The pytracker extension provides a small, efficient set of classes for tracking object usage in production code. In order to track objects, they must be subclasses of the pytracker.Trackable class, which in most cases behaves exactly like the object class.
Unlike existing packages like Heapy and PySizer, pytracker is not designed for profiling or debugging existing code, but is rather designed to allow you instrument production systems for monitoring of object usage during normal operation. It is especially useful for optimizing long-running systems which may exhibit memory leaks or unusual usage patterns over time.
Though you can create your own tracker to collect more comprehensive information about live objects, there is a simple tracker provided which can be used quickly and easily. For example:
>>> from pytracker import Tracker, Trackable, set_global_tracker
>>> t = Tracker()
>>> set_global_tracker(t)
>>>
>>> class track_my_instances(Trackable):
... pass
...
>>> i1 = track_my_instances()
>>> i2 = track_my_instances()
>>> t.dump()
track_my_instances allocated: 2 retired: 0
>>> i1 = None
>>> t.dump()
track_my_instances allocated: 1 (-1) retired: 1 (+1)
>>>
Tracked objects must be pickled using a protocol level of 2 or greater when using pickle.dump().
Any bugs should be reported as issues at https://github.com/garywiz/pytracker/issues.
The easiest way to install pytracker is using pip from the https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pytracker package:
# Ubuntu or debian prerequisites...
apt-get install pip
apt-get install python-dev
apt-get install gcc
# pytracker installation (may be all you need)
pip install pytracker
If you’re interested in the source code, or contributing, you can find the pytracker source code at https://github.com/garywiz/pytracker.
This software is distributed under the BSD-3 License:
Copyright (c) 2013, Gary J. Wisniewski, All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer:
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. Neither the name of the author, the author’s organization, nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
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