Re: Boehm-Demers-Weiser conservative garbage collector and GNAT

[Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net>]

Ludovic Brenta wrote:

> Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
 
>> For details on Boehm-Demers-Weiser conservative garbage collector see:
 
>> http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/index.html
> 
> The web page you mention says that GCC contains a version of this
> garbage collector.  I understand this has been introduced in GCC 3.0.

You can compile the libgc.a with GCC 2.8+ as well. You just have to do it
yourself then.

> So, to me, there appears to be three approaches to "implement a
> storage pool using the Boehm-Demers-Weiser conservative garbage
> collector in GNAT":

> - Re-implement the GC in Ada, as an external library, so that all Ada
>   programs can use it (even non-GNAT ones if the code is portable).

That would be to much work for a one man project.

> - Write a thick Ada binding to the C garbage collector, with the same
>   end result as above, but requiring an additional library at link
>   time.

That is indeed my plan. 

> - Modify libgnat and libgnarl in GCC 3.3 with a new storage pool that
>   uses the copy of the GC that is in GCC 3.3; this would make the GC
>   available only to GCC 3.3 applications.

That would be cool since all librarys would become garbage collected. And
the Garbage_Collected flag in System.Parameters even suggest that GNAT can
work with a garbage collector. However I would need help from someone who
knows how to patch GNAT. 

Also I would not start patching GCC 3.3 before the GCC 3.3 bug I have in the
pipeline is solved.

With Regards

-- 
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