Re: GC ( Was: Re: ObjectiveC accessors)

[Public Look]

On May 30, 2004, at 7:25 AM, Stefan Urbanek wrote:

> On 2004-05-30 12:40:06 +0200 David Ayers <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > Stefan Urbanek wrote:
> > > Speaking about retain/release being OpenStep specific. Why not to 
> > > include some kind of garbage collection into the language too? It is 
> > > used in majority of sources. Of course, with appropriate library 
> > > hooks/callbacks, so one can implement custom GC method. I think it 
> > > can be done in some simple way.
> > The GNU runtime can be configured with garbage collection enabled. 
> > GNUstep uses the RETAIN/RELEASE/AUTORELEASE related macros because of 
> > this.  It also introduces the gnugc-gnu-gnu library combo for the GC 
> > enabled runtime.  I don't think this gets much testing though, but 
> > that's pure speculation.
>
> Why it is not used? Just lack of recommendations/advertising or are 
> there some other reasons? What are the problems with the GC (... that 
> can not be solved)?

I wrote a critique of garbage collection applied to C like languages:
http://cocoa.mamasam.com/COCOADEV/2003/05/1/62933.php