On 11/5/2020 11:48 AM, Sylvain Hubert wrote:
After dozens of compilations of various minimal examples using the newly installed context, the problem reappeared.
Removing tex/texmf-cache does not help. Removing firefoxe does ... when I open e.g. the cnn website in firefox (for instance to keep an eye on crazy elections), that program takes 650 MB memory and 44% GPU while edge (or chrome) takes 270 MB mem and 3% GPU. Add a few more tabs and firefox will easily eat up gigs of mem.
Now, I don't know how it manages memory but the tex engine needs a few reasonable sized arrays but in large allocs and then it manages its own memory from that pool, Lua needs more mem (could be scattered due to allocs i guess), and soem garbage collection can kick in, and browsers ... well i suppose lots of allocations and it also depends on the jasvascript vm. So, I would not be surprised if after some runs of these programs you end up with scattered memory. I suppose that at some point the operating system (when in rest) will sort things out. When I make a format file it normally takes a few seconds. When I let firefox run wild on memory (top out mem and then let it give back some), it can take twice as much to make a format, but after quitting firefox it's all ok again. Anyway, already long ago I decided that firefox is a memory hog so whenever I do something that takes more time than I susspect, I close firefox. Actually I often close browsers when i don't need them, also because they always seem to be busy with something (also the network). Tex is just juggling some bytes. In the past tex and distributioen were considered large ... nowadays they are small compared to whatever you install and run. And in luametatex/context the performance bottleneck is lua, not the core tex engine. Of course you could consider swithcing to another operating system. Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------