In an attempt of using ctypes.from_buffer() to map a structure to a memory mapped file, it is important to destroy the mapping after use, because the mmap won't be resizable or freeable correctly until then.

The best approach, I was able to came up with is using a context manager, but calling the dtor of the mapping in __exit__ is not enough, which results to code like this:

with StructMap(ctypes_struct, mm, offest) as smap:
    smap.xxx = 'blabla'
del smap # necessary, but ugly

Without the del, the "with" variable still exist in the local context, hence the mapping still exist, until it is explicitly destroyed.

I hope, that ctypes is able to (or can be made to) actively remove the mapping in the __exit__ part of the context manager.

I've put some code on stackoverflow to play with this:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/41077696/python-ctypes-from-buffer-mapping-with-context-manager-into-memory-mapped-file

The problem seems to exist with the linux mmap implementation only.

Have you tried Mark Tolonen's suggestion on the stack overflow question, to set the instance variables to None in __exit__?