From: Simon Strandgaard <0bz63fz3m1qt3001@...>
Date: 2003-05-19T03:51:37+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby garbage collection

On Mon, 19 May 2003 02:28:16 +0900, Mauricio Fern�ndez wrote:

> On Sun, May 18, 2003 at 11:30:48PM +0900, Simon Strandgaard wrote:
>> On Mon, 19 May 2003 00:15:33 +0900, Gaffer wrote:
>> 
>> > an interesting aside, is there any benefit to using ruby's ALLOC etc.
>> > functions over new/delete? i notice you dont, cheers
>>  
>> I don't know the difference:  new/delete  versus  rubys ALLOC.
>> Can anyone shed some light on this ?
> 
> If you go through Ruby's allocation (ALLOC is equivalent to xmalloc
> which is normally ruby_xmalloc) the information on how much memory has
> been allocated is updated. If more than malloc_limit (a changing
> threshold) bytes have been allocated a GC run is performed.
> 
> This means Ruby will not GC if you use new or malloc directly, but it
> might start GC()ing in the middle of ALLOC.
> 
> You should bypass Ruby's ALLOC if you're pretty confident that no memory
> will be regained in the GC pass.
> 
[snip ruby_xmalloc]

This topic got me really confused when I started on writing ruby
extensions. Therefore I think I will add a brief discussion of it to 
the tutorial on how to embed ruby into c++.    
http://metaeditor.sf.net/embed/


Should extension writers overload new so that ruby_xmalloc/ALLOC 
is being used ?   any benefits ?

Or should we just stick with new/delete ?


--
Simon Strandgaard