Handling Memory Leaks with Weak References in C# - Observing High Memory Usage in .NET 6
I'm collaborating on a project where After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. I'm working on a personal project and I'm currently dealing with a memory leak issue in a .NET 6 application where I utilize weak references to cache objects. The idea was to allow the garbage collector to reclaim memory when necessary, but I've been observing high memory usage during runtime. My implementation follows this pattern: ```csharp public class CacheItem<T> { private WeakReference<T> _weakReference; public CacheItem(T item) { _weakReference = new WeakReference<T>(item); } public T GetItem() { if (_weakReference.TryGetTarget(out T target)) { return target; } return default; } } public class Example { private List<CacheItem<MyObject>> _cache = new List<CacheItem<MyObject>>(); public void AddToCache(MyObject obj) { _cache.Add(new CacheItem<MyObject>(obj)); } } ``` After adding multiple objects to the cache, I'm noticing that the memory usage doesn’t decrease even when the objects are no longer in use. I've tried forcing garbage collection using `GC.Collect()` after removing references, but this doesn’t seem to yield any improvements. I also validated that the objects I am caching are not being held elsewhere in the application. The profiler indicates that the memory is retained by these weak references, which should not be the case. Is there a better way to implement a weak reference cache that ensures that the memory is freed up correctly? Or are there some best practices I might be missing? Any insights would be greatly appreciated! I'm working on a CLI tool that needs to handle this. Is there a better approach? I'm working in a Ubuntu 22.04 environment. Has anyone dealt with something similar? I'm on Debian using the latest version of C#. This is happening in both development and production on Windows 10. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.