[fpc-devel] Boehm garbage collector for freepascal

[Thaddy]

On 18-11-2010 13:21, Z(ilvinas Ledas wrote:
>> But it might be an advantage for some projects as the discussions 
>> over the years implied. 
> What about using GC for fpc itself? If it is usable for fpc, then the 
> problem of fpc leaking memory when compilation fails with errors can 
> be solved using GC. As a result fpc can be integrated to some IDEs 
> without a fear or memleaks.
> Just a thought.
>
> Regards
> Zilvinas Ledas
>
It is not a very good idea to use a GC as a means to catch mistakes made 
by a programmer.
These kind of mistakes can still cause memory resource related problems 
or violations.

That's not why I (re)wrote my GC interface unit (again) anyway.

But, there is no reason why it shouldn't work.
The Lazarus IDE for example is a different proposal and more difficult 
to implement: You have to get rid of the suballocator mm to have it 
working properly and efficently (The Lazarus IDE uses a memory manager 
on top, not in place, of the default memory manager.)
At least the Boehm GC would have a performance penalty in this case 
(large blocks)  - being the lower level one -, but the reason it - the 
sub allocator - is there is because of performance in the first place 
and I would not be surprised at all if the Boehm GC would perform equal 
or better after the removal of this sub allocator.

Regards,

Thaddy

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