Where does all the memory go?

rubyonrails-talk
#1

I've a method within an Event model..

  def batch_import(folder)
      require 'find'

      Find::find("#{SOURCE_PATH}/#{folder}") do |path|
          if path[-3..-1].downcase == 'jpg'
            @photo = Picture.new()
            @photo.data = File.new(path)
            @photo.filename = File.basename(path)
            @photo.caption = "none"
            self.pictures << @photo
            self.save
          end
      end
  end

Where Picture is ..

class Picture < FlexImage::Model
  file_store 'pictures'

  belongs_to :event, :counter_cache => true
  acts_as_list :scope => :event

  acts_as_solr :fields => [:caption]

end
and Event is..

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :pictures, :order => 'position',:dependent=>:destroy

When I run the code it uses a massive 1.5GB of memory to process 28
pictures. Ruby eventually returns the memory once you've browsed to
another view, but still?!?

Anyone have any ideas how/why?
should I be forcing garbage collection on @photo after each image?!?

#2

I don't know if that'll matter. It looks like FlexImage is reading the
files into memory, and it still might be referenced in Event's
self.pictures array.

#3

Thanks for the replies.

Bryan, Soory I'm a bit of a ruby newbie (still!!!), do you mean use
some form of syntax for the Find that returns all images as an array,
for processing?

also @photo = nil (is that what you mean?

#4

Actually, on further testing it does look like it the 'self.pictures
<< @photo ' that eats up all the memory. Yes, each image is very
large. So time to look for a new solution. Shame.