GC again

[Craig Black]

"Frank Benoit (keinfarbton)" <benoit at tionex.removethispart.de> wrote in 
message news:ekfj8p$v0o$1 at digitaldaemon.com...
>
>> Garbage Collector: We now use Boehm GC in precise mode as opposed to 
>> fully
>> conservative mode. We also use it with a precise set of GC roots which
>> greatly improved Garbage Collection performance.
>
> The explanation on wikipedia are a good starting point
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_%28computer_science%29
>
>> What does this mean and how hard would it be for D to do this as opposed 
>> to
>> doing a full generational GC?  Maybe we could do this as a short term
>> improvement while we wait for a generational GC in the long term.
>
> At the moment the GC has no information, what values in memory are of
> pointer type, and which one are not. So he takes them all as pointers.
> This means conservative (vs. precise).
>
> To do a precise GC, this information must be available and that will
> need support in the compiler.
>
> To be precise is a precondition for a generational GC.

I was thinking something along those lines.  Thanks for clearing it up for 
me.

-Craig