Re: GC rewrite, first version.

[Rob Browning]

Han-Wen Nienhuys <address@hidden> writes:

> Personally, I view source code as a form of prose. It should be
> easily readable. Hence I prefer variable names that can just be read
> as an english expression, with the prefix scm_ for delimiting our
> namespace, perhaps with an abbreviation here or there to keep the
> lines within my editor window. Typically, the most generic word
> (always a noun), eg number, size, string, comes last

Overall I agree, though I will say that all other things being equal,
I tend to feel that consistency within the codebase, up to a certain
point, improves readability (and managability wrt finding things via
the normal tools like grep, etc.) more than having some files with the
"perfect style" and others without would.

>   scm_heap_segment_table_size
>   scm_formals_str(ing)
>
> in stead of 
>
>   scm_n_heap_segs
>   scm_s_formals

I consider the latter uglier, and wouldn't choose it myself, but I
could manage with either if the convention were consistently used.

> And for the rest, I think that GUILE 1.6 should be released.

Agreed.  I've fixed the remaining issues, and 1.5.7 has been ready for
upload since last week, but I've been waiting for alpha.gnu.org to
become available again.

> As an aside, if no-one objects to it, I would like to merge the new GC
> code coming weekend.

No opinion -- I'd rather have the people who know the GC better
comment on that, but I definitely appreciate your efforts in trying to
clean things up.  Seems like the gc and eval are two of the
(understandably) harder segments of code to get a handle on when you
start messing with guile, so the more we can make these transparent
without appreciably harming our performance or functionality, the
better.

-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org, @linuxdevel.com, and @debian.org
Previously @cs.utexas.edu
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