research-article

Tolerating memory leaks

Authors:

Michael D. Bond,

Kathryn S. McKinleyAuthors Info & Claims

OOPSLA '08: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems languages and applications

Pages 109 - 126

https://doi.org/10.1145/1449764.1449774

Published: 19 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Type safety and garbage collection in managed languages eliminate memory errors such as dangling pointers, double frees, and leaks of unreachable objects. Unfortunately, a program still leaks memory if it maintains references to objects it will never use again. Leaked objects decrease program locality and increase garbage collection frequency and workload. A growing leak will eventually exhaust memory and crash the program.

This paper introduces a leak tolerance approach called Melt that safely eliminates performance degradations and crashes due to leaks of dead but reachable objects in managed languages, given sufficient disk space to hold leaking objects. Melt (1) identifies stale objects that the program is not accessing; (2) segregates in-use and stale objects by storing stale objects to disk; and (3) preserves safety by activating stale objects if the program subsequently accesses them. We design and build a prototype implementation of Melt in a Java VM and show it adds overhead low enough for production systems. Whereas existing VMs grind to a halt and then crash on programs with leaks, Melt keeps many of these programs running much longer without significantly degrading performance. Melt provides users the illusion of a fixed leak and gives developers more time to fix leaky programs.

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Index Terms

Tolerating memory leaks
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software development techniques
      1. Error handling and recovery

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cover image ACM Conferences

OOPSLA '08: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems languages and applications

October 2008

654 pages

ISBN:9781605582153

DOI:10.1145/1449764

General Chair:
Gail E. Harris
Instantiated Software Inc.
,
Program Chairs:
Gregor Kiczales
University of British Columbia
,
Dirk Riehle
SAP Research
,
Andrew P. Black
Portland State University

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 43, Issue 10
September 2008
613 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1449955
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

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Published: 19 October 2008

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Cited By

Inoue AUgawa TChiba SBond MLee JPayer H(2024)A Managed Memory System for Micro Controllers with NOR Flash MemoryProceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on Memory Management10.1145/3652024.3665511(57-67)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652024.3665511
Blanco ABergel AAlcocer J(2022)Software Visualizations to Analyze Memory Consumption: A Literature ReviewACM Computing Surveys10.1145/348513455:1(1-34)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485134
Hong SLee JLee JOh HRothermel GBae D(2020)SAVERProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3377811.3380323(271-283)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377811.3380323
Ghanavati MCosta DSeboek JLo DAndrzejak A(2019)Memory and resource leak defects and their repairs in Java projectsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-019-09731-8Online publication date: 26-Jul-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-019-09731-8
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Yan HSui YChen SXue J(2017)AutoFixACM SIGAPP Applied Computing Review10.1145/3040575.304057916:4(38-50)Online publication date: 13-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3040575.3040579
Ayrapetyan RKvochko A(2017)Tizen .NET Memory Profiler2017 Ivannikov ISPRAS Open Conference (ISPRAS)10.1109/ISPRAS.2017.00014(39-44)Online publication date: Nov-2017
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Braz LGheyi RMongiovi MRibeiro MMedeiros FTeixeira L(2016)A change-centric approach to compile configurable systems with #ifdefsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093335.299325052:3(109-119)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2016
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Braz LGheyi RMongiovi MRibeiro MMedeiros FTeixeira LFischer BSchaefer I(2016)A change-centric approach to compile configurable systems with #ifdefsProceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences10.1145/2993236.2993250(109-119)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2016
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