Handling Memory Leaks in Python 3.10 with Circular References
I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help... I've been working on a Python application using version 3.10, and I've noticed some unexpected memory growth when running it over long periods. After profiling the application with `objgraph` and `tracemalloc`, it seems that circular references are preventing garbage collection from freeing memory. I've tried using weak references in various classes but haven't seen any improvement. Here's a simplified version of my code where I suspect the leak originates: ```python import weakref class Node: def __init__(self, name): self.name = name self.children = [] def add_child(self, child_node): self.children.append(child_node) # Here, I tried weak reference but it doesn't seem to work as expected. # self.children.append(weakref.ref(child_node)) class Tree: def __init__(self, root): self.root = root root = Node('root') tree = Tree(root) for i in range(10): child = Node(f'child-{i}') root.add_child(child) # Simulating a long-running process import time while True: time.sleep(10) ``` When I run this code, I see the memory usage steadily increasing over time. I expected the garbage collector to clean up the memory allocated to `child` nodes once they are no longer referenced, but it seems like the circular references are blocking it. I also attempted manually invoking `gc.collect()` periodically, but that hasn't resolved the issue either. Is there a more effective way to manage memory in this case, or an alternative pattern I should consider to prevent the memory leak? I'm working on a API that needs to handle this.