Re: the future of Guile

[Roland Orre]

On Tue, 2007-12-04 at 19:34 +0100, Kjetil S. Matheussen wrote:
...
> Oh, and another thing. My tests (available in the guile-devel archives)
> also showed that the HBGC version usually use a bit less memory
> than Guile's old garbage collector. (Yet another "should"
> for replacing. :-) )

I don't have much experience with different GC algorithms, but
as I understand the HBGC is not intended for background GC.

If the GC should be replaced I would consider it wise to
replace it with an algorithm than can be run in a thread.
This I consider strongly motivated by the fact that most new
machines today are multi core. An efficient way to decrease the
latency of the GC is to simply run it in background.

Regarding GC I also think it is could be useful to have a GC that
can compact the memory and of course give allocated memory back to
the OS when no longer needed. OK, a compacting GC may make it
hard to write applications, so don't take this point too
seriously...

/Roland