Re: guile/guile-core/libguile init.c

[Mikael Djurfeldt <mdj at mdj dot nada dot kth dot se>]

Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com> writes:

> In his thesis, Ben Zorn recommends that one should not GC when the
> freelist is exhausted.  If you do this, then programs whose data size
> is close to the current heap size will GC very frequently, because the
> freelists will always be short.  And since these GC's will reclaim
> very little storage, the time they take is pretty much wasted.
> 
> He suggests that the program should instead expand the heap whenever
> the freelist is exhausted, and GC after every N allocations, where N
> is a parameter.  This way, the heap size naturally adjusts to match
> the program's data size, and the GC frequency is more controlled.

This sounds good.

I suggest that we replace the current double mechanism
SCM_INIT_HEAP_SIZE-EXPMEM / SCM_HEAP_SEG_SIZE with the mechanism you
describe.

OK?