On Monday, 7 January 2013 at 17:19:25 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
On Monday, January 07, 2013 17:55:35 Rob T wrote:
On Monday, 7 January 2013 at 16:12:22 UTC, mist wrote:
> How is D manual memory management any worse than plain C one?
> Plenty of language features depend on GC but stuff that is
> left
> can hardly be named "a lousy excuse". It lacks some
> convenience
> and guidelines based on practical experience but it is
> already
> as capable as some of wide-spread solutions for systems
> programming (C). In fact I'd be much more afraid of runtime
> issues when doing system stuff than GC ones.
I think the point being made was that built in language
features
should not be dependent on the need for a GC because it means
that you cannot fully use the language without a GC present and
active. We can perhaps excuse the std library, but certainly
not
the language itself, because the claim is made that D's GC is
fully optional.
I don't think that any of the documentation or D's developers
have ever
claimed that you could use the full language without the GC.
Quite the
opposite in fact. There are a number of language features that
require the GC
- including AAs, array concatenation, and closures. You _can_
program in D
without the GC, but you lose features, and there's no way
around that. It may
be the case that some features currently require the GC when
they shouldn't,
but there are definitely features that _must_ have the GC and
_cannot_ be
implemented otherwise (e.g. array concatenation and closures).
So, if you want
to ditch the GC completely, it comes at a cost, and AFAIK no
one around here
is saying otherwise. You _can_ do it though if you really want
to.
In general however, the best approach if you want to minimize
GC involvement
is to generally use manual memory management and minimize your
usage of
features that require the GC rather than try and get rid of it
entirely,
because going the extra mile to remove its use completely
generally just isn't
worth it. Kith-Sa posted some good advice on this just the
other day, and he's
written a game engine in D:
http://forum.dlang.org/post/[email protected]
- Jonathan M Davis
Just speaking as a bystander but I believe it is becoming
apparent that a good guide to using D without the GC is required.
We have a growing number of users who could be useful converts
doing things like using it as a game engine, giving some general
help with approaches and warnings about what does and doesn't
require the GC would greatly smooth the process. Sadly I lack the
talent to write such a guide.
