anybody else embed their Pythons?
tnb2d@henson.cs.virginia.edu
Thu, 26 May 94 18:09:21 EDT
Our VR system here embeds Python in a C/C++ hybrid with tons
of classes and modules and such written in both C, C++ and (mostly)
Python. We only make one or two minor hacks to the distributed Python
in order to embed it in our system, so every time a new version of
Python comes out I make the hacks and re-compile so we can get the new
language features, speed-ups, etc. Yesterday I put Alice (our system)
together with Python-1.0.2 and it all compiled okay, but when I typed
a simple assignment, say "a = 42" I heard my disk start going nuts.
When I ran a top it turned out that my process had ballooned up in
memory from 1.78 meg to 199.8 meg!!! That's right, almost 200 meg!
The disk was going nuts because the os was madly swapping memory in
and out to keep up with the process.
Simply printing a literal didn't cause this to happen (like
"print 'hello.'"), and I could do this over and over, but once I made
an assignment or tried to print out an interesting object, like a
class instance, it started thrashing. This DOES NOT happen when I run
Python alone (i.e. from the command line, without Alice). This also
has never happened in any version of Python before 1.0.2. I'm
inclined to believe it is Python that is causing this because I have
not changed a single line of Alice code. In fact I just swapped out
1.0.2 for 1.0.1, re-compiled, and this ballooning is not happening
anymore.
Any clues? Has anything like this happened to anyone else?
Thanks for any and all help,
-------> Tommy.
"Subvert the parental paradigm - Refuse Birth."