memory defragmentation

[Godmar Back]

> 
> >I'm still a weenie at programming, but I've had a Good Hard Think (tm)
> >about this and I still don't see any memory structure that'll work
> >better than the current system, which (as you know) dedicates each
> >memory block to a certain size of object.  (In that respect, it's
> >similar to the Boehm-Demers-Weiser collector; the book mentioned above
> >cites [Boehm and Weiser, 1988].)
> >
> 
> Correct me if I am wrong. What actually bother me is that kaffe use a free
> list to keep track of free memory block. After allocating and reclaiming
> memory blocks, the free block will not be contiguous and this might be the
> problem for large objets to fit in. Or did I miss something?
> 

I don't think the primitive lists are a problem.  They are defragmented
in that adjacent pieces are spliced together upon free.  At least that's 
what Jason told me the last time I talked to him about that, and that's 
also what a quick look at gc-mem.c:gc_primitive_free shows.
Do you see any problems with that?

	- Godmar