The Memory Mine^TM

SUMMARY

The Memory Mine™ is a stand-alone application that lets you monitor and stress heaps in any open application and helps find problems such as memory leaks and heap corruption. Status of memory in a heap is sampled dynamically: nonrelocatable(Ptr), relocatable (Handle) and free space is shown. Allocate, Purge, Compact, and Zap memory lets users stress all or part of a program. Heap data can be logged manually or automatically; data can be exported to graphics programs and spreadsheets. Source code is not needed to view heaps; there is no system patching, and nothing is inserted in code. Works with PowerMac, and Macintosh with 68020 or better and System 7.0 or later. Click to download a demo of The Memory Mine™

FEATURES

Accessing heaps

• Any open application's heap can be monitored, including System and Finder.
• Heaps are selected from a list of the names of open applications.
• The Memory Mine monitors a selected heap (in the background, if desired) until you choose a different heap or quit, or the application is closed.

Monitoring Heaps

• Physical location of a heap in memory
• Whether the heap is consistent: if it is not, a message and reason code is returned
• The amount of memory (in both blocks and bytes) allocated to
• Free space
• Non-relocatable space
• Relocatable space, further broken down into: locked and purgeable space
• Fragmentation of the heap, as the number of "fences" - i.e. of non-movable partitions
• Maximum and minimum free space
• Maximum space allocated • Maximum relocatable space allocated: this shows both the maximum number of handles allocated and the amount of space used
• Two display modes: one is detailed numerical tables, the other a more compact graphical display.

Stressing Heaps

• Allocate memory to any listed heap except that of the System, either manually or automatically.
• Purge, Compact, Zap (invalidate free memory), and Maximize any listed heap (Zap works in 24 and 32-bit mode on all machines, but not with the Modern memory manager)

Use with Source Level Debuggers

• With a source level debugger to set breakpoints in code, The Memory Mine can help pinpoint leaks and heap corruption.
• Logging and Printing Heap Data
• Log, manually or automatically, to text files that can be accessed directly, or through other editors.
• Print saved heap statistics.

System and Space Requirements

Works on PowerMacintosh, and all Macintosh with 68020 processor or better. System 7.0 or later is required. Works in 24-bit or 32-bit mode and with the Modern memory manager. No special installation is required; no traps patched. The Memory Mine is a fat binary file that starts up in native mode no matter what the processor type. Startup size set at 650Kb.