Garbage collection of export_png()

[chyan26]

I am using export_png() for producing images. However, the phamtonjs process does not go away when program is fiished. After running the program for few times, I need to clean the phamtonjs process before it eat up all memory.

Therefore, I am writing to ask a possible way to do garbage collection after export_png() is done.

[philippjfr]

I've noticed the same thing. In holoviews we use static export to generate thumbnails for our examples, and when building the docs I end up with about 100 phantomjs processes, which use an inordinate amount of CPU.

[chyan26]

My solution is a little bit ugly. I did something like this.

   # Garbage collection for Phantomjs.  This is because it produce one process after export_png()
    p = subprocess.Popen(['ps', '-A'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    out, err = p.communicate()

    for line in out.splitlines():
        if b'phantom' in line:
            pid = int(line.split(None, 1)[0])
            os.kill(pid, signal.SIGKILL)    

So, I believe there is a way to fix the issue.

[mattpap]

Issue #6525 seems related.

[mattpap]

This seems to be a regression after PR #8329.