[panic] out of memory - heap full while resizing - execution terminated (awful-picman)

[Mario Domenech Goulart]

I frequently get out [panic] out of memory - heap full while resizing - execution terminated errors when running ​awful-picman (a pictures manager).

I don't have a simple test case, and I can't deterministically reproduce the problem, but it' not very difficult to trigger it.

Here are the steps to install awful-picman, run it and set up a test case:

git clone https://github.com/mario-goulart/awful-picman.git
cd awful-picman
git checkout 45a0a1e5f7245b0ea17b163746362aca87e77d95
chicken-install
mkdir -p test/pics
cd test/pics
wget http://parenteses.org/mario/misc/DSC00065.jpg
for i in `seq 100`; do cp DSC00065.jpg $i.jpg; done
cd ..
awful-picman --init

(--init is only necessary for the first run.)

Then use you browser to request ​http://localhost:8080/folders/pics . Keep reloading that page. After a couple of requests awful-picman will crash with [panic] out of memory - heap full while resizing - execution terminated.

Sometimes it crashes when the heap is growing, sometimes when the heap is shrinking. The call trace is usually different among crashes.

I can reproduce this problem with CHICKENs 4.7.0, 4.8.0, 4.8.0.3 and the 4.8.2 dev-snapshot tarball (Linux x86-64).

It crashes more frequently with 4.7.0 (usually on the first request).