Re: gc notes available

[Chris.Bitmead@misys.com.au]

Is it possible perhaps that the interface to gc could be well enough
defined that the user
could choose which gc to use? Ideally you could say (use-modules (gc
incremental))
and get the sort of gc you want. Such an interface would also make it easy
for people
to experiment with different sorts of gc.

Knowing how hairy gc can be though, I don't know how feasable that would
be.






I'm concerned first with reducing the overall cost of GC, and second
with providing acceptable interactive behavior.

I have read that most incremental collectors limit the absolute pause
length, but consume more time overall than non-incremental collectors.
I don't want to come out of this with Guile spending *more* time in
the collector than it does now.  I'm not interested enough in games
and animations to make that trade.

If someone gives us an incremental collector that's *more*
efficient, I'm certainly not going to complain.