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Opportunistic garbage collection


From: Stefan Monnier
Subject: Opportunistic garbage collection
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2019 16:54:20 -0400
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.0.50 (gnu/linux)

I recently bumped into http://akrl.sdf.org/ where they mention a hack of
running the GC from an idle timer, and I was wondering why that would be
a good idea compared to the opportunistic GC we already do.

So I went a look for what we do, and the only thing I found was

      /* If there is still no input available, ask for GC.  */
      if (!detect_input_pending_run_timers (0))
        maybe_gc ();

in src/keyboard.c which doesn't seem to be of any use since this
maybe_gc will very rarely fire: the Elisp code we ran just before should
have called `maybe_gc` already (probably many times, actually).

So unless I missed the other place were we take advantage of idle time
to force an "early" GC, I suggest we install a patch like the one below
(which does more or less what I thought Emacs had been doing all along).

WDYT?


        Stefan


diff --git a/lisp/startup.el b/lisp/startup.el
index a9b58c5e01..33fc901411 100644
--- a/lisp/startup.el
+++ b/lisp/startup.el
@@ -971,6 +971,13 @@ startup--load-user-init-file
     (when debug-on-error-should-be-set
       (setq debug-on-error debug-on-error-from-init-file))))
 
+(defcustom gc-cons-opportunistic-idle-time 5
+  "Number of seconds before trying an opportunistic GC.
+After this number of seconds of idle time, Emacs tries to collect
+garbage more eagerly (i.e. with thresholds halved) in the hope
+to avoid running the GC later during non-idle time."
+  :type 'integer)
+
 (defun command-line ()
   "A subroutine of `normal-top-level'.
 Amongst another things, it parses the command-line arguments."
@@ -1368,6 +1375,16 @@ command-line
                 (eq face-ignored-fonts old-face-ignored-fonts))
       (clear-face-cache)))
 
+  ;; Start opportunistic GC (after loading the init file, so we obey
+  ;; its settings).  This is desirable for two reason:
+  ;; - It reduces the number of times we have to GC in the middle of
+  ;;   an operation.
+  ;; - It means we GC when the C stack is short, reducing the risk of false
+  ;;   positives from the conservative stack scanning.
+  (when gc-cons-opportunistic-idle-time
+    (run-with-idle-timer gc-cons-opportunistic-idle-time t
+                         #'garbage-collect-maybe 2))
+
   (setq after-init-time (current-time))
   ;; Display any accumulated warnings after all functions in
   ;; `after-init-hook' like `desktop-read' have finalized possible
diff --git a/src/alloc.c b/src/alloc.c
index 402fada1ad..14d387861c 100644
--- a/src/alloc.c
+++ b/src/alloc.c
@@ -6016,6 +6016,28 @@ garbage_collect (void)
   garbage_collect_1 (&gcst);
 }
 
+DEFUN ("garbage-collect-maybe", Fgarbage_collect_maybe, 
Sgarbage_collect_maybe, 1, 1, "",
+       doc: /* Call `garbage-collect' if enough allocation happened.
+FACTOR determined what "enough" means here:
+a FACTOR of N means to run the GC if more than 1/Nth of the allocations
+needed to triger automatic allocation took place.  */)
+  (Lisp_Object factor)
+{
+  CHECK_FIXNAT (factor);
+  EMACS_INT fact = XFIXNAT (factor);
+  byte_ct new_csgc = consing_since_gc * fact;
+  if (new_csgc / fact != consing_since_gc)
+    /* Overflow!  */
+    garbage_collect ();
+  else
+    {
+      consing_since_gc = new_csgc;
+      maybe_gc ();
+      consing_since_gc /= fact;
+    }
+  return Qnil;
+}
+
 DEFUN ("garbage-collect", Fgarbage_collect, Sgarbage_collect, 0, 0, "",
        doc: /* Reclaim storage for Lisp objects no longer needed.
 Garbage collection happens automatically if you cons more than
@@ -7416,6 +7438,7 @@ than 2**N, where N is this variable's value.  N should be 
nonnegative.  */);
   defsubr (&Smake_finalizer);
   defsubr (&Spurecopy);
   defsubr (&Sgarbage_collect);
+  defsubr (&Sgarbage_collect_maybe);
   defsubr (&Smemory_info);
   defsubr (&Smemory_use_counts);
   defsubr (&Ssuspicious_object);
diff --git a/src/keyboard.c b/src/keyboard.c
index dff8f6b2fc..237ced19ca 100644
--- a/src/keyboard.c
+++ b/src/keyboard.c
@@ -2728,7 +2728,7 @@ read_char (int commandflag, Lisp_Object map,
 
       /* If there is still no input available, ask for GC.  */
       if (!detect_input_pending_run_timers (0))
-       maybe_gc ();
+       maybe_gc (); /* FIXME: Why?  */
     }
 
   /* Notify the caller if an autosave hook, or a timer, sentinel or



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