I tried contacting Stephen the pool_allocator author, but his e-mail is invalid (shouldn't the docs be updated?) Here is what I wrote in case someone else here can offer some help: I'm trying unsuccessfully to use your Boost::pool_alloc. In the documentation at the boost website: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_42_0/libs/pool/doc/interfaces.html it says: // Exiting the function does NOT free the system memory allocated by the pool allocator // You must call // boost::singleton_pool<boost::pool_allocator_tag, sizeof(int)>::release_memory() // in order to force that release_memory() does not seem to work. Not sure why. I called a function in my code to verify my processes memory usage, and see that indeed memory was not being released. I also google searched and found that others experienced the same: http://groups.google.ms/group/boost-list/browse_thread/thread/7d350f4c30d76d... http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/179196 http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2008/08/141468.php http://archives.free.net.ph/message/20080827.184624.21654313.en.html Your help on this is requested. Thanks.