Having recently upgraded to Python 2.4, I am having a 
large memory 
leak with the following code built with VC++ 6.0: 


                PyObject *pName, *pModule; 


                Py_Initialize(); 
                pName = PyString_FromString(argv[1]); 


                pModule = PyImport_Import(pName); 
                Py_DECREF(pName); 


                PyObject* pModule2 = 
PyImport_ReloadModule(pModule)­; 
                Py_DECREF(pModule2); 
                Py_DECREF(pModule); 
                Py_Finalize(); 
                return 0; 


I get leaks of over 500 kb.  I have another program which 
is much more 
complex, in which every call to PyImport_ReloadModule 
is leaking 200+ 
kb, even though I am calling Py_DECREF correctly.

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How do you know there is a memory leak?

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Boundschecker shows the leak and I have verified this by 
watching the process memory increase via the task manager.

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I've been unable to verify this on Linux. I've tested python
versions 2.2.3, 2.3.5 and 2.4.1, all compiled with gcc 3.3.5
on Debian 3.1 under kernel 2.6.8. I used the sample program
provided by Ben, modified with an infinite loop over the
PyImport_ReloadModule/PyDECREF(pModule2) lines, sleeping for
1 second after every 25 iterations. I tested reloading the
modules distutils, os.path, distutils.command.sdist for 300+
iterations each under each python version. No memory leak
was observed.

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This behavior is evident with Python 2.3.5 built on Windows 
with VC++ 6.0.

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I just tested with Python 2.4.2 on Linux with valgrind.  It
doesn't report any leaks.  So this could be specific to
Python 2.3.5, Windows, VC++ 6.0 or some other variation.  

Can you provide more info?  For example, what module are you
passing on the command line?  Can you provide that code? 
What objects specifically do you think are leaking?  Where
were they allocated?

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Turns out this is not a Python issue, but a SWIG issue.  It 
only leaks for modules that were created with SWIG.  Please 
close this item

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Closing as requested.