• Weed (4/4) Feb 03 2009 It is possible to disable GC?
• Daniel Keep (15/18) Feb 03 2009 I don't know what "ref operations" are, but odds are disabling the GC
• Jesse Phillips (4/10) Feb 03 2009 You can find some more answers, though not much about how to replace it.
• Tim M (4/8) Feb 04 2009 To anyone here that disables there GC: Whats you reason for doing this? ...
• Chris Nicholson-Sauls (12/25) Feb 04 2009 I've never attempted to remove it entirely, but have often disabled it.
• Heinz (5/18) Feb 08 2009 Just for interest in some optimization:
• bearophile (5/5) Feb 04 2009 Weed, some built-ins and significant part of the standard lib (and other...
• Weed (7/11) Feb 04 2009 Right. For example, return from function of a dynamic array will not
• Kagamin (2/4) Feb 05 2009 D can do it. Phobos and Tango - can't.
• Lutger (6/8) Feb 05 2009 D2 can easily, but it seems there is not so much interest if measured by...

Weed <resume755 mail.ru> writes:

It is possible to disable GC?

That it has not been included in result binary for an increasing
performance of ref operations and reduction of the size of the binary

I have not found the answer in google.

Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> writes:

Weed wrote:
 It is possible to disable GC?

Yes.  See std.gc or tango.core.Memory.

 That it has not been included in result binary for an increasing
 performance of ref operations and reduction of the size of the binary

I don't know what "ref operations" are, but odds are disabling the GC
will not alter their performance.  Disabling the GC just prevents
collections from occurring.  Collections ONLY occur during allocation,
so the only thing you'll speed up are allocations.

Whilst it's possible to replace the GC in D, it's not exactly
straightforward.  I'm not sure what the situation with Phobos is, but
last I checked, the GC is built as part of Phobos, so you would need to
make a custom version.

Tango is slightly better in this respect; the GC is compiled separately,
and is then linked in.  I also believe Tango has a "stub" GC that
doesn't actually do any garbage collection; you just need to link that
in instead of the proper GC.

  -- Daniel

Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips gmail.com> writes:

On Wed, 04 Feb 2009 09:38:45 +0700, Weed wrote:

 It is possible to disable GC?
 
 That it has not been included in result binary for an increasing
 performance of ref operations and reduction of the size of the binary
 
 I have not found the answer in google.

You can find some more answers, though not much about how to replace it.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/472133/turning-off-the-d-garbage-
collector

"Tim M" <a b.com> writes:

On Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:38:45 +1300, Weed <resume755 mail.ru> wrote:

 It is possible to disable GC?

 That it has not been included in result binary for an increasing
 performance of ref operations and reduction of the size of the binary

 I have not found the answer in google.


To anyone here that disables there GC: Whats you reason for doing this?  
(Note: I don't want to know possible requirements but just your reason  
just out of interest)

Chris Nicholson-Sauls <ibisbasenji gmail.com> writes:

Tim M wrote:
 On Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:38:45 +1300, Weed <resume755 mail.ru> wrote:
 
 It is possible to disable GC?

 That it has not been included in result binary for an increasing
 performance of ref operations and reduction of the size of the binary

 I have not found the answer in google.

 
 
 To anyone here that disables there GC: Whats you reason for doing this? 
 (Note: I don't want to know possible requirements but just your reason 
 just out of interest)

I've never attempted to remove it entirely, but have often disabled it. 
  There are two basic scenarios where I've done this.  One, where I have 
a block of code that either really needs to run at full speed or just 
plain allocates a whole lot of memory in multiple chunks.  In this case, 
I am delaying the inevitable collection run.

The second case, is a program of mine that expects to run for very long 
periods (months, if all goes well), and also needs to be very responsive 
to work right.  In this case, I keep the GC disabled and trigger 
collections at my own choice of key moments (database checkpoints, etc) 
where responsiveness is /expected/ to be temporarily lacking.

-- Chris Nicholson-Sauls

Heinz <malagana15 yahoo.es> writes:

Tim M Wrote:

 On Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:38:45 +1300, Weed <resume755 mail.ru> wrote:
 
 It is possible to disable GC?

 That it has not been included in result binary for an increasing
 performance of ref operations and reduction of the size of the binary

 I have not found the answer in google.

 
 
 To anyone here that disables there GC: Whats you reason for doing this?  
 (Note: I don't want to know possible requirements but just your reason  
 just out of interest)

Just for interest in some optimization:
I disable it (but replace it) in DLL's, i mean, there's no need to have 2 GC
running at a time (one for the exe and one for the DLL), so i disable the one
in the dll and then replace it with the same from the exe. I link my dll with
gcstub.obj to use a dummy gc so file size is smaller.
So after all...i never disable gc.

GC is a good feature, i always use it in executables but when i do a gc full
collect under heavy load programs (great amount of mb of ram) the thing gets
quiet slow.

bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:

Weed, some built-ins and significant part of the standard lib (and other libs
you can find around) assume the presence of a GC.
So you can disable (or often just not use it. If you don't allocate/free
GC-managed memory then the GC sleeps) in some critical spots of your code as I
do (and you can also just use memory from the C heap), but if you really want
to remove it, you may want to consider using C++ instead.

I'd like too to have something like a -nogc compiler flag to not include the GC
at all in small programs that don't use the GC (or use it only to allocate
memory and not to free it).

Bye,
bearophile

Weed <resume755 mail.ru> writes:

bearophile ÐÉÛÅÔ:
 Weed, some built-ins and significant part of the standard lib (and other libs
you can find around) assume the presence of a GC.

Right. For example, return from function of a dynamic array will not
work correctly without GC - there will be a memory leak.

 So you can disable (or often just not use it. If you don't allocate/free
GC-managed memory then the GC sleeps) in some critical spots of your code as I
do (and you can also just use memory from the C heap), but if you really want
to remove it, you may want to consider using C++ instead.
 
 I'd like too to have something like a -nogc compiler flag to not include the
GC at all in small programs that don't use the GC (or use it only to allocate
memory and not to free it).

My wishlist also contains -nogc (or may be -gc?) too. But it seems to me
it will not occur - too many parts of language mean presence GC.

I just would like that D could substitute C++ completely in all
applications...

Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:

Weed Wrote:

 I just would like that D could substitute C++ completely in all
 applications...

D can do it. Phobos and Tango - can't.

Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:

Weed wrote:
 
 I just would like that D could substitute C++ completely in all
 applications...

D2 can easily, but it seems there is not so much interest if measured by 
what library code is available. D1 can do too, but if you want to use raii 
for memory management D2 has better facilities.

In all fairness, those language features that use GC don't exist in C++.