Memory management design

[Dicebot]

On Wednesday, 10 July 2013 at 08:00:55 UTC, Manu wrote:
> I'd push for an ARC implementation. I've become convinced 
> that's what I
> actually want, and that GC will never completely satisfy my 
> requirements.

I think those issues are actually orthogonal. I'd love to have 
verified @noheap attribute even in my old C code. Sometimes the 
very fact that allocation happens is more important that 
algorithm how it is later collected.

> Additionally, while I can see some value in @nogc, I'm not 
> actually sold on
> that personally... it feels explicit attribution is a backwards 
> way of
> going about it. ie, most functions may actually be @nogc, but 
> only the ones
> that are explicitly attributed will enjoy that recognition... 
> seems kinda
> backwards.

Yes, this is a common issue not unique to @nogc. I am personally 
much in favor of having restrictive attributes enabled by default 
and then adding "mutable" "@system" and "@allowheap" where those 
are actually needed. But unfortunately there is no way to add 
something that backwards-incompatible and attribute inference 
seems the only practical way (though I hate it).