A Precise Garbage Collector for D

Rainer Schütze
May 2nd @ 2:30 PM

Duration: 50 minutes
Talk type: Presentation
Level: Intermediate
Slides
Video: [HD] [SD]

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Abstract: 

Though optional to some extent, garbage collection simplifies programming considerably and is a major building block for a number of features of the D programming language like slices and delegate closures. The current garbage collector implemented in the D runtime library is conservative, limiting the possibility to detect false pointer references leading to unused memory leaking and polluting the address space, especially in 32-bit environments.

This presentation describes the implementation of a precise garbage collector for D that takes advantage of building necessary type information at compile time via the existing RTInfo compiler hook. Modifications to the D runtime library are discussed and compiler modifications are proposed to support precise scanning the data and TLS segments in addition to heap allocated memory.

Benefits: Learning how to create custom type information using the RTInfo compiler hook, understanding the gains and pitfalls of using precise garbage collection in a systems programming language.

Speaker Bio: Rainer Schuetze is the author of Visual D, an extension to Visual Studio to integrate the D programming language. In addition he has been working on improving the experience of debugging D applications under Windows. In his professional career he has been working as a software engineer in the computer music industry for almost 20 years.