617395 - Need GC rules

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 564194

(Tamarin Graveyard :: Garbage Collection (mmGC), defect, P3)

Description

[Tommy Reilly]

We need to document (text file in docs directory) all the MMgc rules.   We just removed the global new operator and have a new rule that all GC allocations done with new have to inherit from GCObject (enforced with compile error).   Also we just tightened up the rules around what can be passed to a write barrier (assertion enforced).  

Something that listed all the rules and how/if they are enforced would be great.  In an ideal world we could prove that if none of the rules were broken that a program couldn't crash from a GC problem.  Really though I just want to point people at something when they say "I didn't know that rule! Where are the rules written down?"

Comment 1

[Lars T Hansen]

GC.h needs to include a clear and visible comment at the beginning that points to that file.

It's not clear to me why that documentation should not be part of the MMgc docs on MDC, though, since that would allow us to have all the docs in one place and structured in some useful way.  (Alternatively kill the MDC docs and move everything into the docs directory.)  See also bug #564194 which is about cleaning up the MDC docs.

Comment 2

[Lars T Hansen]

I'm now firmly in favor of killing the MDC docs and moving everything into the docs directory.