Hello,
I recently find out I had a memory leak in Silva, with Python 2.7. After
playing a while with various tools (objgraph is nice), I found out I leaked
between two and three objects at every request:
- an AccessControl.SecurityManagement.SecurityContext instance,
- two bound methods to ZopeSecurityPolicy.validate and
ZopeSecurityPolicy.checkPermission.
Of course, those leaks disappears as soon as I use the Python
implementation for the security instead of the one in C. And I have tested it
as well with various older versions of AccessControl, and have the same
behavior.
Looking closely at the code, I see that those objects are used internally
by the SecurityManager. The SecurityManager is implemented in C, using the
facilities provided by ExtensionClass. The SecurityManager properly implement
the method dealloc, and it is correctly called. However, since it holds objects
managed by the Python garbage collector (namely one called context that is an
instance of AccessControl.SecurityManagement.SecurityContext, one called
policy, that is an instance of ZopeSecurityPolicy, and a two last ones that are
the bound methods ZopeSecurityPolicy.validate and
ZopeSecurityPolicy.checkPermission), it should implements the tp_traverse
method, but it doesn't. This is not done because ExtensionClass uses the slot
for tp_traverse to store something else (namely what goes in tp_methods later).
In a local checkout of AccessControl, I converted the SecurityManager C
code not to rely on ExtensionClass anymore, but use the 'new object' C API,
that is mostly equivalent to ExtensionClass, and implemented the tp_traverse
method. This fixed my memory leak.
I propose you to commit my code in a branch, and after review to merge it
with the branch 2.13 and the trunk of AccessControl.
I don't see any argument against not using ExtensionClass anymore for
SecurityManager, and it might be possible to convert some other classes to the
'new object' C API too. I can have a look at it.
Regards,
Sylvain,
--
Sylvain Viollon -- Infrae
t +31 10 243 7051 -- http://infrae.com
Hoevestraat 10 3033GC Rotterdam -- The Netherlands
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