The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Sean Kelly]

Yigal Chripun wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>  > I'd prefer being able to choose the GC I want without needing the
>> compiler vendor to supply it.  Otherwise, the compiler vendor either
>> needs to know how to write a GC (unlikely) or they need to bundle a
>> third-party GC.  Also, different applications have different memory
>> requirements.  Tango allows the GC to be chosen at link-time, which
>> allows for a great deal of flexibility. 
> 
> If we compare to Java than Sun provides more than one GC with its
> runtime and you can get even more specialized version GC if you really
> need it (real-time for example). I guess there's nothing wrong in
> getting a third party GC either.
> The point is that in Java those GCs are chosen by the runtime (you can
> specify if you run your app as a server or a client app and based on
> that the GC is chosen) or you can specify explicitly your GC too, I
> guess. Non of that should affect your code (unless you choose to use
> specific extensions to the GC API provided but a specialized GC).
> So, the choice of a GC doesn't affect your code.

It shouldn't, or there would be little point in supporting swappable GCs.

>>> The benefit is that the vendors will compete for runtime performance
>>> which is good for the end user. I can choose vendor A's GC since it is
>>> more efficient with regards to memory (if I care for that) or vendor B's
>>> GC if it's faster, etc..
>> Better to choose the GC separately from the compiler, then, so you can
>> use the best of breed of each.
>>
>>> All I care is that everything that is visible to the end user is
>>> standardized - i.e. I can do GC.collect() in my code since it's in the
>>> APIs and don't care if I use llvmdc, dil, dmd, gdc, etc.. ( I'll care
>>> for performance reasons and such of course and for that I can just
>>> switch to a different vendor without any code changes)
>> This is a standard library issue not a compiler runtime or GC issue.
> 
> it is an issue with the compiler runtime/GC if there isn't a standard
> API and when I change my GC/runtime I need to edit the source.

Fortunately, Tango provides such a "standard API" so no source changes 
are needed unless you do something like drop in a "GC" that simply calls 
malloc and free, in which case your app will leak if it isn't written 
with this in mind.


Sean