Tracing API?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 12/16/13 10:18 AM, Benjamin Thaut wrote:
> Reading "The Handbook of Garbage Collection" I got the opinion that
> doing a generalized tracing API would be a bad idea. In the book they
> usually describe tracing as a specialized task depending on what type of
> collector is chosen.

What parts of the book support that opinion?

> Generally I think it is a good idea to think about tracing and identify
> all problems the language still has with propper tracing. Because it
> seems that this has not been done in the past.
>
> Tracing alone is also not enough. There would also be a need for a
> gc-stop point kind of api that inserts points where the GC can stop the
> program without corrupting it.

That is correct. Such would come in the form of guarantees of when it's 
safe to initiate, pause, and resume iteration.


Andrei