[BUG]: Memory leak

[apprenti-sorcier]

Brief description of the issue

The more you use RSS Guard, the more memory it takes. After a little use, GB of RAM are taken, more than Firefox with many tabs open.

How to reproduce the bug?

I have about 100 feeds in my local list (no online account). The images in articles are shown reduced, as the default setting is.
With the system monitor open:

1. Start RSS Guard: RSS Guard takes about 80 MB.
2. Wait a minute or so for it to automatically update the feeds: it jumps to 260 MB.
3. Open the list of all the feeds: now 296 MB.
4. Open one article: now 320 MB.
5. Open a second article: 324 MB.
6. Open a third article containing some images: 349 MB.
7. A few more articles containing images: 370 MB.
8. Apply a text filter: 372 MB.
9. Empty the text filter: 372 MB (not coming back).
10. A few more articles, send the URL to open in the default web browser: 441 MB.
11. Add a feed, find button (no feeds found): 447 MB.
12. Manually add a feed (non functional for some reason): 449 MB.
13. Add a feed, find button (feed found): 564 MB.
14. Import it, open the most recent article: 566 MB.
15. Find a feed on another website: 638 MB.
16. Import it: 639 MB.
17. Delete the new feed, empty the recycle bin: no change.
18. Open the parameters, immediately cancel: 643 MB.
19. Open the article filter window, close immediately: 645 MB.

Note that at this point we multiplied our RAM usage 8 times. We could keep doing on and on…

In conclusion, the two main problems are:

• RSS Guard rarely releases its RAM after having taken it (probably the most obvious one is if you just go through the list of articles);
• feed discovery seems to be the biggest consumer from my quick test, but I didn’t completely test all its functions.

So please review this memory usage problem thoroughly.

I didn’t notice a similar problem with other software, let’s say with Akregator being the closest relative.

What was the expected result?

Use RAM parsimoniously and empty it when the actions is finished.

What actually happened?

Recently as I was adding websites and feeds, it ended using up 2,7 GB (!) of RAM until I discovered the memory hog and closed the culprit.

Debug log

I don’t have one, but see the flow described above.

Operating system and version

• OS: Manjaro KDE
• RSS Guard version: 4.8.6