Gtk, Languages, and Memory

August 17, 2007

It has been a long time since my last post. Sorry, but now to business.

Recently I have re-tried to open up to Mono. I certainly do like some of its abilities and features, but the memory usage always worries me. When I compared the memory usage of Banshee and Rhythmbox, I found memory utilization of 80 MiB and 20 MiB, respectively. That mostly shot the Mono idea out of the water. However, then I checked Tomboy memory usage and found it to be reasonable, but still a little high at 16.7 MiB on my computer with three notes. For reference, Pidgin uses 6.9 MiB and Nautilus uses 12.0 MiB.

Then I got to wondering about the baseline memory usage for using GTK+ for different languages. Here are the languages, files, and commands I used.

Languages, Files, and Commands

C

hello-world.c:

#include <gtk/gtk.h>

static void
on_destroy (GtkWidget * widget, gpointer data)
{
    gtk_main_quit ();
}

int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
    GtkWidget *window;
    GtkWidget *label;

    gtk_init (&argc, &argv);

    window = gtk_window_new (GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);
    gtk_window_set_title (GTK_WINDOW (window), "Hello World");

    g_signal_connect (G_OBJECT (window), "destroy",
                      G_CALLBACK (on_destroy), NULL);

    label = gtk_label_new ("Hello, World");
    gtk_container_add (GTK_CONTAINER (window), label);
    gtk_widget_show_all (window);
    gtk_main ();

    return 0;
}

compile:
gcc hello-world.c -o hello-world `pkg-config --libs --cflags gtk+-2.0`

run:
./hello-world

C++

hello-world.cpp:

#include <gtkmm/main.h>
#include <gtkmm/window.h>
#include <gtkmm/label.h>

class HelloWorld : public Gtk::Window
{
public:
    HelloWorld();
    virtual ~HelloWorld();

protected:
    Gtk::Label m_label;
};

HelloWorld::HelloWorld()
: m_label("Hello, World")
{
    set_title("Hello World");

    add(m_label);

    show_all();
}

HelloWorld::~HelloWorld()
{
}

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
    Gtk::Main kit(argc, argv);

    HelloWorld helloworld;
    Gtk::Main::run(helloworld);

    return 0;
}

compile:
g++ hello-world.cpp -o hello-world `pkg-config --libs --cflags gtkmm-2.4`

run:
./hello-world

Python

hello-world.py:

import gtk

def on_destroy(o):
	gtk.main_quit()

w = gtk.Window()
w.set_title("Hello World")

w.connect("destroy", on_destroy)

l = gtk.Label("Hello, World")
w.add(l)
w.show_all()
gtk.main()

run:
python hello-world.py

C#

hello-world.cs:

using Gtk;
using System;

class Hello {

	static void Main()
	{
		Application.Init ();

		Window window = new Window ("Hello World");

		window.DeleteEvent += delete_event;

		window.Add (new Label ("Hello, World"));

		window.ShowAll ();
		Application.Run ();

	}
	static void delete_event (object obj, DeleteEventArgs args)
	{
		 Application.Quit ();
	}
}

compile:
mcs hello-world.cs -pkg:gtk-sharp

run:
mono hello-world.exe

IronPython

hello-world.py:

import clr
clr.AddReference("gtk-sharp")
import Gtk

def delete_event (o, args):
  Gtk.Application.Quit ()

Gtk.Application.Init ()
w = Gtk.Window ("Hello World")

w.DeleteEvent += delete_event

l = Gtk.Label ("Hello, World")
w.Add(l)
w.ShowAll ()
Gtk.Application.Run ()

run:
mono ipy.exe hello-world.py

Results

All the memory usages were recorded from GNOME's System Monitor. I used the new "Memory" column that is suppose to be less misleading than other measurements.

Language	Memory Usage
C	1.9 MiB
C++	2.7 MiB
Python	6.6 MiB
C#	3.3 MiB
IronPython	29.8 MiB

I tried to do Java as well, but I could not get the Java bindings to compile. I think that this test gave Mono some credibility and removed any consideration for using IronPython from my mind. I was not very surprised with Python's "high" memory usage, since I had already looked into this when looking into GEdit's plugins. This test tells nothing about actual memory usage in typical programs in each of the different languages, just the baseline for how low the memory usage can go.

Eric Anderson

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