FS#67547 - [audacity] memory leak while playing or recording audio on Wayland

Attached to Project: Community Packages
Opened by Daniel Martí (mvdan) - Monday, 10 August 2020, 17:51 GMT
Last edited by David Runge (dvzrv) - Wednesday, 03 August 2022, 19:32 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages
Status Closed
Assigned To David Runge (dvzrv)
Architecture All
Severity High
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 2
Private No

Details

Description:

For example, try to record a few minutes of Audio on Sway or another Wayland compositor, while keeping the window focused.

My memory usage increases at a pretty constant rate. My machine will run out of memory after about 20m, with Audacity using over twelve gigabytes of memory.

This exact same issue was reported on Debian (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=948364), but I'm filing it here because they haven't found the cause and I'm sure it will confuse other Arch users. Hopefully having an open bug here will make research easier.

Additional info:
* package version(s): 1:2.4.1-4
* config and/or log files etc: (all defaults)
* link to upstream bug report, if any: (there is none)
This task depends upon

Closed by  David Runge (dvzrv)
Wednesday, 03 August 2022, 19:32 GMT
Reason for closing:  Upstream
Additional comments about closing:  Likely not an issue anymore with >= 3.1.3.
Comment by Daniel Martí (mvdan) - Monday, 10 August 2020, 17:53 GMT
I filed this as high severity because it makes Audacity very hard to use on Wayland, to the point that you risk losing your entire recording if your machine crashes.

There is one workaround, though - if you start recording and minimize the Audacity window, the memory leak appears to stop and the memory usage stays somewhat stable.
Comment by David Runge (dvzrv) - Monday, 10 August 2020, 20:07 GMT
@mvdan: Thanks for the report.

I'm just going to say right away, that audacity as a package and as an upstream is in quite the desolate condition which requires a lot of work from any downstream.
For some background, please read this upstream ticket: https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/625

The problem you are seeing might very well be related to that.

If time permits in the coming weeks I might attempt a Frankenstein-build of audacity with the wxwidgets fork included, but I'm not yet sure how much time that'll cost, as I also have to switch to cmake and that has many more open issues.
Comment by David Runge (dvzrv) - Wednesday, 03 August 2022, 19:32 GMT
If this is still relevant with >= 3.1.3, please report the issue upstream.

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