Bug#807062: Excessive memory usage with large contacts database

[Josh Triplett]

Package: gnome-contacts
Version: 3.18.1-1
Severity: important

I have evolution hooked up to a large contacts database (corporate
address book).  Recently, gnome-contacts (running in the background of
the GNOME session, without anything requesting contacts) started using
an excessive amount of memory: 7GB+ before it got killed by the OOM
killer, and just before doing so it very nearly froze my X session.

No matter how big the contacts database is, gnome-contacts should not
use that much memory; map the contacts from disk if necessary, but don't
copy them into memory.

Furthermore, it doesn't seem at all obvious to me why gnome-contacts
needs to run at all in the background of my session, as I have not run
anything that would need access to contacts.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.3.0-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages gnome-contacts depends on:
ii  dconf-gsettings-backend [gsettings-backend]  0.24.0-2
ii  libatk1.0-0                                  2.18.0-1
ii  libc6                                        2.21-1
ii  libcairo2                                    1.14.4-1
ii  libchamplain-0.12-0                          0.12.11-1
ii  libcheese-gtk25                              3.18.1-2
ii  libcheese8                                   3.18.1-2
ii  libclutter-1.0-0                             1.24.2-1
ii  libclutter-gtk-1.0-0                         1.6.6-1
ii  libedataserver-1.2-21                        3.18.2-1
ii  libedataserverui-1.2-1                       3.18.2-1
ii  libfolks-eds25                               0.11.1-2+b1
ii  libfolks-telepathy25                         0.11.1-2+b1
ii  libfolks25                                   0.11.1-2+b1
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0                           2.32.2-1
ii  libgee-0.8-2                                 0.18.0-1
ii  libgeocode-glib0                             3.18.0-1
ii  libglib2.0-0                                 2.46.2-1
ii  libgnome-desktop-3-12                        3.18.2-1
ii  libgoa-1.0-0b                                3.18.2.1-1
ii  libgtk-3-0                                   3.18.5-1
ii  libpango-1.0-0                               1.38.1-1
ii  libpangocairo-1.0-0                          1.38.1-1
ii  libtelepathy-glib0                           0.24.1-1.1

gnome-contacts recommends no packages.

gnome-contacts suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information