class gc

[Godmar Back]

> 
> Godmar> Either you'll need to check on the collector side that you
> Godmar> don't mark anything you haven't allocated.
> 
> This is what we do right now.  That's because the Boehm collector is
> smart about this sort of thing, though -- not from any real plan.
> 

What exactly do you mean by "smart"?  Are you referring to the possibility
of using GC_make_descriptor for each class and have Boehm use a bitmap
when walking a class?

Say you have a class F

    class F {
	Class type;
    }

You do know not whether F.type points to a class object you can safely mark
or not.  How do you write the walk method for class F such that you
don't mark `type' unless it's okay to do so?  If the walk method uses 
Boehm's bitmap based descriptors, how would that work?

Thanks,

	- Godmar