[gclist] Two conservative collectors.

[Michael T. Richter]

I'm looking into the possibility of adding garbage collection (masquerading
it as "run-time leak detection and correction" to managers convinced that
GC is evil) to a C++ project.  I'd like to minimize the impact adding such
GC to projects would entail.  This had led me to looking into conservative
collectors.

I've tracked down two conservative collectors which will work in the Win32
environment: the Boehm-Demers-Weiser collector at
http://reality.sgi.com/boehm_mti/gc.html and the Great Circle collector at
http://www.geodesic.com/products/greatcircle.html.

I'd like to get a feel for the costs of integrating either of these
packages into existing code.  Can either of them be used "out of the box"
with no source code changes whatsoever for at least a start?  How
reliable/unreliable are either of these?  How configurable are either of
these?  I'm soliciting opinions both good and bad.

I'm also interested in any comparative analyses people with experience in
both may have to offer.  The BDW collector is free, so what precisely does
Great Circle value-add that makes it worth its purchase price (whatever
that price is -- alarm bells go off when I see "runtime license fee" and no
pricing information on a web site....).

--
Michael T. Richter    <mtr@ottawa.com>    http://www.igs.net/~mtr/
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