Garbage Collection for Systems Programmers

[Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole]

On 05/04/2024 3:10 AM, user1234 wrote:
> On Thursday, 4 April 2024 at 09:32:10 UTC, Sebastian Nibisz wrote:
> 
>     Why doesn't the D language have a fully concurrent, pause-free GC? [...]
> 
> I believe the reason is that the GC was designed before the multi-core 
> era (or maybe at the very beginning), so STW was less a problem than 
> todays. Then nobody proposed anything new.

People have proposed plenty of new GC stuff over the years.

But to summarize:

For newer GC designs, you need write barriers. They are approved as an 
opt-in feature.

Nobody has added support nor written a new GC.

It simply comes down to man power, nobody is willing to do the work.

There just isn't enough of a win here to make anyone motivated to do it.

We'd need funding to try and get a student or two to tackle it long term.