D Language 2.0

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> Again? RC is *not* -nogc, is -anothergc.

I agree. With reference counting, you'd be no worse than a C++ project 
that decided to use refcounted smart pointers for all allocated objects. 
That sounds good to me.

> And reference counting won't do
> the trick unless you add a backing GC to free cycles.

Well there are techniques for lifting cycles but really I think it 
wouldn't be bad if the user were given the possibility (e.g. weak pointers).

> What I mean about
> -nogc is *no* GC, is "please, mr compiler, give me an error when a GC
> facility is used".

I know. That could be another object.d implementation that would 
@disable certain functions. The nice part about refcounting is that for 
the most part you don't need to cripple the language.


Andrei