Smart pointers instead of GC?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 2/3/14, 5:36 PM, Adam Wilson wrote:
> You still haven't dealt with the cyclic reference problem in ARC. There
> is absolutely no way ARC can handle that without programmer input,
> therefore, it is simply not possible to switch D to ARC without adding
> some language support to deal with cyclic-refs. Ergo, it is simply not
> possible to seamlessly switch D to ARC without creating all kinds of
> havoc as people now how memory leaks where they didn't before. In order
> to support ARC the D language will necessarily have to grow/change to
> accommodate it. Apple devs constantly have trouble with cyclic-refs to
> this day.

The stock response: weak pointers. But I think the best solution is to 
allow some form of automatic reference counting backed up by the GC, 
which will lift cycles.

Andrei