Memory leak when calling run_script

[Apprisco]

describe your issue

Had a python based AHK script running that consistently presses some values using asyncahk. Memory kept increasing over time, currently over 4GB.``

ahk.version

latest

AutoHotkey version

v1

Code to reproduce the issue

from ahk import AHK,AsyncAHK

class Trove:
    ahk=AHK(directives=[NoTrayIcon])
    asyncAHK=AHK(directives=[NoTrayIcon])

while True:
    script='''.......'''
    ahk.run_script(script)
    asyncAHK.run_script(script)

Traceback/Error message

Observe memory usage increasing over time.

[spyoungtech]

Thanks for the report. I confirmed this behavior is reproducible with run_script and calls with blocking=False. It's likely related to resources for the subprocess.

[spyoungtech]

I believe I found the cause of this.

The creation of AutoHotkey processes uses the start method (or here in the sync API), which includes a call to atexit.register, which is an attempt to ensure that the subprocess will be cleaned up when the Python script is finished -- to avoid leaving AutoHotkey running after Python is done executing.

However, this obviously causes a reference to be held for the subprocess.Popen object, so it never gets garbage collected.

When I remove this line, the memory buildup no longer occurs.

[Apprisco]

How am I able to copy your fix? Will there be an updated version of AHK wrapper released soon? Thanks :) This library is genuinely awesome for people who want to use AHK but not in a synchronous loop, and it's pretty damn great asides from the memory leak lol.

While I understand this is an open source project and i cannot expect a fast response, a memory leak is a pretty critical issue to deal with.

[spyoungtech]

@Apprisco I've opened #339 with a fix for this issue. As long as tests pass, it should be released within the next day, if not the next hour or so.

[spyoungtech]

This is fixed in version 1.8.0

[Apprisco]

Hell yeah, thanks man!