From: Justin Johnson <justinj@...>
Date: 2002-08-29T22:32:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Why Ruby Uses Mark-and-Sweep GC?


Unfortunatly not.  It's in my implementation of Ruby which is a long way off
from usable.

The assumption that I also meant incremental marking isn't true either.

Marking is difficult to do incrementally because the mutator can change the
state of objects.  Sweeping incrementally is fairly easy because all the
marking has been done.  The incremental sweep can be built into the
allocation code so that it only sweeps when it runs out of other allocation
resources.  In this case it only needs to sweep until enough garbage is
freed to satisfy the current allocation needs.

It only took a few minutes to add this to my collector.  Perhaps somebody
who has more knowledge of the Ruby source could see how feasible this is?
(It may already do it - I don't know).

--
Justin Johnson

"William Djaja Tjokroaminata" <billtj@y.glue.umd.edu> wrote in message
news:akl6m3$4dt$2@grapevine.wam.umd.edu...
> Hi,
>
> Did you indeed add incremental sweeping (I will assume that it also means
> "incremental marking") to Ruby GC?  May I know the general idea on how to
> do this to current Ruby GC?
>
> Regards,
>
> Bill