On: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation

[davidgrenier]

Always look at the memory management story when you stumble upon something like this.

[mtm → davidgrenier]

It seems well thought out:

* malloc/free (ref counting GC)

* memory pooling (no heap, stack-based for memory constrained systems)

* third party allocators

* third party GC

Details here: http://ferret-lang.org/#sec-4-2

[tomsmeding → mtm]

I love the idea of ref counting, but I'm unsure about the handling of memory cycles. In a plain ref counting implementation, these will not be cleaned up, resulting in a memory leak.

I didn't find anything on cycles in the linked page, maybe the problem is not relevant in most real-world clojure code?

[derefr → tomsmeding]

I don't know about "pure" Clojure (as this is), but in "pure" Erlang (which has similar semantics), you simply can't make a reference cycle. Functional languages in general don't really allow them.

[nakkaya → tomsmeding]

Author here. As derefr said with Clojure semantics you can not create cycles.

[tomsmeding → nakkaya]

Thanks, now I think about it, that makes a lot of sense.

[agentgt → davidgrenier]

You could have provided a link to the memory management section or even mentioned it was ref counting. Otherwise your comment is ... it kills me to say this but pretty useless.

[tedunangst → agentgt]

Always look at memory management is more general, and perhaps even more useful, advice than look at the memory management for this one project.

[jonathonf → davidgrenier]

Why? What's "good" vs what's "bad"?