[rules-users] Memory leak due CompositeClassLoader

[Romain Thouvenin]

Hello,

I am working on a Web application that uses a third-party component that 
uses Drools 5.2.1 (I know this is old, but this is not my choice).
While investigating memory leaks in my application, I found out that after 
redeploying the webapp in the application server (Weblogic), the leaking 
class loader is referenced by:

   org.drools.util.CompositeClassLoader.classLoaders

This is because when that class is instantiated by 
org.drools.util.ClassLoaderUtil, the initial list of class loaders 
includes the context class loader of the current thread, which is the 
class loader of my webapp. But the class loader of CompositeClassLoader is 
not the same as my webapp, so when I redeploy my webapp 
CompositeClassLoader continues to exist and keep that reference to the 
webapp class loader, which is therefore never garbage-collected.

Browsing a bit through the code, I see no reference to 
CompositeClassLoader.removeClassLoader that could remove the faulty 
reference.

So my questions are:
1) Is my investigation correct?

2) I found this thread on the list: 
http://drools.46999.n3.nabble.com/permgen-leak-td4027038i20.html
Is this the same issue as mine, meaning that it is fixed in 5.6.0 and 6.0?
If yes, pushing this third-party component to upgrade is really the only 
solution I have?

I am not at all a knowledgeable user of drools, I just happen to be user 
of that third-party component, that is why I wanted confirmation of my 
findings.

Thanks for your help!
Romain

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