Re: HNUstep and Garbage Collection

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 8 Mar 2006, at 06:53, Lloyd Dupont wrote:

> Does GNUstep support Garbage Collection?

Sort of.

> Does it works well?

Probably not... depending on what classes you want to use and how you  
want to use them.  I expect most classes would be OK.

I added GC to the base library many years ago ... but due to lack of  
interest it never really got used or thoroughly tested and it's state  
has probably degenerated over the years.  It should not be a hugely  
difficult task to use it and fix any problems, and I would be very  
happy to put GC fixes into the distribution ... but I would not  
expect it to simply work without fixes.

> What if I want to used a GCed - GNUstep to port a Mac application  
> to windows.
> Would the retain/release be disregarded and be taken over by the GC?

Yes.

> Finally how does the reference couting work and when does the  
> collection occurs?

GC in the base library does not use reference counting ... it uses  
the Boehm garbage collecting library, which uses a mark-sweep  
mechanism rather than a reference counting one.  You can google boehm  
for details.