how to trace memory leak in Android ?

this post is really a question, doesn't contain the answer Orz


this big question may consist of several items


what is memory leak ? 


how  to monitor Android system memory and performance ？



linux command :


ps -x
top
cat /proc/meminfo


not know exactly : 


dumpsys meminfo proc-id
procrank
time command-line
vmstat


and DDMS (Android SDK tool) !!


Could automatic track memory leak on Android ?


DDMS could help !


but need to do some settings ( group discuss Finding Memory leak in native code )


0. Build libc_debug.so 


1. replace system/lib/libc.so with /system/lib/libc_debug.so 


2. set environment variables 



 $PATH with ~/open_src/prebuilt/linux-x86/toolchain/arm-eabi-XXX/bin
 $ANDROID_PRODUCT_OUT with ~/open_src/out/target/product// 


'PATH' is used for getting "arm-eabi-addr2line" and
ANDROID_PRODUCT_OUT for getting the path to /symbol folder. 



3. restart the framework.  


adb shell stop && adb shell start 


4. Add "native=true" to  ~/.android/ddms.cfg


5. start the stand-alone version of DDMS.  -> "Native Heap" 


but just know that there  was an malloc @@ !!


how to avoid memory leak in application ?


from Avoid memory leaks on Android suggestion:

• Do not keep long-lived references to a context-activity (a reference to an activity should have the same life cycle as the activity itself)
• Try using the context-application instead of a context-activity
• Avoid non-static inner classes in an activity if you don’t control their life cycle, use a static inner class and make a weak reference to the activity inside

to be continued ...