Memory Issues and Problematic Workaround with ulimit

[Vej <ubuntu jonasdiekmann de>]

Hello everyone!

I want to discuss a bit about the memory issue and the problems of the implemented workaround.

The initial bug seems to be https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/deja-dup/+bug/1302416 which had been 
temporary solved by setting a ulimit in the desktop file.

The most obvious result of this fix is that the process will run out of memory when approaching the limit. 
Bugs regarding this are traced in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/deja-dup/+bug/1724638.

Another (more unintended?) regression introduced by this in Artful is a limit of threads which could be 
reached according to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/duplicity/+bug/1727653.

This is the state in Ubuntu Artful and most likely in other releases and derivatives with a similar set of 
dependencies.

The webkit version shipped with Bionic is not compatible with ulimit according to 
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=183329, although it is unclear to me if older versions of webkit had 
the same problem but were just not in our dependency tree (it is claimed to be currently in there via Gnome 
Online Accounts).

The developers of webkit say that this is not their problem (which might be right) and suggested removing the 
limit. That has been done by Jeremy Bicha for deja-dup - 37.1-2fakesync1 (see 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/deja-dup/+bug/1751460).

So in bionic we lost the protection of ulimit and will likely get the old problem of 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/deja-dup/+bug/1302416 back.

Any solution to this in sight? Have I missed something?

Best

Vej