[armedbear-devel] Ugh! java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space

[Mark Evenson]

On 9/24/09 9:21 PM, Alessio Stalla wrote:
> (dotimes (i 100000) (compile 'f (lambda () 42)))
>
> abcl dies with java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space
>
> if I use nil instead of f it doesn't die. Also with nil is noticeably faster.
>
> Adding (when (= 999 (mod i 1000)) (room)) in the loop shows that gc is
> performed and memory is reclaimed, but apparently there's a leak
> somewhere.

Note that 'PermGen' space is different then running out of heap space. 
Among other things, 'PermGen' holds class metadata for every loaded 
class.  Since we are compiling 10^6 new classes here (and they really 
are different at a JVM level) what I think is happening is that we 
eventually exhaust the available space.

I've been able to reproduce your error running under the NetBeans 6.7 
profiler, but I am unable to exactly confirm this hypothesis as I don't 
think it has access to information on the PermGen space (or at least I 
haven't found out how to access it).

Creating a 'build.properties' with

java.options=-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled

(all on one line) should should allow garbage collection of the class 
instances, but it still crashes the OS X JDK6, so I don't I am 
necessarily on the right track here.

More investigatin'

-- 
"A screaming comes across the sky.  It has happened before, but there
is nothing to compare to it now."