This is the mail archive of the guile@sourceware.cygnus.com mailing list for the Guile project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]

guile-gc 0.15 released



Another new patch (I wanted to get out a release that worked better with
scwm) available at
http://home.thezone.net/~gharvey/guile/guile-gc-0.15.tar.gz; 

The new bits (from the readme):

* Efficient mark stack: no repeated allocations for every recursive
  call.

* Replace signals during gc: currently, only SIGSEGV and SIGBUS
  signals, since these tend to be the most significant evils in the
  gc. Note that this can be changed by running with
  GUILEGC_DONT_REPLACE_SEGV (set this for scwm, or any other program
  that handles signals without consing). The fault handlers aren't
  particularly nice, but they are nicer than an infinite loop
  ;). Probably it would be better to replace these handlers globally,
  since there isn't really much you can do about a segv but print a
  message and try to exit gracefully (maybe abort isn't graceful, but
  it does work well when you're debugging with gdb)... you can try to
  keep running (as guile is), but I don't think that's a good idea
  when there's a very good chance that something is majorly hosed.

* Two cell heaps; ok, they've been around for a while, but now there's
  actually objects that use them, thanks to Michael Livshin
  :). configure with --enable-gc-two-cell-heaps to have these objects
  added. Currently you don't really want this unless you use goops or
  a lot of double math (or dynamic linking); if not, the number of
  objects actually in the new heap is pretty pathetic. Note that this
  doesn't include the three cell heap changes he made (I'm not
  convinced it's worth it, to be honest).

* option to enable profiling: right now, this is pretty pathetic as
  well. It gives some sense of where the most time is being spent, but
  also inflates the overall gc numbers, so it's not really comparable
  to normal guile in any meaningful way. --enable-gc-profile will get
  this, and gc-stats can access the info. 

* bugfixes

* more info and tips on running with scwm. Read the README (if you're
  reading this in the announcement message... if you are reading this
  in the README, keep on going :).

-- 
Greg

Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]