# Dev Container memory usage really high?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/dev-container-memory-usage-really-high/355701
**Category:** Development
**Tags:** dev-install
**Created:** [March 4, 2025, 8:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dev-container-memory-usage-really-high/355701 "2025-03-04T20:02:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dsims](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dsims)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2025, 8:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dev-container-memory-usage-really-high/355701/1 "2025-03-04T20:02:19Z")
I’m on a M2 Macbook Pro using the [Dev Container setup](https://meta.discourse.org/t/developing-discourse-using-a-dev-container/336366). Memory usage seems really high, is this typical? I see about 4GB memory usage before running anything, then needing about 10GB to get through a successful build and the full app running at about 8GB.
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### Author:  [@dsims](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dsims)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2025, 11:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dev-container-memory-usage-really-high/355701/2 "2025-03-04T23:42:26Z")
Before the official Dev Container config was shared, I had my own `devcontainer.json` that didn’t use the `discourse_dev` base image. It uses only 2GB RAM at rest and 6GB while running Discourse, so I’m curious what the difference could be.
base image: `mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/base:debian-12`
with these “[features](https://containers.dev/implementors/features/)”:
```plaintext
"features": {
"ghcr.io/rocker-org/devcontainer-features/apt-packages:1": {
"packages": "software-properties-common libpq-dev vim curl expect debconf-utils build-essential zlib1g-dev libssl-dev openssl libcurl4-openssl-dev libreadline6-dev libpcre3 libpcre3-dev imagemagick advancecomp jhead jpegoptim libjpeg-turbo-progs optipng pngcrush pngquant gnupg2"
},
"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/ruby:1": {
"version": "3.3.4"
},
"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/node:1": {
"version": "18",
"pnpmVersion": "9"
},
"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/rust:1": {
"version": "1.75.0"
},
"ghcr.io/itsmechlark/features/redis-server:1": {},
"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/go:1": {},
"ghcr.io/azutake/devcontainer-features/go-packages-install:0": {
"PACKAGES": "github.com/mailhog/MailHog@latest"
},
},
```
including another container db service running the `postgres:14` image
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### Author:  [@jahan\_gagan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jahan_gagan)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2025, 11:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dev-container-memory-usage-really-high/355701/3 "2025-03-04T23:49:04Z")
The official image aims to simplify development by bundling everything needed to run Discourse seamlessly, at the cost of higher memory requirements, and your custom setup seems to have a fine-grained control over versions and installed libraries.
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### Author:  [@dsims](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dsims)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2025, 12:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dev-container-memory-usage-really-high/355701/4 "2025-03-05T00:12:28Z")
> [@jahan\_gagan](#):
>
> at the cost of higher memory requirements
Are you also seeing the dev image using about 8-10GB RAM?
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### Author:  [@dsims](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dsims)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2025, 3:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dev-container-memory-usage-really-high/355701/5 "2025-03-05T03:56:59Z")
Now it’s down around 6GB after restarting all the things, so I am going to assume that is “typical” and blame any more than that on a possible memory leak _somewhere_ in the dev stack (probably Docker Desktop).
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2025, 3:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dev-container-memory-usage-really-high/355701/6 "2025-04-04T03:57:14Z")
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