Re: Garbage Collection

[sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)]

Mike Ryer (ryer@inmet.UUCP) writes:
>Currently, Ada neither requires nor precludes garbage collection.  For 
>example, the Symbolics Ada compiler provides it (as well they should), but
>none of the eight cross-compilers for the 1750A computer does (as they 
>shouldn't).
>
>What are you (any of you) proposing?  That ALL Ada compilers should have
>garbage collection?  Than no Ada compilers should be allowed to have it?
>Pragmas?

I know about nothing about 1750, but I assume it's typically used
for those "embedded systems" that Ada was intended for. I can agree
that garbage collection is virtually of no interest on such a machine
and not worth the development costs.
  On the other hand if I want to port my interactive program from VAX/VMS
to SunOS, I can't with the rules of today rely on garbage collection, 
but have to stick to Unchecked_deallocation.
  So it would be nice if garbage collection was required to be available, 
or at least recommended. How it should be controlled (on or off) is a more 
tricky question. Pragmas is maybe not the best of ideas since to some extent 
it applies to the entire system.
  Of course, if practice turns out that all compilers except those for 
strict real-time use have garbage collection, then such a rule in the
LRM is unnecessary. Unfortunately, this doesn't seems to be the case
today.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog
ENEA Data, Stockholm              This signature is not to be quoted.
sommar@enea.se