Democratizing the Fight Against Ruby Memory Bloat

In the talk titled "Democratizing the Fight Against Ruby Memory Bloat," Hongli Lai outlines the challenges faced by Ruby applications regarding excessive memory usage, primarily attributing the issue not to Ruby itself but to the system's memory allocator, particularly in Linux environments. Lai emphasizes that around 70% of memory bloat can be traced back to these allocators, especially when multi-threading is involved. This talk aims to elucidate both the causes of Ruby memory bloat and the potential solutions that, despite existing, are not widely adopted due to their complexity in configuration and deployment.

Key points discussed include:

Definition of Memory Bloat: An instance where simple Ruby applications consume excessive memory, questioning the efficiency of Ruby as a programming language for certain applications.
Misconceptions: Lai addresses common myths surrounding memory bloat, clarifying that fragmentation and issues related to multi-threading don't account for the majority of the problem. Instead, it's primarily the system's memory allocator that causes this bloating.
Statistical Insights: Through synthetic tests, it's revealed that up to 90% of memory usage can be unrelated to Ruby.
Solutions: Lai presents several solutions to combat memory bloat, including changing environment variables, utilizing the garbage collector's malloc trim API, or swapping the memory allocator for a more efficient one like jemalloc. He points out that these solutions are not currently integrated into the upstream Ruby, which complicates their adoption.
Project Fullstaq Ruby: Introduced as a distribution that includes these solutions pre-compiled, focusing on making it easier for developers to alleviate Ruby memory issues without diving into complex configurations.
Sustainability and Community: Lai emphasizes the importance of community involvement and sustainable practices in open source projects, suggesting the use of automation, active recruitment, and comprehensive documentation to foster a healthy community around Fullstaq Ruby.

In conclusion, Lai reiterates that the successful fight against Ruby memory bloat requires broader accessibility to solutions. He encourages developers to think about the democratization of their software solutions and how to maintain healthy, sustainable open source projects that benefit the wider community.

Democratizing the Fight Against Ruby Memory Bloat
Hongli Lai • online • Talk

Date: June 09, 2021
Published: unknown
Announced: unknown

Ruby apps can use a lot of memory, but not for the reasons you think. I've discovered that as much as 70% of the memory usage is not caused by Ruby, but by the system's memory allocator! The good news is that there are technically simple solutions. So why isn't everybody using them? That's the bad news: they're cumbersome to deploy. We can say that the solutions are not "democratized".

I'm on a mission to allow everyone to easily get rid of Ruby memory bloat. In this talk I'll explain where Ruby memory bloat comes from, what the solutions are, and how I'm working on democratizing the solutions in the form of Fullstaq Ruby. I will also talk about my efforts to make Fullstaq Ruby a sustainable open source project.

This talk was delivered at EMEA on Rails, a virtual mega-meetup which took place on June 9, 2021.

EMEA on Rails 2021