Re: gc notes available

[Russ McManus <russell.mcmanus@gs.com>]

Mikael Djurfeldt <mdj@nada.kth.se> writes:

> I agree.  I'm not opposed to a generational GC, I applaud it.  Also,
> even if Greg's GC will have occasional long GC pauses in large
> applications I still think it's great.
> 
> But it is possible to write a generational GC which doesn't have long
> GC pauses, and I think that is a better solution for Guile.  I'm
> taking up this issue now if it is possible for Greg to take this into
> account in his design (which I regretfully still haven't studied).

I think it is a basic requirement for guile to be able to work with
large data sets.  Without some form of generational gc, gc time starts
to dominate run time, so I think we need a generational gc.  I'm not
sure if this means a vote for 1 or 2!

With a generational gc, you sometimes get a scan of the whole data
space, which will necessarily be slow when the data set is large.  So
I don't know how to get around occassional long pauses, so I think
I'm still voting for 2.  But if 1 has the ability to handle large
data sets, then I would vote for that one instead.

BTW, I use guile right now for GUI programs (linked into Motif
programs), and the collections are noticeable to the user, so
improvements in this area are very welcome!

-russ

--
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you 
take into account Hofstadter's Law.