[gclist] Boehm collector and parallel Boehm collector - opinions

[David Gould]

I am considering using the Boehm-Weiser conservative collector in a very large
long running existing C program that currently uses explicit allocation and
deallocation.

The program uses its own thread package and multiple processes on MP machines.
The heap is managed in shared memory and is mostly global to all the
processors. It is required that this program be very reliable and robust, and
that it scale well on MPs.

There appears to be a parallel development of the Boehm collector by
Yonezawa Laboratories (http://www.yl.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/gc/) available.

Does anyone have experience with these collectors that they could share? I
am interested in any particular problems or successes. Due to the nature of
the existing program it will take a fair amount of work to adapt it to use a
GC, and I would like to get an idea of things to look out for or ways to
enhance this adaptation.

Thanks

-dg

David Gould           dg@informix.com            510.628.3783 or 510.305.9468 
Informix Software                       300 Lakeside Drive  Oakland, CA 94612
 - If simplicity worked, the world would be overrun with insects. -