Fare's GC

[Mike Prince]

On Fri, 23 Dec 1994, Francois-Rene Rideau wrote:
> ### Garbage collection ###
> 
>    We'll need some distributed GC mechanism. A synchronized algorithm is
> possible on a local net (or for multiple VM's in a same host); but for a
> large (world-wide ?) net, some conservative GC mechanism is needed for
> synchronization may be impossible (synchronization is needed to remove
> cycles).
>    Again, the GC is *not* a kernel. But if you want to share objects with
> other machines, you'd better share a common GC protocol. This is a
> standard-related problem. However, even given the protocol, you may use
> any GC from any vendor, and dynamically replace it, and migrate every
> single object from the address space managed by the older GC to the
> address space managed by the newer one (of course, until all the objects
> migrated, the older one is still needed). The same holds for the dynamic
> loader: when all stubs using the older dynamic loader have been replaced,
> the newer one has definitively taken over.

You didn't suggest a mechanism.  Please suggest at least one way of 
dealing with objects distributed world-wide.  You can't simply say "we'll 
deal with that part later" if your design requires it.

Mike