👀 Views: 3 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-07

c# memory-leak singleton weakreference C#

Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy. I'm working on a personal project and I'm working with an unexpected memory leak scenario in my C# 10 application where I use a singleton pattern in combination with `WeakReference`... Although I'm using weak references to hold instances of objects that can be collected when no longer in use, the memory usage keeps increasing over time. Here’s a simplified version of my singleton implementation: ```csharp public class MySingleton { private static readonly Lazy<MySingleton> _instance = new Lazy<MySingleton>(() => new MySingleton()); public static MySingleton Instance => _instance.Value; private readonly Dictionary<string, WeakReference<MyClass>> _cache = new Dictionary<string, WeakReference<MyClass>>(); private MySingleton() {} public MyClass GetOrCreate(string key) { if (_cache.TryGetValue(key, out var weakRef) && weakRef.TryGetTarget(out var target)) { return target; } var newObject = new MyClass(); // Assume MyClass is a sizable object _cache[key] = new WeakReference<MyClass>(newObject); return newObject; } } ``` While I expect `MyClass` instances to be collected when they are no longer referenced, I noticed that the total memory usage of my application keeps growing, and the garbage collector doesn’t seem to collect the objects as I anticipated. I also tried forcing garbage collection with `GC.Collect()` after certain operations, but it doesn't seem to help. Running this in a long-running application leads to higher memory consumption, and I need to pinpoint why the weak references aren't functioning as expected. Are there additional considerations I need to keep in mind when using `WeakReference` in conjunction with a singleton pattern? Also, should I be concerned about how the dictionary is structured? Would it be better to periodically clean up the dictionary? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! For context: I'm using C# on Linux. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. For context: I'm using C# on Ubuntu. Is there a better approach? This is part of a larger web app I'm building. What's the best practice here?