From: Tim Hunter <TimHunter@...>
Date: 2009-06-28T04:07:20+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] RMagick 2.10.0 released with support for Ruby-managed memory

Tim Hunter wrote:
> I've just uploaded RMagick 2.10.0 to RubyForge. This release includes 
> experimental support for using Ruby-managed memory for all RMagick 
> allocations. This means that Image objects (and all other RMagick 
> objects) are managed by Ruby and will be automatically garbage 
> collected. You do not have to manually invoke GC.start or call the 
> Image#destroy! method.
> 
> This support is very raw, very experimental, and disabled by default. To 
> enable it, set
> 
> RMAGICK_ENABLE_MANAGED_MEMORY = true
> 
> _before_ requiring RMagick. When RMagick is using Ruby-managed memory it 
> sets Magick::MANAGED_MEMORY = true.
> 
> The ImageMagick team has very kindly helped resolve the last known issue 
> with this new functionality. You must be running the absolute latest 
> version of ImageMagick, 6.5.3-10. This version just became available 
> yesterday.
> 
> I haven't had much time to evaluate the new support. My initial 
> impression is that my tests run slower when Ruby is managing all the 
> memory, and in 1.8.x (as I would expect) Ruby's memory footprint is 
> larger. The memory footprint in 1.9.1 is relatively smaller. If you 
> decide to try this I'd appreciate it if you'd share your experiences.

Quick follow-up: I took a harder look and determined that my tests run 
in almost exactly the same time when Ruby is managing all the memory. 
There is no slowdown. Ruby's resident memory size (as shown by top(1)) 
is larger, but I would expect that.

-- 
RMagick - http://rmagick.rubyforge.org/
MagickWand for Ruby - http://magickwand.rubyforge.org/