Re: alloca and native code

[Tom Tromey <tromey at cygnus dot com>]

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Haley <aph@redhat.com> writes:

Andrew> It would be nice if we didn't do this in embedded systems,
Andrew> since it breaks the nice property that Java aprograms have
Andrew> small stacks, and the stack is only scanned conservatively.
Andrew> We ought to question if this is a performance win on any
Andrew> system.

I usually do it because it is more convenient than doing an explicit
alloc/free of unscanned memory (eg using _Jv_Malloc).  In general I
only use alloca or a variable array if the size is bounded (though
that probably isn't always true, sigh).  But I agree that revisiting
this makes sense.  Maybe we should enter a PR, or even make it part of
our "coding standard (if we had one)".

Tom