GC

Module

The GC module provides an interface to Ruby’s mark and sweep garbage collection mechanism.

Some of the underlying methods are also available via the ObjectSpace module.

You may obtain information about the operation of the GC through GC::Profiler.

Constants

internal constants

GC build options

Class Methods

Raises NoMemoryError when allocating an instance of the given classes.

Returns whether or not automatic compaction has been enabled.

Updates automatic compaction mode.

When enabled, the compactor will execute on every major collection.

Enabling compaction will degrade performance on major collections.

This function compacts objects together in Ruby’s heap. It eliminates unused space (or fragmentation) in the heap by moving objects in to that unused space. This function returns a hash which contains statistics about which objects were moved. See ‘GC.latest_gc_info` for details about compaction statistics.

This method is implementation specific and not expected to be implemented in any implementation besides MRI.

The number of times GC occurred.

It returns the number of times GC occurred since the process started.

Disables garbage collection, returning true if garbage collection was already disabled.

GC.disable   #=> false
GC.disable   #=> true

Enables garbage collection, returning true if garbage collection was previously disabled.

GC.disable   #=> false
GC.enable    #=> true
GC.enable    #=> false
Returns information about object moved in the most recent GC compaction.

The returned hash has two keys :considered and :moved. The hash for :considered lists the number of objects that were considered for movement by the compactor, and the :moved hash lists the number of objects that were actually moved. Some objects can’t be moved (maybe they were pinned) so these numbers can be used to calculate compaction efficiency.

Returns information about the most recent garbage collection.

If the optional argument, hash, is given, it is overwritten and returned. This is intended to avoid probe effect.

Returns the size of memory allocated by malloc().

Only available if ruby was built with CALC_EXACT_MALLOC_SIZE.

Returns the number of malloc() allocations.

Only available if ruby was built with CALC_EXACT_MALLOC_SIZE.

No longer raises NoMemoryError when allocating an instance of the given classes.

Initiates garbage collection, even if manually disabled.

This method is defined with keyword arguments that default to true:

def GC.start(full_mark: true, immediate_sweep: true); end

Use full_mark: false to perform a minor GC. Use immediate_sweep: false to defer sweeping (use lazy sweep).

Note: These keyword arguments are implementation and version dependent. They are not guaranteed to be future-compatible, and may be ignored if the underlying implementation does not support them.

Returns a Hash containing information about the GC.

The hash includes information about internal statistics about GC such as:

{
    :count=>0,
    :heap_allocated_pages=>24,
    :heap_sorted_length=>24,
    :heap_allocatable_pages=>0,
    :heap_available_slots=>9783,
    :heap_live_slots=>7713,
    :heap_free_slots=>2070,
    :heap_final_slots=>0,
    :heap_marked_slots=>0,
    :heap_eden_pages=>24,
    :heap_tomb_pages=>0,
    :total_allocated_pages=>24,
    :total_freed_pages=>0,
    :total_allocated_objects=>7796,
    :total_freed_objects=>83,
    :malloc_increase_bytes=>2389312,
    :malloc_increase_bytes_limit=>16777216,
    :minor_gc_count=>0,
    :major_gc_count=>0,
    :remembered_wb_unprotected_objects=>0,
    :remembered_wb_unprotected_objects_limit=>0,
    :old_objects=>0,
    :old_objects_limit=>0,
    :oldmalloc_increase_bytes=>2389760,
    :oldmalloc_increase_bytes_limit=>16777216
}

The contents of the hash are implementation specific and may be changed in the future.

If the optional argument, hash, is given, it is overwritten and returned. This is intended to avoid probe effect.

This method is only expected to work on C Ruby.

Returns current status of GC stress mode.

Updates the GC stress mode.

When stress mode is enabled, the GC is invoked at every GC opportunity: all memory and object allocations.

Enabling stress mode will degrade performance, it is only for debugging.

flag can be true, false, or an integer bit-ORed following flags.

0x01:: no major GC
0x02:: no immediate sweep
0x04:: full mark after malloc/calloc/realloc

Verify compaction reference consistency.

This method is implementation specific. During compaction, objects that were moved are replaced with T_MOVED objects. No object should have a reference to a T_MOVED object after compaction.

This function doubles the heap to ensure room to move all objects, compacts the heap to make sure everything moves, updates all references, then performs a full GC. If any object contains a reference to a T_MOVED object, that object should be pushed on the mark stack, and will make a SEGV.

Verify internal consistency.

This method is implementation specific. Now this method checks generational consistency if RGenGC is supported.

No documentation available
Instance Methods
No documentation available