Addendum: the amount of memory allocated and growing shown by top when I cycle through 'load keys.svg; New file; close keys.svg' is nearly the same which valgrind shows me on this block:
==13354== ==13354== 23251088 (2212104 direct, 21038984 indirect) bytes in 8917 blocks are definitely lost in loss record 470 of 474 ==13354== at 0x3414A5A9: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:130) ==13354== by 0x811D2AC: operator new(unsigned, Inkscape::GC::ScanPolicy, Inkscape::GC::CollectionPolicy, void (*)(void*, void*), void*) (gc-core.h:72) ==13354== by 0x83A27A9: sp_repr_new(char const*) (gc-managed.h:55) ==13354== by 0x83A2C4A: sp_repr_document_new(char const*) (repr.cpp:82) ==13354== by 0x83A2CFE: sp_repr_document_new_list(_GSList*) (repr.cpp:94) ==13354== by 0x839F1C8: sp_repr_do_read(_xmlDoc*, char const*) (repr-io.cpp:390) ==13354== by 0x839ED64: sp_repr_read_file(char const*, char const*) (repr-io.cpp:258) ==13354== by 0x838C0BF: Inkscape::Extension::build_from_file(char const*) (system.cpp:446) ==13354== by 0x8387A91: Inkscape::Extension::build_module_from_dir(char const*) (init.cpp:204) ==13354== by 0x83878C4: Inkscape::Extension::init() (stl_vector.h:501) ==13354== by 0x81220AB: inkscape_application_init(char const*, int) (inkscape.cpp:596) ==13354== by 0x81174F9: sp_main_gui(int, char const**) (main.cpp:521)
A question: wouldn't a forced garbage collection at close time cure the situation, as most people have reported problems when closing/opening documents?
ralf