BLeak: automatically debugging memory leaks in web applications

Abstract

Despite the presence of garbage collection in managed languages like JavaScript, memory leaks remain a serious problem. In the context of web applications, these leaks are especially pervasive and difficult to debug. Web application memory leaks can take many forms, including failing to dispose of unneeded event listeners, repeatedly injecting iframes and CSS files, and failing to call cleanup routines in third-party libraries. Leaks degrade responsiveness by increasing GC frequency and overhead, and can even lead to browser tab crashes by exhausting available memory. Because previous leak detection approaches designed for conventional C, C++ or Java applications are ineffective in the browser environment, tracking down leaks currently requires intensive manual effort by web developers.