Hello. This is my first post to the list, so first I'd like to thank everybody for making and mantaining such a great product as R. I'm writting a native binding to R from Dolphin Smalltalk. I've followed up the examples of the documentation showing how to run R embedded, and I got it partially working. However, I have a problem with the reference handling of the R objects. I've followed this strategy: every time I call a function in R and it answers me a SEXP, I called R_PreserveObject(sexp), and wrap it with a Smalltalk object. Whenever the Smalltalk object dies, I release the R object by calling R_ReleaseObject(sexp). This seems to handle well the life cycle, but makes the running process to use a growing and a never ending amount of memory. Actually, after experimenting a while, I isolated the problem to iterate over a loop which all it does is create an expresion for a number, call PreserveObject and call ReleaseObject, and that alone makes the memory to grow indefinitely. I couldn't find any comment about this behaviour. Is there something I'm missing ?
Martin, I am working with code taking a similar approach (from Python), and I do not seem to observe what you are experiencing. When I initialize the embeded R with the "--verbose" flag, and initialize disposable objects from a loop in Python, R outputs lines such as the ones below: 11.8 Mbytes of vectors used (40%) Garbage collection 536 = 307+159+70 (level 0) ... 7.1 Mbytes of cons cells used (38%) 19.4 Mbytes of vectors used (65%) Garbage collection 537 = 307+160+70 (level 1) ... 7.1 Mbytes of cons cells used (38%) 11.8 Mbytes of vectors used (40%)
I'm running the embedded R-2.6.2 binaries for Windows in a WindowsXP sp2 environment.
I am currently working on Linux.
I've also implemented another strategy, which keeps a global list in R, and instead of calling R_PreserveObject, it inserts the SEXP in the list. This made the memory usage problem to go away, but the performance is noticeably worst compared with the other strategy, and is not as elegant as the first one neither, so I was hoping to be able to use the first strategy.
The first strategy appears is something similar, if I understood it right (there is a global SEXP object called R_PreciousList in memory.c).
I'll appreciate any comment about what might be going on.
May be try the "--verbose" flag ?
Thanks in advance. Best regards. martin