IPython integration

After installing the module, if you use IPython, you can use the %mprun, %%mprun, %memit and %%memit magics.

For IPython 0.11+, you can use the module directly as an extension, with %load_ext memory_profiler

To activate it whenever you start IPython, edit the configuration file for your IPython profile, ~/.ipython/profile_default/ipython_config.py, to register the extension like this (If you already have other extensions, just add this one to the list):

c.InteractiveShellApp.extensions = [
    'memory_profiler',
]

(If the config file doesn't already exist, run ipython profile create in a terminal.)

It then can be used directly from IPython to obtain a line-by-line report using the %mprun or %%mprun magic command. In this case, you can skip the @profile decorator and instead use the -f parameter, like this. Note however that function my_func must be defined in a file (cannot have been defined interactively in the Python interpreter):

In [1]: from example import my_func, my_func_2

In [2]: %mprun -f my_func my_func()

or in cell mode:

In [3]: %%mprun -f my_func -f my_func_2
   ...: my_func()
   ...: my_func_2()

Another useful magic that we define is %memit, which is analogous to %timeit. It can be used as follows:

In [1]: %memit range(10000)
peak memory: 21.42 MiB, increment: 0.41 MiB

In [2]: %memit range(1000000)
peak memory: 52.10 MiB, increment: 31.08 MiB

or in cell mode (with setup code):

In [3]: %%memit l=range(1000000)
   ...: len(l)
   ...:
peak memory: 52.14 MiB, increment: 0.08 MiB

For more details, see the docstrings of the magics.

For IPython 0.10, you can install it by editing the IPython configuration file ~/.ipython/ipy_user_conf.py to add the following lines:

# These two lines are standard and probably already there.
import IPython.ipapi
ip = IPython.ipapi.get()

# These two are the important ones.
import memory_profiler
memory_profiler.load_ipython_extension(ip)