Allocators in Phobos

[dsimcha]

On 8/22/2011 4:21 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 8/19/11 10:33 PM, David Simcha wrote:
>> Are there any other allocators that might be useful and could
>> reasonably be
>> implemented as Phobos modules without major modifications to druntime
>> or the
>> compiler?
>
> We need to have a classic heap allocator that we can combine with
> regions. See Emery Berger's HeapLayers and reap data structure.
>
> Andrei

I've read up on reaps a little.  It sounds like a pretty interesting 
concept.  Since I'm hoping RegionAllocator will get its turn in the 
review queue soon and implementing a good heap is fairly involved, a 
reap isn't going to be part of my initial proposal.  (Dimity's and 
Cristi's GSoC projects are both Phobos candidates and both already 
depend on RegionAllocator, so we should probably get it in Phobos soon. 
  As a short term solution, both are just keeping a copy of it in their 
source trees.)  However, when RegionAllocator is reviewed, we should 
make sure there are no bad design decisions that would make implementing 
a reap on top of it unnecessarily difficult.

Bottom like:  Longer term, a reap definitely does belong in Phobos and 
we should plan accordingly, but it should be a separate, later proposal.