Re: gc notes available

[Radey Shouman <Radey_Shouman@splashtech.com>]

hjstein@bfr.co.il (Harvey J. Stein) writes:

> 3. Emacs has a non generational GC that's on the slow side.  Does its
>    pauses cause a significant degradation of it's UI?

Just to amplify a bit: emacs used to gc only* as a response to
keyboard input.  This was annoying, as it might teeter on the brink of
gc for hours, until someone resumed typing, at which point it would
gc, with a noticeable pause and a message to that effect.

Emacs will now gc, if necessary, during breaks in keyboard activity.
I don't know, but doubt that emacs' gc is much faster.  I suspect that
total cpu time spent in gc might actually be greater, since gc tends
to happen earlier.  But, the irritating pauses and messages are gone.


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* barring activity in response to asynchronous processes.  I wrote an
elisp package for emacs 18 that did background gc based on the display-time
process, judging from the email I recieved it was somewhat popular.