• Russ Lewis (16/16) May 31 2002 A few questions for Walter (or somebody who's studied his GC code):
• Walter (8/18) May 31 2002 The gc runs in preference to increasing the size of the memory pool.
• Russ Lewis (11/27) May 31 2002 I'm not sure I understand what that means. Does that mean that you'll f...
• Walter (5/18) May 31 2002 first

Russ Lewis <spamhole-2001-07-16 deming-os.org> writes:

A few questions for Walter (or somebody who's studied his GC code):

1) I assume that the GC will run when we run out of memory.  Does it
ever run at other times, like perhaps during an idle condition or on a
timer?  If not, then I assume that the user could program such a
mechanism if he so desired...
2) Would it be possible to devise a timeout on the GC, so that it would
have an upper limit on its runtime?  If so, and if the GC were to
timeout, then do we really gain any useful information, or do we have to
start over next time totally from scratch?  That is, could several short
runs of the GC clean up a large block of garbage, or must it be one long
run?

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"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> writes:

"Russ Lewis" <spamhole-2001-07-16 deming-os.org> wrote in message
news:3CF790DC.BB8EFFC0 deming-os.org...
 1) I assume that the GC will run when we run out of memory.  Does it
 ever run at other times, like perhaps during an idle condition or on a
 timer?  If not, then I assume that the user could program such a
 mechanism if he so desired...

The gc runs in preference to increasing the size of the memory pool.

 2) Would it be possible to devise a timeout on the GC, so that it would
 have an upper limit on its runtime?  If so, and if the GC were to
 timeout, then do we really gain any useful information, or do we have to
 start over next time totally from scratch?  That is, could several short
 runs of the GC clean up a large block of garbage, or must it be one long
 run?

You're thinking of incremental garbage collection, which is a very
complicated thing to do successfully, and in my not-so-humble-opinion (!)
not worth the effort and bugs.

The current gc is a simple mark and sweep algorithm. A future version will
be generational, which will improve performance.

Russ Lewis <spamhole-2001-07-16 deming-os.org> writes:

Walter wrote:

 "Russ Lewis" <spamhole-2001-07-16 deming-os.org> wrote in message
 news:3CF790DC.BB8EFFC0 deming-os.org...
 1) I assume that the GC will run when we run out of memory.  Does it
 ever run at other times, like perhaps during an idle condition or on a
 timer?  If not, then I assume that the user could program such a
 mechanism if he so desired...

 The gc runs in preference to increasing the size of the memory pool.

I'm not sure I understand what that means.  Does that mean that you'll first
run the gc before asking for more blocks of memory from the OS?  If so, how
large of a block do you ask for at a time (a page?), and is there a way to
tune this?

 2) Would it be possible to devise a timeout on the GC, so that it would
 have an upper limit on its runtime?  If so, and if the GC were to
 timeout, then do we really gain any useful information, or do we have to
 start over next time totally from scratch?  That is, could several short
 runs of the GC clean up a large block of garbage, or must it be one long
 run?

 You're thinking of incremental garbage collection, which is a very
 complicated thing to do successfully, and in my not-so-humble-opinion (!)
 not worth the effort and bugs.

I figured that that was the answer, but it was worth asking :)

--
The Villagers are Online! villagersonline.com

.[ (the fox.(quick,brown)) jumped.over(the dog.lazy) ]
.[ (a version.of(English).(precise.more)) is(possible) ]
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"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> writes:

"Russ Lewis" <spamhole-2001-07-16 deming-os.org> wrote in message
news:3CF7D9FA.5B9C5B81 deming-os.org...
 Walter wrote:
 "Russ Lewis" <spamhole-2001-07-16 deming-os.org> wrote in message
 news:3CF790DC.BB8EFFC0 deming-os.org...
 1) I assume that the GC will run when we run out of memory.  Does it
 ever run at other times, like perhaps during an idle condition or on a
 timer?  If not, then I assume that the user could program such a
 mechanism if he so desired...

 The gc runs in preference to increasing the size of the memory pool.

 I'm not sure I understand what that means.  Does that mean that you'll

first
 run the gc before asking for more blocks of memory from the OS?

Yes.

  If so, how
 large of a block do you ask for at a time (a page?), and is there a way to
 tune this?

Those are all constants in gc.d.