 7800&data=02%7C01%7CJeff.Coffler%40microsoft.com% > >> 7Ccb0bfb1eb3e242c0dd4108d4e946d709%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011 > >> db47%7C1%7C0%7C636389937852266742&sdata=IrzDO6o1VL9a8eGJIW3jKbWXk6U4f > >> H > >> Fn3Xbn4po1r3c%3D&reserved=0. > >>>> > >>>> I imagine any organization running Mesos for an extended period of > >>>> time has had its share of similar issues, so I expect this proposal > >>>> to be useful for the whole community. > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> # Why jemalloc? > >>>> > >>>> Given that memory issues tend to be most visible after a given > >>>> process has been running for a long time, it would be great to have > >>>> the option to enable heap tracking and profiling at runtime, > >>>> without having to restart the process. (This ability could then be > >>>> connected to a Mesos endpoint, similar to how we can adjust the log > >>>> level at > >>>> runtime) > >>>> > >>>> The two production-quality memory allocators that have this ability > >>>> currently seem to be tcmalloc and jemalloc. Of these, jemalloc does > >>>> produce in our experience better and more detailed statistics. > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> # What is the impact on users who do not need this feature? > >>>> > >>>> Naturally, not every single user of Mesos will have a need for this > >>>> feature. To ensure these users would not experience serious > >>>> performance regressions as a result of this change, we conducted a > >>>> preliminary set of benchmarks whose results are collected under > >>>> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fis > >>>> s > >>>> ues.apache.org%2Fjira%2Fbrowse%2FMESOS-7876&data=02%7C01%7CJeff.Cof > >>>> f > >>>> ler%40microsoft.com%7Ccb0bfb1eb3e242c0dd4108d4e946d709%7C72f988bf86 > >>>> f > >>>> 141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636389937852266742&sdata=RsZcAGuFm% > >>>> 2 > >>>> Bw2PPLgMql%2B9vVgkFQrZZFJYdPGcBODsCU%3D&reserved=0 > >>>> > >>>> It turns out that we could probably even expect a small speedup (1% > >>>> - 5%) as a nice side-effect of this change. > >>>> > >>>> Users who compile Mesos themselves would of course have the option > >>>> to disable jemalloc at configuration time or replace it with their > >>>> memory allocator of choice. > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> I'm looking forward to hear any thoughts and comments. > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> Thanks, > >>>> -- > >>>> Benno Evers > >>>> Software Engineer, Mesosphere > >>> > >>> > >> > >> > >> -- > >> Benno Evers > >> Software Engineer, Mesosphere > >> > > > > > > > > -- > > Benno Evers > > Software Engineer, Mesosphere > > -- Benno Evers Software Engineer, Mesosphere
