Google has released a new open source tool called Leak Finder that aims to help Web app developers find memory leaks in JavaScript code. A memory leak is a bug that occurs when an application fails to release memory when it is no longer in use. In a blog post about Leak Finder, Google acknowledged, “In garbage-collected languages, such as JavaScript, you cannot have traditional memory leaks by forgetting to free memory: When all references to an object are dropped, the object is garbage-collected and the memory is freed. However, JavaScript programs can leak memory by unintentionally retaining references to objects.” It is these retained references that Leak Finder helps to locate.
The source code for Leak Finder is available through Google code and more information can be found at Google’s open source blog.
