On Tuesday, 6 August 2013 at 07:19:40 UTC, JS wrote:
1. Is there a way to determine what the GC is doing?

It is probably easiest to just run it in a debugger, and set a breakpoint on gc_malloc and gc_qalloc. When it breaks, you can see where it is, then continue to carry on.

You can also tell where the gc runs by carefully reviewing the code:

1) any instance of "new", obviously

2) any use of array ~ array. Binary ~ on other types doesn't necessarily run the gc, since it could be overloaded, but generally does. (If you want to avoid gc, a ~ b is something I'd avoid entirely.)

3) Some uses of a ~= b. This doesn't necessarily allocate, it might be appending to reserved space or be overloaded. If a is a built in array though and you're looking at the code, assume it allocates and do something else.

4) Passing a nested delegate or lambda to another function, sometimes. It won't if a) the receiving function marks the delegate argument as scope, or b) the function doesn't reference any variables.

But generally if you see a non-scope delegate, assume it allocates.

5) Any array literal that isn't static immutable allocates. Hopefully this will be fixed soon, but right now they all do... even if the array literal is in an enum!

ummm... I think I might be forgetting something, but I'm pretty sure these are all the major ones.

Anything that allocates might call the gc collect.


So to sum up: search your code for "new", "~", calling functions that receive "delegate", and "[a,b,c...]" and you'll have an idea as to where the gc might run in your code.

I suppose I can modify the sources, but is there an easier way?

What about writing your own external alloc function like std.conv.emplace? Then you'd do it just at the creation site without modifying the class.

(which I think is required over sizeof, classInstanceSize, etc... to prevent slicing).

Check out typeid(MyClass).init as well...

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