Tracing the references for a specific object in Python (memory leak)

Question

I have a 3rd party library creating huge memory leaks. I've called gc.collect, and have no references to any objects created by this library, but it still leaks.

Using gc.get_objects() I've identified numerous objects which should not be alive, as they are specific to this library.

How can I trace which objects are keeping these leaked objects alive (the goal being to trace it to a global variable/list, which I can reset to fix the leak)?

Files and line numbers would be nice, but even having the instances of the holder objects would help a great deal.

Answer 1

You could try gc.get_referrers. Demo:

import gc

def test():
    a = ['foo', b := {'bar'}]
    for r in gc.get_referrers(b):
        print(r)

test()

Output (Attempt This Online!):

['foo', {'bar'}]