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From: "Samuel T. Harris" <sam_harris@hso.link.com>
Subject: Re: Ada and GC   (Was Re: Ammo-zilla)
Date: 1999/10/30
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Organization: Raytheon Scientific & Technical Services
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1999-10-30T00:00:00+00:00
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Vladimir Olensky wrote:
> 
> David Botton wrote in message <7vc3v5$1888$1@news.gate.net>...
> >I have found many times that GC can be unacceptable do to unpredictable
> >delays even on non-embedded, real-time and safety critical systems. Go
> >explain to a power user of large Java programs why they have to
> occasionally
> >wait to regain usable control of the application do to GC crunching. (I
> >believe this had a part in the demise of Corel's Java Office Suite. Applix
> >just uses Java like an X terminal and does the real work off site.)
> 
> That's why  I wrote that Java GC is not a good "hint" for user controlled GC
> and M3 GC is much better in that respect.
> 
> My view is that  all objects  by default should be UNTRACED.
> Only those objects that are subjected to GC should be marked
> as TRACED.  This approach is opposite to what is done in Modula-3
>  but it gives  full control to the programmer over GC and it also provides
>  compatibility with the current Ada 95 implementations
> 
> All the traced objects should be allocated in separate storage pool
> controlled
> by GC pool storage manager that could provide all needed operations for user
> to control GC process.

Why not package up this GC as an Ada 95 storage pool and simply
associate
it to the access types which need GC? With the inclusion of the storage
pool
concept in Ada 95, I don't see this "to GC or not to GC" within Ada
itself
as being a _very_ important issue.

> 
>   I was pleased very much  by  the nice  Tucker Taft post regarding this
> issue.
> Now  I have a feeling that this issue has grown up and we may expect  some
> progress  in this area soon.
> 
> Regards,
> Vladimir Olensky

-- 
Samuel T. Harris, Principal Engineer
Raytheon, Scientific and Technical Systems
"If you can make it, We can fake it!"