[Mono-list] How do I force a garbage collection / free a heap

[Mike Christensen]

Thanks!  This is exactly what I needed.  I did some tests and with a
large database (probably the most data I'll ever have) I allocated
about 500 megs on the heap.  Once I null out my "temporary workspace",
GC.Collect() takes about 30ms to run and my process goes back down to
about 18 megs..  If I don't run GC.Collect(), I see the 500 megs
sitting around for quite some time..

Since this is simply a web site start-up routing, I think this is the
best way to go..

Mike

On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 8:11 PM, Michael Hutchinson
<m.j.hutchinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Mike Christensen <mike at kitchenpc.com> wrote:
>> Hi all -
>>
>> I have a program that generates some results, but in order to do so it
>> must load a whole lotta stuff into memory for calculations.  When this
>> is done, I only need the results and not the data in memory.  This
>> data might be several hundred megs on the heap or more.
>>
>> When I'm done, I want to "free" this data and not have it sit around
>> and slow down stuff.  Is there a way to force a GC cycle or just say
>> "delete these objects"?  Is there a better design for this sort of
>> thing (like can I create my own heap and just release the whole thing
>> at once?)  Also, I'm aware that GC will freeze all threads while it
>> works, which is okay since I only do this when the application starts
>> and I don't mind if the start-up costs are slow (since it's a web
>> site)..
>>
>> Any pointers would be great!
>
> You can use GC.Collect () to force a collection. Generally it's
> advised not to call GC.Collect, because it's best to let the garbage
> collector handle its scheduling, but it sounds like your use case is
> okay.
>
> --
> Michael Hutchinson
> http://mjhutchinson.com
>