Finding JavaScript memory leaks with Chrome

Question

I\'ve created a very simple test case that creates a Backbone view, attaches a handler to an event, and instantiates a user-defined class. I believe that by clicking the \"R

Answer 1

I second the advice to take a heap snapshot, they're excellent for detecting memory leaks, chrome does an excellent job of snapshotting.

In my research project for my degree I was building an interactive web application that had to generate a lot of data built up in 'layers', many of these layers would be 'deleted' in the UI but for some reason the memory wasn't being deallocated, using the snapshot tool I was able to determine that JQuery had been keeping a reference on the object (the source was when I was trying to trigger a .load() event which kept the reference despite going out of scope). Having this information at hand single-handedly saved my project, it's a highly useful tool when you're using other people's libraries and you have this issue of lingering references stopping the GC from doing its job.

EDIT: It's also useful to plan ahead what actions you're going to perform to minimize time spent snapshotting, hypothesize what could be causing the problem and test each scenario out, making snapshots before and after.