Re: newbie Q: storage management

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

iSamuel said

<<The only decent argument I've seen against a GC annex is that it
would have to either select a single approach and denigrate all
others, or else provide such a generalized interface as to be a
pointless standard.  I DON'T AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THIS, since
I know too little about garbage collection research.  The best
refutation would be a strawman of the package(s) and/or the
rules that the annex would provide.

I suspect it mostly didn't get an annex because the pro-GC forces
were sociologically unable to force the issue.>>


Samuel, you don't understand the dynamics behind the special needs
annexes. They are VERY conservatively chosen, and are supposed to
represent only items on which there was a clear consensus that for
certain application areas, the annex facilities were clearly an
absolute necessity, and it was important that if such facilities
were provided, then they should be provided in a common way.

In the GC case, there was no such consensus. The general impression was
that it was unlikely that many Ada compilers would implement GC, and
in any case there was certainly NO consensus on what facillities should
be required of compilers that might try.

I would be VERY much opposed to trying to standardize this facility
at this stage, we simply don't know enough, and even those who favor
GC strongly have VERY different ideas about what facilities should be
provided.

As I said before, don't put your efforts into an ANSI committee, put them
into an actual implementation. It is certainly doable, as has been
demonstrated by the GCC port of Modula-3 -- yes it's just a research
project that was never fully finished, but it got far enough to be an
effective proof of feasibility.

If there was a GNAT with garbage collectoin that turned out to be usable
and widely used, that would have more effect than anything said here on
the progress towards routine use of GC in Ada environments.