[issue6695] PyXXX_ClearFreeList for dict, set, and list

[Martin v. Löwis]

Martin v. Löwis <martin at v.loewis.de> added the comment:

I still stand by my suggestion to free memory as a side effect of
garbage collection. It may well be that an application will start
re-allocating blocks that soon end up in the free list again. OTOH, it
may also be that releasing those free lists, along with the freeing that
the GC just did, can cause arenas to become completely free, and thus be
returned to the operating system. Users really really want Python to
return memory to the operating system whenever possible, and on its own;
those free lists can block memory from being returned, more or less
unreasonably.

So unless it can be demonstrated (preferably in a realistic application)
that clearing the free lists has a measurable negative impact, I propose
to keep things the way they are.

IMO, it would be best if we could eliminate the freelists altogether.

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue6695>
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