Is there any memory leak possibility due to some strange reference counts of VTK objects?

In Situ Support
1

Hi Everyone,

I have written a ParaView catalyst adaptor for my simulation. It is based on a vtkMultiBlockDataSet grid that is distributed over a set of processes. Here, is a partial code snippet of CoProcess() function of my adaptor:

if (processor_->RequestDataDescription(dataDescription) != 0) 
{
		vtkMultiBlockDataSet* rootGrid = vtkMultiBlockDataSet::New();
		cout << "RefCount in Step 1 is: " << rootGrid->GetReferenceCount() << endl;

		FillMultiBlockGrid(rootGrid);
		cout << "RefCount in Step 2 is: " << rootGrid->GetReferenceCount() << endl;
		
		dataDescription->GetInputDescriptionByName("input")->SetGrid(rootGrid);
		cout << "RefCount in Step 3 is: " << rootGrid->GetReferenceCount() << endl;

		processor_->CoProcess(dataDescription);
		cout << "RefCount in Step 4 is: " << rootGrid->GetReferenceCount() << endl;

		rootGrid->Delete();
		cout << "RefCount in Step 5 is: " << rootGrid->GetReferenceCount() << endl;
}

When the simulation is running, the output is like this:

RefCount in Step 1 is: 1
RefCount in Step 2 is: 1
RefCount in Step 3 is: 2
RefCount in Step 4 is: 4
RefCount in Step 5 is: 3

To me, the outputs of Step 1 and Step 2 are clear. Step 3 is also fine because dataDescription will be deleted at the end of the method. But should I care about the output of Step 4? Considering the fact that processor_ is a member variable of my adaptor class (like ALL Catalyst examples), is there any memory leak probability in the simulation?

Thanks in advance,
Hadi

2

Hi Hadi,

Internal objects keep references on your grid so this is OK if RefCount if not 0 after step 5.
To be sure there is no leak, you can turn on the VTK_DEBUG_LEAKS in your Catalyst or PV’s build.

Best,
Joachim