Perl memory usage profiling and leak detection?

Question

I wrote a persistent network service in Perl that runs on Linux.

Unfortunately, as it runs, its Resident Stack Size (RSS) just grows, and grows, and grows, slowly

Answer 1

What next to try (not sure if this would be best placed in a comment after Alex's question above though): What I'd try next (other than Devel::Leak):

Try to eliminate "unnecessary" parts of your program, or segment it into separate executables (they could use signals to communicate, or call each other with command-line arguments perhaps) -- the goal is to boil down an executable into the smallest amount of code that still exhibits the bad behaviour. If you're sure it's not your code that's doing it, reduce the number of external modules you're using, particularly those that have an XS implementation. If perhaps it is your own code, look for anything potentially fishy:

• definitely any use of Inline::C or XS code
• direct use of references, e.g. \@list or \%hash, rather than preallocated references like [ qw(foo bar) ] (the former creates another reference which may get lost; in the latter, there is just one reference to worry about, which is usually stored in a local lexical scalar
• manipulating variables indirectly, e.g. $$foo where $foo is modified, which can cause autovivication of variables (although you need to disable strict 'refs' checking)