C++, D: Dinosaurs?

[Bruno Medeiros]

Tony wrote:
> "Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message 
> news:gergn9$109b$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> "Tony" <tonytech08 at gmail.com> wrote in message 
>> news:gerdem$rc4$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>> "Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message 
>>> news:gep0ej$232$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>> "Tony" <tonytech08 at gmail.com> wrote in message 
>>>> news:geogvj$1p5r$2 at digitalmars.com...
>>>>> "Robert Fraser" <fraserofthenight at gmail.com> wrote in message 
>>>>> news:geo5p6$12gk$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>>>> Tony wrote:
>>>>>>> (one HAS to use GC with D, right?)
>>>>>> No. Well, the compiler generates calls to allocate & free memory, but 
>>>>>> you can replace those calls with whatever you want. See Tango's 
>>>>>> (druntime's) "stub" GC, which just reroutes compiler-generated calls 
>>>>>> to GC methods to malloc() and free(). You can implement your own "GC" 
>>>>>> or whatever management scheme you want (in fact, if you're writing, 
>>>>>> say, a device driver in D, you would want to use a custom allocator 
>>>>>> like this and not the built-in GC).
>>>>> Please clarify for me the mem mgmt of D: is the garbage collector 
>>>>> optional or not?
>>>> Yes, it can be ripped out, replaced, whatever. It's slightly hacky, but 
>>>> it's perfectly doable. I did it a few years ago when I was playing 
>>>> around with using GDC with DevKitARM for GBA.
>>>>
>>>> IIRC, you just go into "extern (C) int main(size_t argc, char **argv)" 
>>>> in the internal portion of phobos/tango/druntime or wherever it lives 
>>>> now and comment-out the calls to "gc_init()" and "gc_term()". You might 
>>>> also need to call "gc.disable()" or something (don't really remember). 
>>>> And then if you still want to use "new" and/or "delete" with your own 
>>>> memory manager, you can use D's class allocator and deallocator feature 
>>>> (http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/class.html#allocators). I assume you 
>>>> could probably plug those class allocators/deallocators directly into 
>>>> the internal object class if you wanted.
>>> It sounds like a lot of work and new stuff to learn about the 
>>> implementation. Let's face it, I'm not going to use D since it doesn't 
>>> offer me anything over C++ that I want. The main thing I may like about D 
>>> is that it makes the effort to make implementation of the language 
>>> easier, and that, I think, is very key. I am here to look for features I 
>>> would put in a new language, though that may be too large of an endeavor 
>>> for someone my age.
>>>
>>> Tony
>>>
>> If you've already got your own full-fleged, reliable, memory management 
>> system, plugging it into D via the methods Robert and I pointed out is 
>> nothing by comparison.
> 
> If I could do something with the object model, and or if the compiler is 
> open source, I would maybe look at the implementation as a potential 
> starting point or learning tool. Every time I've considered using existing 
> code though, I have ended up just starting with a clean slate for a number 
> of reasons. For now, I'm going to evolve my framework a bit more and produce 
> some programs. I'm keeping away from "advanced features" of existing 
> languages as much as possible so as not to be tied to them. So far I've not 
> found problem doing that. Error handling is the worst beast that I don't 
> have completely slain yet. Generics and mem mgmt I have under control. I 
> feel a bit limited by existing languages object models, that's probably the 
> key reason why I'd like to invent a new language, be it for my own use or 
> for more widespread use. Having full control of a language and it's 
> implementation is nothing to sneeze at either, but taking advantage of that 
> probably takes quite a bit of labor (more than one developer).
> 
> Tony 
> 
> 

What exactly is your memory management system? Is it a GC? Is it pooling 
code? Is it a more efficient implementation of free/malloc?


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Developer, MSc. in CS/E graduate
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D