[boost] Proposal: Monotonic Containers

Subject: [boost] Proposal: Monotonic Containers
From: Christian Schladetsch (christian.schladetsch_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-06-09 02:51:25

Hello,

There is a need in high-performance realtime software to use containers that
may only grow in size. These are typically reset at the end of each update
cycle.

The proposal here consists of a base 'monotonic allocator', which takes its
storage from a buffer that you provide. Allocations are made from this
buffer, and deallocation only calls an object's destructor; no actual
memory-management is performed at all.

This is very useful for realtime systems that have to do things like, for
example, physics or renderering systems. These systems build up lists and
other containers over the period of an update frame, however at the end of
that frame the storage can just be reset.

The benefit of using this system over a normal std::allocator is that memory
is not fragmented, and memory allocation and deallocation is basically
optimal.

Within the package are:

boost.monotonic.inline_storage
boost.monotonic.list
boost.monotonic.vector
boost.monotonic.map
boost.monotonic.set
boost.monotonic.ptr_list

I didn't bother adding the other ptr_* containers yet.

The files for the proposal are in the vault at
http://www.boostpro.com/vault/index.php?action=downloadfile&filename=MonotonicAllocator.zip&directory=&
.

I'd be happy to address any issues or comments. There are some improvements
that could be made.

Regards,
Christian.