On 2013-07-10 08:00:42 +0000, Manu <[email protected]> said:
I'd push for an ARC implementation. I've become convinced that's what I actually want, and that GC will never completely satisfy my requirements.
There's two ways to implement ARC. You can implement it instead of the GC, but things with cycles in them will leak. You can implement it as a supplement to the GC, where the GC is used to collect cycles which ARC cannot release. Or you can implement it only for a subset of the language by having a base reference-counted class and things derived from it are reference counted.
The two first ideas, which implement ARC globally, would have to call a function at each and every pointer assignment. Implementing this would require a different codegen from standard D, and libraries compiled with and without those calls on pointer assignment would be incompatible with each other.
On the other end, having a reference counted base class is of more limited utility because you can't reuse D code that rely on the GC if your requirement does not allow the GC to run when it needs too. But it does not create codegen fragmentation.
-- Michel Fortin [email protected] http://michelf.ca
