如何让Linux更积极地使用交换分区？应对D项目编译内存突发占用

Hey there, let me break down what's happening here—this isn't a bug, it's actually intentional behavior from DMD designed to prioritize compile speed above all else.

Here's the core of it:

• DMD, the reference compiler for D, is built with one key goal in mind: blazing-fast compilation. To hit that target, it uses an extremely aggressive memory management strategy: it only allocates memory via malloc, and never calls free to release it during its runtime.
• This makes total sense when you think about what a compiler does: it's a short-lived program. It starts up, processes your code, outputs binaries or diagnostics, then exits. For this kind of workflow, freeing memory on the fly is a waste of time:
  • It eliminates the need for complex logic to track which part of the code owns which memory blocks
  • It skips the overhead of deciding when to safely free memory without causing crashes
  • It avoids the performance hit of dealing with memory fragmentation
• When you trigger a compile in VS Code (whether manually or via background checks), DMD will allocate all the memory it needs for your project upfront—hence that sudden 5-6GB spike. Once compilation finishes and DMD exits, your operating system will automatically reclaim all that memory for you.

If this memory usage is causing issues on your machine, here are a couple of quick fixes to try:

• Use DMD's incremental compilation flag (-i) to only recompile changed files instead of the entire project—this can drastically cut down on the memory needed per compile.
• If you don't need real-time background compilation in VS Code, disable it in your D language extension settings (like Code-D). This prevents DMD from spinning up unexpectedly and eating up memory while you're coding.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者zorael