Memeory retention problem

Memeory retention problem

[Guenther Demetz]

Hi,

we own a git-repository which size is around 3.4 GiB.

Windows:
git clone git://pbzcvs01/cis/dev
Cloning into 'dev'...
remote: Counting objects: 373667, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (56072/56072), done.
Receiving objects: 100% (373667/373667), 3.46 GiB | 63.15 MiB/s, done.

Now while the client is receiving the objects from the remote,
we experience that on the remote (a linux system) the allocated memory is
linear increasing with the amount of transferred data.
While the transfer is at 99% we see following on the remote:

Linux:
  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
10197 root      20   0 4318m 3.4g 3.3g R 40.2 91.6   0:26.97 git
10196 root      20   0 1191m  51m  10m S 19.0  1.3   0:07.24 git-upload-pack

After the transmission has completed, the memory get freed istantly.
My question is:

Is it’s really necessary to allocate all compressed objects in memory and
release them not before transmission has completed?

I ask, because when there are more clients doing a clone contemporaneously
we face out of memory errors.

Windows:
Windows 7 Enterprise, SP1, 64 bit
git version 1.9.5.msysgit.0

Linux:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.3 (Santiago),
2.6.32-279.5.1.el6.x86_64
git version 2.3.0 (compiled locally)

P.S.: Please forgive me, if similar mail was already posted on the mailing-list.

best regards
Günther Demetz
Würth Phoenix S.r.l.
Product Development (CIS)
Via Kravogl 4
I-39100 Bolzano 
Direct:     +39 0471 564 061
Fax:        +39 0471 564 122
E-Mail:     guenther.demetz@wuerth-phoenix.com
Website:  www.wuerth-phoenix.com