DEBUG-INFO-AREA grows to enormous size

[barmar@Think.COM (Barry Margolin)]

    Date: Mon, 10 Sep 90 17:28 CDT
    From: lgm@iexist.att.com

      What all goes into the
    DEBUG-INFO-AREA, and who is the likely culprit in this case?

Debug info goes in DEBUG-INFO-AREA, of course!  Debug info includes
argument list descriptions, local variable descriptors, some
declarations, etc; basically, it's the stuff that shows up in "Extra
info" when you DESCRIBE a compiled function object.

This is a static area for the same reason that COMPILED-FUNCTION-AREA
is: most of the time you don't redefine functions alot, so very little
of the stuff in these areas ever becomes garbage.  Even if you are doing
lots of redefinition, though, it seems pretty hard to waste a
significant amount of memory with garbage debug info; a large function
might have a few dozen words of debug info.  Perhaps your application
(or Statice, maybe) compiles lots of functions on the fly and then
throws them away?

If your pattern of function creation doesn't fit Genera's assumption you
might want to create a couple of new areas and set or bind
SYS:COMPILED-FUNCTION-AREA and SI:DEBUG-INFO-AREA to them.

                                                barmar