D Language 2.0

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu, el 20 de enero a las 20:48 me escribiste:
>> BCS wrote:
>>> Hello Andrei,
>>>
>>>> BCS wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Also there is one thing that -nogc would have over what you are
>>>>> talking about; you could use it on some modules and not others. If I
>>>>> have some performance critical code where attempting to use the GC
>>>>> would break it's perf contract, I can put it in it's own module and
>>>>> compile just it with -nogc and then link it in with code that does
>>>>> use the GC.
>>>>>
>>>> Meh. This has been discussed in the C++ standardization committee, and
>>>> it gets really tricky real fast when you e.g. use together several
>>>> libraries, each with its own view of memory management. My impression:
>>>> don't.
>>>
>>> Why would having one chunk of code get checked for calls to the GC
>>> and another not be any more complicated than mixing
>>> malloc/free+add/removeRoot with normal GC? I'm beginning to wonder
>>> if I'm calling for something different than other people are.
>>>
>>> What I'm thinking of would have zero effect on the generated code,
>>> the only effect it would have is to cause an error when some code
>>> would normally attempt to invoke the GC.
>> It's much more complicated than that. What if a library returns an
>> object or an array to another library?
> 
> The same that happens in C now, memory management is part of the interface
> and you should state if the returned object's memory is managed by the
> library or the user.
> 
> This introduces a problem D doesn't have now, but let's keep the focus
> here, this will be used mostly only in embedded environments, where this
> problem is already present, so it's not too bad. People using "regular"
> D probably won't be using any "embedded library". They other way arround
> could be a little more likely, and since "embedded guys" are tought, they
> should be able to cope with this issue (or avoid using "regular"
> D libraries that use the GC).

I very much see people using a reference-counted approach to GC in a 
non-embedded application.

Andrei