tclsh eats all available memory (port -d upgrade installed)

[David Evans]

Dave Evans wrote:
> I have 317 ports installed. None require upgrading.
>
> Starting  sudo port -d upgrade installed  and monitoring
> the memory usage with Activity Monitor, after a few seconds
> tclsh RSIZE is up to 300 MB.   After a couple of minutes
> the RSIZE is up to 1.5GB and the free memory is down
> to  8 MB.  They stay at these values for another couple of minutes
> when tclsh gives up with an out of memory error.
>
> DEBUG: Found port in file:///opt/local/var/macports/sources/
> rsync.macports.org/r
> elease/ports/gnome/gnome-icon-theme
> tclsh(34820,0xa0592fa0) malloc: *** mmap(size=1884160) failed (error
> code=12)
> *** error: can't allocate region
> *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
> unable to alloc 1882835 bytes
> Abort trap
>
> Does any one know why tclsh is using so much memory?  The only
> message in this mailing list referring to the problem was a couple of
> months ago. See http://tinyurl.com/5vn3qu and
> (on another mailing list) http://tinyurl.com/6s7sxh
>
> My configuration: 2GB memory, OSX 10.5.4, Xcode 3.1,
> 500 GB of free disk space (so swap space cannot be a problem)
>
>   
I've now installed tcl 8.5.4 from Macports and modified
port to use it.  I then rerun
sudo port -d upgrade installed

It ran right through to the end.  It still used up nearly all
of the free memory though, even though it did not
need to upgrade any ports.

Apologies for the html text in the previous message. I've now
installed Thunderbird which should avoid this - I hope.