I can't help but think debugging memory allocations shouldn't be this hard

vchuravy · October 17, 2023, 2:17am

I have proposed removing --track-lallocation since it is prone to false-positives.

github.com/JuliaLang/julia

RFC: Remove `--track-allocation`

JuliaLang:master ← JuliaLang:vc/remove_track_allocations

opened 07:51PM - 05 Jan 23 UTC

vchuravy

+11 -218

Prior to Julia 1.9 `--track-allocation` was one of the only ways to track where …allocations where coming from in Julia. The way it functions is to change the emitted LLVM IR to insert code that tracks allocations occuring. This often leads to false-positives since these statements interfere with optimization (in particular escape analysis) and @simonbyrne and I once spend a particular fun couple of days hunting down ghosts. Since it changes the emitted code it also does not particular play well with package images. I believe there is no remaining use-case for `--track-allocation` that would not be better served by using the allocation profiler, and I am proposing to remove of the `--track-allocation` feature in 1.10. Are there users of `--track-allocation` that would object? Are there use-cases where you have fund it particular useful that are not covered by the allocation profiler?

I strongly recommend using the allocation profiler instead to gain insights.