On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 8:42 AM, Ben Kloosterman <[email protected]> wrote:
> I will second that the whole shadow stack is a bad approach from the start > , it needs a redesign. Eg apps can emit GC code snippets , while not too > difficult to do it’s a architectural change which requires more from > application and hence some politics.. > Wait, who said anything about a shadow stack? > *From:* [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > *On Behalf Of *Jonathan S. Shapiro > *Sent:* Monday, April 04, 2011 2:05 PM > *To:* Discussions about the BitC language > *Subject:* Re: [bitc-dev] Request for advice on choice of a GSoC project > > > > Jérémie: > > Here are my thoughts. > > Two important considerations in the GSoC evaluation are "impact" and > "realism". Impact means "how many people will benefit, and how important is > the effort?" Realism means "is the work proposed realistic?" > > In my opinion, work on Jikes RVM is low impact, because the Jikes RVM is > not widely used. I'm actually a fan of Jikes, but it hasn't exactly taken > over the world. > > Work on MMTk is even less useful than work on Jikes RVM, unless it benefits > LLVM. > > Work on Mono or LLVM will have very broad impact, and GC is an area that > both are actively working on. > > So I would suggest that you focus your attention on Mono or LLVM. The > challenge for Mono is more manageable: they understand the problem, and they > need to work on a precise GC implementation. The challenge for LLVM is > larger: their approach to dealing with GC is complete crap, and a viable GC > plan involves significant rework to the LLVM infrastructure - or at least, > this was true the last time that I looked. Also, the LLVM team does not seem > to take GC seriously, so there is lower likelihood of acceptance. > I agree that both Mono and LLVM would be higher-impact projects to target than Jikes or MMtk. They're different beasts, though: Mono is a runtime for a specific language, while LLVM is common infrastructure for "any" language. I don't think "complete crap" is a defensible summary of LLVM's GC support. It has shortcomings, yes, but that's not the same as being without value. And it's not a question of sticking their heads in the sand about GC, it's simply that the core clients (and sponsors) of LLVM are for non-GCed languages. So they are rationally allocating their resources towards improvements that benefit all LLVM clients, and assuming that those clients who are not satisfied with the current infrastructure will improve it as they find necessary. > My suggestion: any improvement to mono will have very broad benefit to the > community, so that is a very good place to put your effort. Another good > place would be the Dalvik VM's GC. I know that GC in Dalvik is something on > Daniel Borenstein's "to do" list... > > shap > > _______________________________________________ > bitc-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.coyotos.org/mailman/listinfo/bitc-dev > >
_______________________________________________ bitc-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.coyotos.org/mailman/listinfo/bitc-dev
