Memory leak introduced by recent update

[jphgoo049]

We recently updated our code to use v8.17.1 from v6.12.6 and found it has introduced a memory leak related to the validate() function. We separately use compile() elsewhere which appears to be unaffected.

It was quite serious as it nearly brought our service down.

[andreasvoigt]

In one of my projects, we run into a huge memory leak using ajv. In our case we used the ajv instance on a static class member. Using compile on this static instance object creates a memory leak. I didn't had the time to look completely into the code of ajv. Maybe there is a known reason behind this and this behavior is intended? I would have expected that the validation function created as the output of compile hold's "all the magic" and the used memory will be freed by GC after leaving the scope.

I tried with the latest versions of ajv: 8.17.1 and 8.16.0

[roger-soler-deel]

We are also experiencing memory leaks with AJV.

We created a test setup where we create a schema, we compile it, validate data, and then we call removeSchema and GC. And memory increases indefinitely.

[marcbachmann]

Please see #1413 (comment)