Python uses a reference counting GC, MacRuby could, in theory, implement ARC under the cover. It would however make C extensions really really hard to support.
- Matt On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Igor Evsukov <igor.evsu...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Henry, > > And it's impossible to make Ruby to use ARC. > > Why? > > For memory management Objective-C uses a paradigm called "reference > counting". The idea is very simple – when You need an object – You increase > it reference count, when You no longer need it – You should decrease it. For > example > > NSString *name = @"Henry"; > //when [[... alloc] init...] called (new object get created) – reference > count of object is set to 1. > //who create's object is responsible to delete it > NSString *greeting = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"Hello %@",name]; > //assume that greetings in an instance of NSMutableArray > [greetings addObject:greeting]; > //we no longer need a greeting variable > [greeting release]; > > Everything is ok with this model, but You should manually track circular > references. > ARC is just a smart preprocessor that knows Cocoa memory conventions and > add's retain/release/autorelease calls to Your source code. And it can't > figure out what to with circular references. > In Ruby we have garbage collector which is acts in whole different way – > instead of modifying source code it track all created objects and delete > one's that are no longer accessible from Your program. > So, basically, ARC and GC are two conceptually different things which are > even not replaceable by each other(circular references). > I encourage You to watch a BostonRB talk > ( http://bostonrb.org/presentations/macruby-what-is-it-and-why-should-i-care-part-1 ) by Joshua > Ballanco (one of the MacRuby developers). In his talk he sad that GC isn't a > major issue with bringing MacRuby to iOS. > On 17 окт. 2011, at 08:43, Henry Maddocks wrote: > > On 16/10/2011, at 9:07 PM, Igor Evsukov wrote: > > And it's impossible to make Ruby to use ARC. > > Why? > > Henry > > _______________________________________________ > MacRuby-devel mailing list > MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org > http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel > > > _______________________________________________ > MacRuby-devel mailing list > MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org > http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel > > _______________________________________________ MacRuby-devel mailing list MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel
