cni-changes documented?

Fri Mar 19 17:07:00 GMT 2004

Adam Megacz writes:
 > 
 > Andrew Haley <aph@redhat.com> writes:
 > > I think so. I exepct the only issue will be ABIs that pass single
 > > member structs in a different way from scalars.
 > 
 > How hard would it be to change GCC's internal representation of a
 > pointer to a pointer-to-a-pointer (handle)?
gcj, not gcc. You can't do this with C.
 > Could this be done as a thin layer over the backend (ie a "filter"
 > over the code generator)?
It's doable. It's not the back end though, but the front end.
 > Obviously this would carry a heavy performance penalty, but it
 > would be a quick-and-easy way to get precise GC with a copying
 > collector in the eden generation. It would probably also be a
 > great "midway point" towards adding such functionality to Hans'
 > collector in the general (non-handle) case. All the algorithms
 > could be tested in an environment where there is no ambiguity about
 > what/where to scan; once that code is stable and tested, more
 > complex scanning can be attempted without having to worry about the
 > correctness of the compacting algorithms.
Like anything else in free software, it's a matter of time and
motivation.
Andrew.