[Bug python/12533] New: gdb consumes large memory when millions gdb.values are created

["joachim.protze at zih dot tu-dresden.de" <sourceware-bugzilla@sourceware.org>]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12533

           Summary: gdb consumes large memory when millions gdb.values are
                    created
           Product: gdb
           Version: HEAD
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: python
        AssignedTo: unassigned@sourceware.org
        ReportedBy: joachim.protze@zih.tu-dresden.de


For my current pretty-printer project i collect some metadata in inferior
space. This is used to evaluate, how some values - especially send/recv-buffers
- should be formated for printout. In some cases it is necessary to evaluate
metadata for each single value in buffer, which can be 10k+ values. 

I observed gdb to consume hundreds of MB memory and tried to analyze the source
of the problem with valgrind + massif: most memory is consumed within
allocate_value()

What i don't understand: why are the value structures not freed while the
command is running. Is this an issue of the python interpreter or is this an
issue of the gdb-py api?

Is there a way to get the values freed?

-----------------------------------------
short example to see this behaviour (for RAM <2GB use smaller iteration
counts!):

(gdb) python v=gdb.parse_and_eval("1")
(gdb) python 
>for i in range(1000000):
>  v+=1
>end
(gdb) python 
>for i in range(1200000):
>  v+=1
>end
(gdb)                                                                           
gdb consumes 600MB after the 1.0M iterations and 780MB after the 1.2M
iterations

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