Optimizing Memory Usage and Preventing Memory Leaks

The Ruby Garbage Collector (GC) module serves as an interface to Ruby’s mark and sweep garbage collection mechanism. Runtime garbage collection significantly influences memory management and recycling.

Although the GC operates automatically in the background as needed, the GC module allows you to manually invoke the GC when necessary and gain insights into the progress of garbage collection cycles. This module offers adjustable parameters that can help moderate performance.

Several frequently used methods within this module include:

• start/garbage_collect: This method initiates a manual garbage collection cycle.
• enable/disable: These methods activate or deactivate automatic garbage collection cycles. They return a boolean value reflecting the success of the operation.
• stat: This method supplies a list of keys and values that describe GC module performance. We will delve into these metrics in detail in the following section.

To manually invoke the Garbage Collector, execute GC.<method> in your IRB or Rails console. For a deeper understanding of GC tuning, take a look at this article.