*nix measure memory usage
Solution 1:
The strace command might be of some use. It will show you in what system calls the time is being taken up:
$ strace -cTv zip /tmp/test.zip /usr/share/dict/words
adding: usr/share/dict/words (deflated 73%)
% time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
100.00 0.000055 2 34 read
0.00 0.000000 0 21 write
0.00 0.000000 0 12 3 open
0.00 0.000000 0 9 close
0.00 0.000000 0 3 3 access
0.00 0.000000 0 1 rename
0.00 0.000000 0 3 brk
0.00 0.000000 0 1 gettimeofday
0.00 0.000000 0 4 munmap
0.00 0.000000 0 3 mprotect
0.00 0.000000 0 6 _llseek
0.00 0.000000 0 6 rt_sigaction
0.00 0.000000 0 12 mmap2
0.00 0.000000 0 8 1 stat64
0.00 0.000000 0 1 1 lstat64
0.00 0.000000 0 9 fstat64
0.00 0.000000 0 1 fcntl64
0.00 0.000000 0 1 set_thread_area
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
100.00 0.000055 141 8 total
Solution 2:
On Linux you can read /proc/[pid]/status; the VmPeak field is the maximum virtual memory size, VmHWM is the maximum resident set size.
The getrusage() syscall might, or might not, help. The struct rusage contains e.g. a maxrss field, but at least on Linux this is never filled in.
Solution 3:
If you don't mind repeating the execution a few times you can use ulimit -Hv to set the memory limit for the shell (in Bash) and then binary search the minimum when the application successfully exits.