Automatically Find Memory Leaks in Native Gems | Rails at Scale

Ruby supports gems written in native languages, such as in C, C , or Rust. These gems are known as “native gems”. There are several reasons why a gem author would choose to write a native gem over writing one in Ruby, such as for higher performance or to use a native library. However, native gems have several drawbacks, one of which is the risk of memory leaks. High level languages like Ruby have a garbage collector, which manages memory and ensures memory is released after you’re done using it. However, these native languages don’t have a garbage collector, so they require the developer to manually manage and release memory. If the developer forgets to release a piece of memory, then a memory leak will occur.