# plasma-umass/Mesh

A memory allocator that automatically reduces the memory footprint of C/C++ applications.

Repository: https://github.com/plasma-umass/Mesh
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/plasma-umass-mesh
Language: C++
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: allocator, memory, malloc-library, memory-allocator, memory-management
Last push: 2026-03-25T14:38:46+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 66/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 74, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4020, "days_push": 161, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1882, forks 83 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:48.613332+00:00)

## What it is
Mesh is a drop-in replacement malloc library for C/C++ that transparently reduces memory footprint by recovering from heap fragmentation without code changes. It can be linked into applications or loaded via LD_PRELOAD.

## Use cases
- reduce memory usage of C/C++ applications
- replace malloc to fix heap fragmentation
- run redis or other servers with lower memory footprint
- profile allocator behavior with MALLOCSTATS
- drop-in memory allocator for long-running services

## When to choose
- your C/C++ app suffers from memory fragmentation
- you want memory savings without modifying source code
- you run long-lived services on Linux or macOS

## When to avoid
- you need Windows support (still a work in progress)
- your workload has no fragmentation issues
- you need a guaranteed-performance real-time allocator

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: caching, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, performance, operating-systems
- platform: cpp, c
- tags: memory-allocator, malloc, memory-fragmentation, drop-in-replacement, ld-preload, memory-compaction, performance, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- plasma-umass/Mesh (main) score 66

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:48.613332+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:13:48.048197+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/plasma-umass/Mesh (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:48.613332+00:00, sha bab83d4d38e6)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.