fix(memory): release fetched payloads once they have been delivered (#499)

* fix(memory): release fetched payloads once they have been delivered

BackgroundDataService kept the fetched body on the FetchResult it filed
in completed_requests, which is swept hourly and capped at 500 entries
by count. For a status record that costs nothing; for a season schedule
it costs a tenth of the board.

Measured on a 1GB Pi 3B+ with a 1-second RSS profile: the display
process sat at 404MB after plugin load, then stepped +21MB when NFL
fetched its season and +90MB when NCAA football fetched 946 games for
2026 -- and stayed at 494MB. Not a leak; a staircase that never came
down. When a later fetch landed while headroom was low, available memory
reached ~70MB, fork() began failing, and the board stopped being able to
start a process at all: sshd accepted connections and closed them before
its banner, systemd could not respawn the display, and the panel went
dark while the kernel carried on answering pings.

The cache-hit path was the worse of the two. It runs once per update
interval per sport, mints a fresh request_id each time, and files
whatever the cache returned. The memory tier is capped at 150 entries on
a 1GB board, so a miss re-parses the payload from disk into a genuinely
new object -- separate copies accumulating toward the 500-entry cap,
not shared references.

Releasing is safe: the payload is written to the cache under the
request's cache_key before the result is built, the callback is handed
the object directly, and consumers read it back from the cache
afterwards (the plugins' callbacks use it only in passing, to log a
count, before reading the cache). Nothing is lost -- it moves from RAM
to the disk cache that was already holding it.

Requests submitted without a callback keep their payload, since polling
get_result() is then the only way to collect it. That keeps the existing
contract, and the existing tests covering it, intact.

Not addressed here: max_workers=3 allows three concurrent fetches, so
three large parses can peak at once, and there is no in-flight dedupe by
cache_key -- a second submit for a key already being fetched starts a
second fetch. Both bound the transient peak rather than what stays
resident, and both are behaviour changes worth their own review.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* fix(memory): file the cache-hit result before running its callback

Restores the original ordering. Releasing the payload after the callback
meant filing the result after it too, so a callback that queried
get_result() or is_request_complete() for its own request would not have
found it -- a behaviour change unrelated to the memory fix.

The dict holds a reference to the same object, so releasing after filing
still clears the payload.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* test: wait for the payload release, not just the filing

The callback test waited on is_request_complete(), which goes true as soon
as the worker files the result in completed_requests. The worker then runs
the cleanup pass, then the callback, then releases the payload. Both of the
test's assertions therefore raced the worker: `seen` is populated by the
callback, and `data is None` only after the release that follows it.

It passes today because a one-line callback usually finishes inside the
20ms poll interval. Confirmed by making the callback sleep 0.4s: _wait()
returns with seen == {} and the payload still resident.

_wait_for_release() polls for the released payload instead. Release happens
strictly after the callback returns, so a released payload also means the
callback has finished and one wait covers both assertions. Verified against
the same 0.4s callback.

_wait() stays for the other three fetch-path tests, which assert only what
is already true when the result is filed -- the success flag, the error,
and the cache write that happened during the fetch itself. Its docstring
now says so, so the next reader picks the right one.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01STMbQE4YctTacQXfbYqKuW

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Chuck
2026-08-25 08:32:08 -04:00
committed by GitHub
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent a4a55a23fc
commit 333fd17d28
2 changed files with 225 additions and 4 deletions
+38 -4
View File
@@ -57,7 +57,15 @@ class FetchRequest:
@dataclass
class FetchResult:
"""Result of a background fetch operation."""
"""Result of a background fetch operation.
``data`` survives on the stored result only for requests submitted without
a ``callback``, where polling ``get_result()`` is the sole way to collect
it. When a callback was given, the payload has already been delivered and
the service releases it -- see :meth:`BackgroundDataService._release_payload`.
Either way the data remains in the cache under the request's ``cache_key``,
which is where consumers read it from.
"""
request_id: str
success: bool
data: Optional[Any] = None
@@ -191,14 +199,19 @@ class BackgroundDataService:
cached=True,
fetch_time=0.0
)
# Filed before the callback runs, as it always was: a callback
# that queries get_result()/is_request_complete() for its own
# request must still find it. Releasing afterwards mutates the
# same object the dict holds.
self.completed_requests[request_id] = result
if callback:
try:
callback(result)
except Exception as e:
logger.error(f"Error in callback for request {request_id}: {e}")
self._release_payload(result)
logger.debug(f"Cache hit for {sport} {year} data")
return request_id
@@ -333,8 +346,29 @@ class BackgroundDataService:
request.callback(result)
except Exception as e:
logger.error(f"Error in callback for request {request.id}: {e}")
# Delivered. Drop both references -- they point at the same
# object, so one survivor keeps the whole payload resident.
self._release_payload(result)
request.result = None
return result
@staticmethod
def _release_payload(result: FetchResult) -> None:
"""Drop a delivered payload, keeping the result's status and timings.
Only called once a callback has been handed the data. Consumers read
fetched data back from the cache under ``cache_key``; the copy carried
here was pinning a parsed season schedule -- 946 games for NCAA
football, roughly a tenth of total RAM on a 1GB Pi -- in memory until
the hourly sweep.
The cache-hit path matters most: it runs once per update interval per
sport, mints a fresh request_id each time, and a memory-tier miss
re-parses the payload from disk. Those were genuinely separate copies
accumulating toward the 500-entry cap, not shared references.
"""
result.data = None
def _make_request_with_retry(self, request: FetchRequest) -> requests.Response:
"""