lance-memtest

Memory allocation testing utilities for Python test suites. This package provides tools to track memory allocations made by the Python interpreter and any Python libraries during test execution.

Usage

Install with:

make build-release

To activate the memory tracking, you need to set the LD_PRELOAD environment variable:

export LD_PRELOAD=$(lance-memtest)

On macOS, use DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES instead:

export DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES=$(lance-memtest)

Then you can write Python code that tracks memory allocations:

import memtest

def test_memory():
    with memtest.track() as get_stats:
        # Your code that allocates memory
        data = [0] * 1000000

        stats = get_stats()
        assert stats['peak_bytes'] < 10**7  # Assert peak memory usage

How this works

The library uses dynamic linking to intercept memory allocation calls (like malloc, free, etc.) made by the Python interpreter and its extensions. It keeps track of the total number of allocations, deallocations, and the peak memory usage during the execution of your code.