Re: [boost] Smart pointer status, directions, thoughts

From: John Max Skaller (skaller_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-05-26 13:59:31

Bjarne Stroustrup wrote:
> 
> John Max Skaller <skaller_at_[hidden]> writes:

> >       Using Boehm, you can register these objects
> > as roots, and unregister them. But that defeats the
> > principal advantage of Boehm, namely, transparency.
> 
> But you can't be transparent if you want to keep live objects known only to
> external entities.

        That's right. However, if you agree to give up transparency,
one of the major _disadvantages_ of other collection techniques,
compared with Boehm, disappears.
 
> >       A second problem with Boehm is that it is global,

> Again, this is not a problem unique to a conservative collector.

        It remains a disadvantage, whether or not it is unique.
It is also a disadvantage of Greg Colvins cyclic_ptr, on the other
hand my Felix GC system is instance based, and so if one
has an instance per thread (for thread local storage only),
then only the thread gets stopped. 

        I will add that the collector that comes with the Ocaml
system I'm using is generational and incremental.

[performance]
> This is theory.

        That is correct. I haven't done any measurements.

> One nice thing about a conservative collector is
> that it doesn't impose a cost on ordinary use of objects - such as requiring
> than every object be accessed through a pointer to its first element or
> requiring that every object contain space for use by a garbage collector.

        Yes. I agree. And one of the nasty things is that
you cannot rely on it to release objects, which makes
resource release by finalisation problematic.

-- 
John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller_at_[hidden]
10/1 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia voice: 61-2-9660-0850
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