compiler support added for precise GC

[Timon Gehr]

On 04/16/2012 10:51 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/16/2012 11:42 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> On 2012-04-16 18:53, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> On 4/16/2012 9:40 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>>> Regardless of how the runtime reflection is generated, by a library or
>>>> the
>>>> compiler, it needs to be available to all types.
>>>
>>> Why?
>>>
>>> (I can see the point for a dynamic language, but not a static one.)
>>
>> The standard example that comes back is serialization. That can be
>> done without
>> support for runtime reflection but not as good as with the support. As
>> far as I
>> know it's impossible to serialize through a base class reference without
>> registering the subtype with the serializer, if runtime reflection
>> isn't available.
>>
>
> Serialization does NOT need to deal with all types, only the types that
> are to be serialized.

That is certainly true. Full runtime reflection is a sufficient, but not 
a necessary solution.

The issue to be solved is that it is inconvenient and possibly error 
prone to manually annotate all types that need specialized runtime type 
info. Eg. If a class subclasses a serializable class, then by default 
the subclass should be fully serializable without further action.