Memory management - Wow does Lazarus/FPC need a lot of RAM
lazarus / 8-Other

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Keneto1 · 2006-03-22 15:07

Project: New Application. Dropped a DataSource, TMemDataSet and
TDBGrid on it. Hit run.

On my development computer it took about 8s to compile and run. In
school, when I had my students do it, out of memory or Windows paging
file gets too big and it dies. Same problem on all the computers but
one and the last one reboots when you hit F9. [Computers using Win2K
and Win98].

Went in manually and cranked the paging file to a min size of 500Mb.
Now one machine compiles (but takes over 16 hours to link and execute)
and the rest still die.

Clearly, Lazarus isn't using all 500Megs of virtual memory at once. I
suspect that memory is getting so fragmented that Windows is forced to
dip into paging files to satisy hundreds of spread out pages.

School machines have 32 megs of RAM. Not a lot for a development
machine. But Delphi can compile, link & execute a much larger project
without touching the paging file [Works when I cap the paging file to
just 10 megs! wow].

Anyone having similar problems?

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felipemdc · 2006-03-22 23:00

This is because version 0.9.12 was distributed with smartlinking as a
experience. Smartlinking decreases final file sizes in about 30%, but
the GNU Linker seams to eat a huge amount of memory and sometimes
crash when it is used.

You should recompile the LCL to fix this problem. After LCL is
recompiled it will no longer be smartlinked. The time necessary to
compile+link a program will dramatically decrease and it will need a
lot less RAM.

To recompile LCL just open Lazarus, go to the Menu "Tools" ->
"Configure Build Lazarus" and then set everything to None and LCL to
Clean+Build.

No go to the menu "Tools" -> "Build Lazarus". Now it´s ready.

For more details, please look at the following links:

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/File_size_and_smartlinkin
g

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/Lazarus_Faq#Why_is_the_li
nking_so_slow_on_Windows.3F

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Anonymous · 2006-03-23 08:50

Quote from: "Keneto1"
Computers using Win2K and Win98
Anyone having similar problems?
yes
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtop
ic&t=2072

I have now 256 MB installed and working with Lazarus is possible now.
Building an empty project takes 25 seconds on my 1,2 GHz Windows 98
machine.
Quote from: "Keneto1"Project: New Application. Dropped a DataSource,
TMemDataSet and TDBGrid on it. Hit run.

Takes now 45 seconds. Smartlinking cannot be disabled, because the
executables won't run under Windows 98.

Regards, Bernd.

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Keneto1 · 2006-03-23 14:53

Whoops, false alarm... I discovered this morningthat the same problem
happens with a blank form and a button on it with a Hello World
procedure attached. Reachedthe conclusion that it was something to do
with v9.12