Memory footprint refers to the amount of main memory that a program, application or service uses or references while running. The program itself does not make the largest contribution to the footprint, but rather their run-time data
Memory footprint includes all sorts of active memory regions like:
- code segment containing program instructions (and occasionally constants)
- data segment (both initialized and uninitialized)
- heap memory
- call stack
plus memory required to hold any additional data structures, such as:
- symbol tables
- debugging data structures
- shared libraries mapped to the current process
that the program ever needs while executing and will be loaded at least once during its life cycle. Programs themselves often do not contribute the largest portions to their own memory footprints; rather, structures introduced by the run-time environment take up most of the memory.
