Installation and Documentation

pip install objgraph or download it from PyPI.

Documentation lives at http://mg.pov.lt/objgraph.

History

I've developed a set of functions that eventually became objgraph when I was hunting for memory leaks in a Python program. The whole story -- with illustrated examples -- is in this series of blog posts:

• Hunting memory leaks in Python
• Python object graphs
• Object graphs with graphviz

Support and Development

The source code can be found in this Bazaar repository: https://code.launchpad.net/~mgedmin/objgraph/trunk.

To check it out, use bzr branch lp:objgraph.

Report bugs at https://bugs.launchpad.net/objgraph.

1.7.1 (2011-12-11)

• Bugfix: non-ASCII characters in object representations would break graph generation on Python 3.x, in some locales (e.g. with LC_ALL=C). Reported and fixed by Stefano Rivera.
• Bugfix: setup.py was broken on Python 3.x
• Bugfix: dot.exe/xdot.exe were not found on Windows (LP#767239).
• Documentation updates: document the forgotten find_ref_chain, update show_chain prototype.

1.7.0 (2011-03-11)

• New function: find_ref_chain.
• New backrefs argument for show_chain.
• New function: get_leaking_objects, based on a blog post by Kristjan Valur.
• New objects argument for count, typestats, most_common_types, show_most_common_types, and by_type.
• Edges pointing to function attributes such as __defaults__ or __globals__ are now labeled.
• Edge labels that are not simple strings now show the type.
• Bugfix: '0' and other unsafe characters used in a dictionary key could break graph generation.
• Bugfix: show_refs(..., filename='graph.dot') would then go to complain about unrecognized file types and then produce a png.

1.6.0 (2010-12-18)

• Python 3 support, thanks to Stefano Rivera (fixes LP#687601).
• Removed weird weakref special-casing.

1.5.1 (2010-12-09)

• Avoid test failures in uncollectable-garbage.txt (fixes LP#686731).
• Added HACKING.txt.

1.5.0 (2010-12-05)

• Show frame objects as well (fixes LP#361704).
• New functions: show_growth, show_chain.
• find_backref_chain returns [obj] instead of None when a chain could not be found. This makes show_chain(find_backref_chain(...), ...) not break.
• Show how many references were skipped from the output of show_refs/show_backrefs by specifying too_many.
• Make show_refs descend into modules.
• Do not highlight classes that define a __del__, highlight only instances of those classes.
• Option to show reference counts in show_refs/show_backrefs.
• Add Sphinx documentation and a PyPI long description.

1.4.0 (2010-11-03)

• Compatibility with Python 2.4 and 2.5 (tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile has no delete argument).
• New function: most_common_types.

1.3.1 (2010-07-17)

• Rebuild an sdist with no missing files (fixes LP#606604).
• Added MANIFEST.in and a Makefile to check that setup.py sdist generates source distributions with no files missing.

1.3 (2010-07-13)

• Highlight objects with a __del__ method.
• Fixes LP#483411: suggest always passing [obj] to show_refs, show_backrefs, since obj might be a list/tuple.
• Fixes LP#514422: show_refs, show_backrefs don't create files in the current working directory any more. Instead they accept a filename argument, which can be a .dot file or a .png file. If None or not specified, those functions will try to spawn xdot as before.
• New extra_info argument to graph-generating functions (patch by Thouis Jones, LP#558914).
• setup.py should work with distutils now (LP#604430, thanks to Randy Heydon).

1.2 (2009-03-25)

• Project website, public source repository, uploaded to PyPI.
• No code changes.

1.1 (2008-09-10)

• New function: show_refs for showing forward references.
• New functions: typestats and show_most_common_types.
• Object boxes are less crammed with useless information (such as IDs).
• Spawns xdot if it is available.

1.0 (2008-06-14)

• First public release.