[BUG] Memory leak in Chrome on repeated browser open/close

[rustyhectors]

Context:

• Playwright Version: 1.29.0
• Operating System: Mac 12.6.1
• Node.js version: v19.6.1
• Browser: Chrome 110.0.5481.100
• Extra: Note that this is a BYOB (bring your own browser) scenario for this repro

Code Snippet

Help us help you! Put down a short code snippet that illustrates your bug and
that we can run and debug locally. For example:

package repro;

import com.microsoft.playwright.Browser;
import com.microsoft.playwright.BrowserContext;
import com.microsoft.playwright.Page;
import com.microsoft.playwright.Playwright;
import java.util.Map;

public class Repro {
  // Before running, launch chrome with "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" --remote-debugging-port=9223 --headless
  public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
    Playwright playwright = Playwright.create(
      new Playwright.CreateOptions().setEnv(Map.of("PLAYWRIGHT_SKIP_BROWSER_DOWNLOAD", "true")));

    // open one browser/page
    Browser browser = playwright.chromium().connectOverCDP("http://" + "localhost" + ":" + 9223);
    BrowserContext context = browser.newContext();
    Page page = context.newPage();
    page.navigate("https://www.google.com");

    // open/close a browser repeatedly
    while (true) {
      try {
        Browser shortLivedBrowser = playwright.chromium().connectOverCDP("http://" + "localhost" + ":" + 9223);
        shortLivedBrowser.close();
        System.out.println("Opened and closed.");
      } catch (Exception e) {
        System.out.println("Failed to open or close browser.");
        System.out.println(e);
      }
      Thread.sleep(10);
    }
  }
}

Describe the bug
Chrome memory usage grows in the "renderer" process.

Baseline before running the repro:

Right after starting:

A minute or two:

About four minutes after starting:

[mxschmitt]

I can confirm that with the following:

// test.mjs
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer';

(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
    executablePath: '/Users/maxschmitt/Library/Caches/ms-playwright/chromium-1048/chrome-mac/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium',
  });
  while (true) {
    console.log("connecting")
    const browser2 = await puppeteer.connect({
      browserWSEndpoint: browser.wsEndpoint(),
    });
    browser2.disconnect();
  }
})().catch(e => {
  console.error(e);
  process.exit(1);
});

the memory also grows linearly. But it grows very slowly for me, after 80k connections the Renderer reached 1GB.

[rustyhectors]

For comparison it took about 2100 iterations with code I provided to get to 1GB memory in the Renderer. I also ran your puppeteer code and confirmed I saw about the same number of iterations to get to 1GB (~80k).

[yury-s]

@rustyhectors it's an upstream issue, can you file it there (https://crbug.com) ?

[rustyhectors]

Filed an issue here https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1418465.

[SmartALB]

We are conducting a sort of mix between a continuous and a load test. Since other tools, such as Artillery, can't represent our scenario, I'm repurposing Playwright for this somewhat. Multiple browsers are opened in tabs, and in an endless loop, a few actions are carried out in all tabs in succession. In any case, I observe with Chromium also a slight linear increase: Starting at about 2.5 GB RAM, the utilization has increased to about 7GB after a good 3 hours. With Firefox, it starts at about 5 GB, and after a significantly shorter period of time, it has reached 8GB. Very noticeable is the behavior with Safari. Here is the utilization shortly after the test began:

[BryceBarbara]

@yury-s the bug ticket filed with chrome was closed as wont-fix. What should we do with this issue?

[ktorn]

My workaround is to process.exit() after a few close() and wrap everything in a shell script that restarts the nodejs process every time it exits. This approach works also when dockerized (with its build-in restart mechanism).