[Gimp-developer] GEGL swap swallowed my $HOME partition and then froze GIMP solid

[Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>]

Hi All,

I filed a bug report with GEGL because while I was using GIMP, GEGL 
created a 147GiB swap file on my $HOME partition, in the process using 
up every scrap of free space on the partition, and then GEGL popped up a 
notice saying that it couldn't continue writing to swap as there was no 
more space:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=794243

I wasn't sure whether to file the bug with GEGL or with GIMP, because 
obviously this bug affects GIMP, in fact froze my computer, I had to 
press the button on the front of the box to shut down Linux, and so of 
course lost all the work I'd done since the last save.

My machine has 32GB RAM, so I changed my "start GIMP" file to include 
the lines:

GEGL_SWAP=RAM
export GEGL_SWAP

But this won't be an option for people who don't have a lot of RAM.

Does anyone know, did GEGL create this huge swap file in one editing 
session? Or does GEGL keep adding to the original swap file that it 
created who knows how long ago? I could remove the lines telling GEGL to 
use RAM as swap space and see what happens, but I'm loathe to risk a 
repeat of having GIMP and my entire computer freeze up.

Elle