requests: Possible Memory Leak

I have a very simple program that periodically retrieves an image from an IP camera. I’ve noticed that the working set of this program grows monotonically. I’ve written a small program that reproduces the issue.

import requests
from memory_profiler import profile


@profile
def lol():
    print "sending request"
    r = requests.get('http://cachefly.cachefly.net/10mb.test')
    print "reading.."
    with open("test.dat", "wb") as f:
        f.write(r.content)
    print "Finished..."

if __name__=="__main__":
    for i in xrange(100):
        print "Iteration", i
        lol()

The memory usage is printed at the end of each iteration. This is the sample output. ** Iteration 0 **

Iteration 0
sending request
reading..
Finished...
Filename: test.py

Line #    Mem usage    Increment   Line Contents
================================================
     5     12.5 MiB      0.0 MiB   @profile
     6                             def lol():
     7     12.5 MiB      0.0 MiB       print "sending request"
     8     35.6 MiB     23.1 MiB       r = requests.get('http://cachefly.cachefly.net/10mb.test')
     9     35.6 MiB      0.0 MiB       print "reading.."
    10     35.6 MiB      0.0 MiB       with open("test.dat", "wb") as f:
    11     35.6 MiB      0.0 MiB        f.write(r.content)
    12     35.6 MiB      0.0 MiB       print "Finished..."

** Iteration 1 **

Iteration 1
sending request
reading..
Finished...
Filename: test.py

Line #    Mem usage    Increment   Line Contents
================================================
     5     35.6 MiB      0.0 MiB   @profile
     6                             def lol():
     7     35.6 MiB      0.0 MiB       print "sending request"
     8     36.3 MiB      0.7 MiB       r = requests.get('http://cachefly.cachefly.net/10mb.test')
     9     36.3 MiB      0.0 MiB       print "reading.."
    10     36.3 MiB      0.0 MiB       with open("test.dat", "wb") as f:
    11     36.3 MiB      0.0 MiB        f.write(r.content)
    12     36.3 MiB      0.0 MiB       print "Finished..."

The memory usage does not grow with every iteration, but it does continue to creep up with requests.get being the culprit that increases memory usage.

By ** Iteration 99 ** this is what the memory profile looks like.

Iteration 99
sending request
reading..
Finished...
Filename: test.py

Line #    Mem usage    Increment   Line Contents
================================================
     5     40.7 MiB      0.0 MiB   @profile
     6                             def lol():
     7     40.7 MiB      0.0 MiB       print "sending request"
     8     40.7 MiB      0.0 MiB       r = requests.get('http://cachefly.cachefly.net/10mb.test')
     9     40.7 MiB      0.0 MiB       print "reading.."
    10     40.7 MiB      0.0 MiB       with open("test.dat", "wb") as f:
    11     40.7 MiB      0.0 MiB        f.write(r.content)
    12     40.7 MiB      0.0 MiB       print "Finished..."

Memory usage doesn’t drop unless the program is terminated.

Is there a bug or is it user error?