[gclist] Garbage collection and XML

[Boehm, Hans]

> From: David Chase [mailto:chase@world.std.com]
> 
> This is not about garbage collection at all, unless we want
> to grumble about the design decisions underlying some of these
> things.
Ditto, though my impression is that there is a lot of interaction between
strings and GC performance.  Strings may be a big part of the heap, and
depending on how you answer some of these questions here, the GC may or may
not have to look at them very much.
> 
> Regarding Hans's observations about gcj -- if they want to
> roll their own String class, that's fine, but if they intend
> to interoperate with native code (JNI code), they'll need
> to use the same String data structures, field names, and types
> as Sun uses for their classes.  I learned this the hard
> way. 
> 
My impression is that this is only an issue for programs that rely on
features not documented in the Java or JNI spec?  If so, it seems to me the
other answer is "fix the client code", which seems to be an easier thing to
say with open source code than with commercial code, though it's never easy.

Hans