[Gcl-devel] Re: reporting GC bugs in GCL

[Camm Maguire]

Greetings!

Matt Kaufmann <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi, Camm --
> 
> An ACL2 user just reported the following, which looks to me like a GCL gc bug.
> 
>    ACL2 !>>[GC for 100 FIXNUM pages..[GC for 100 FIXNUM pages..
>    Process acl2 exited abnormally with code 128
> 

Matt, is this windows?  This is the same bug I think we discussed
earlier, which I hope has been resolved in

revision 1.15
date: 2002/11/19 03:05:59;  author: mjthomas;  state: Exp;  lines: +34 -11
make_fixnum() called GBC(t_fixnum) called runtime() called make_fixnum...
----------------------------

Releases after this point should be fine.  If not, please let me
know.  It would be most helpful if you could give me the commands to
reproduce it on a Linux system.


> What is the preferred way to proceed when such bugs occur?  For example, is
> there a web page where a list appears of various known GCL bugs in various
> versions?  Or should I just ask this user to send you a bug report with the 
> GCL
> version and platform?

The most useful for me is the gcl-devel list, address@hidden  (the
list seems to be down/delayed at the moment).  Second to this is the
savannah website.  We do try to keep a log of bugs there which aren't
fixed quickly, but we tend to be short on the manpower needed to
maintain this database.  Of course, if someone would so volunteer, it
would be a great service.

BTW, I am still working on two issues you've brought to my attention
-- profiling, and the odd contiguous page gbc behavior when sgc is
enabled and bignums are exercised.  I've verified that the latter is
behaving as designed -- your allocation of a few relblock pages puts
the available contiguous just below the amount needed for the
computation specified -- but of course I feel the design can be
improved.  What is basically happening is that certain page types are
allowed to sgc when enabled and certain others are not.  In the bignum
case, the bignum struct itself is on a page which does not sgc, and
the body of the bignum is on a contiguous page which does.  The bignum
body contiguous pages are never swept when sgc is on as the only step
which would sgc-mark these pages occurs when sgc is turned off.  I
should have a solution soon, together with a new profiling mode, gprof
support.  At that point I'd like to release 2.5.4.

Take care,

> 
> -- Matt
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Camm Maguire                                            address@hidden
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah