How do I fix a memory leak from a static map referenced in multiple places?

[Jack54]

I’ve been trying to debug a weird issue where my application’s memory usage keeps climbing, but the garbage collector isn’t reclaiming anything. I ran a heap dump and found a ton of these objects referenced from a static map, which seems like a classic memory leak. I’m just not sure where to start fixing it since the map is used in several places.

[BrianHG]

I ran into this once. a static map that kept growing and the things inside it were big objects. GC looked busy but the map was still holding roots, so nothing got freed. We added a small purge that runs on config reload and started replacing some uses with a scoped cache that can be evicted. It wasn’t a clean fix, but memory drift slowed down after that.

[Nicholas.T]

I’ve learned that not every climb is a bug; sometimes the cache legitimately grows with traffic. The heap dump can look like a leak when the root stays around. In my case, trimming the growth rate and watching allocation speed helped me see what was actually expanding.

[Steven.W]

From an analytical angle, the static map acts as a root. If any value keeps a reference chain into big graphs, they won’t be reclaimed. The quick wins I chased were: look for values that wrap large structures, consider weaker references, and think about eviction policies.

[IsabellaT]

Do you have a sense if the problem is really this map, or could something else be driving growth that happens to touch it?