Re: Mark procedures

[Ludovic Courtès]

Andy Wingo <address@hidden> skribis:

> Some of the points I made have not been made before, AFAIK.  The point
> about marking occuring concurrently with the mutator even in the absence
> of threads, for example.

Yes, right.

>> I agree with you that we must keep recommending against using [mark
>> procedures], and that remaining uses should probably be questioned; I
>> think we can’t “just” remove them though.
>
> I am not sure, to be honest.  I am not proposing "just" removing them.
> However if we can remove them, then we *certainly* should do so -- we
> should plan our API in that way.

Right.  I think we cannot remove them yet, but we should do what it
takes so users rely less and less on them.

>> What we need above all is to address LilyPond’s use case.  I proposed a
>> solution at <http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=19883#23> but
>> never understood whether/why it was considered unfit.
>
> I agree with you that the patch there looks reasonable to me too, though
> AFAIU the original code should work just fine too.
>
> There area few things at play.
>
>  (1) A bug related to SMOB finalization and marking that affects
>      LilyPond
>
>  (2) The utility of mark procedures in general
>
>  (3) The suitability of mark procedures for future uses
>
>  (4) Whether we can get by without mark procedures, and if so, how.
>
> For (1) it seems to me that we just have a bug.  A SMOB mark function
> was called on an object after the finalizer.  ****Note**** that having
> the finalizer called doesn't mean that the GC object was collected -- it
> just means it was collectable, perhaps in a clique of objects.
> Finalization being asynchronous with marking it's possible that a clique
> of objects was only half-finalized when a new mark procedure runs.  The
> mark procedure saw an object on which free() was already called -- this
> is possible.
>
> We should fix Guile so to "null out" the SMOB typecode when the SMOB
> finalizer is called.  If our mark procedure sees a SMOB that has already
> been finalized, it just returns.
>
> Though finalizers in general can resuscitate objects, that was never a
> contract of SMOB finalizers, and I think in fact it's an anti-contract.
> Unfortunately for maximum robustness we probably need to grab the alloc
> lock when swapping out the typecode; too bad.  This is not the same as
> marking dead objects on free lists.  An object is first finalized, then
> BDW-GC removes its finalizer, then if it is collected in the next GC it
> goes on a freelist.

Since (1) is difficult to fix, and since mark procedures have other
problems as you explain, I was inclined to address the Lily problem via (4).

> For (2).  To me the existence of other systems with proper GC but no
> mark procedures, especially JS VMs, means that mark procedures are not
> _necessary_.

Point taken.  BDW-GC makes them useless in most cases anyway.

> For (3) I hope I have successfully argued that what we need for precise
> and moving collection is not the same as mark procedures.  I think Mark
> would like to deal with these topics at the same time but I strongly
> disagree.

I think so.  I admit I’m more concerned with the immediate problems of
LilyPond though.  ;-)

> Point (4) indicates to me that if we are making new abstractions that we
> would like to encourage people to use in the future, we should not
> encourage mark functions.  We can add some other mechanism (type
> descriptors, for example).  SMOBs and their horrible mark procedures
> aren't going away any time soon, of course.

Agreed!  Commit d9a4a1c uses very clear wording to recommend against
mark procedures, which is the right thing IMO; commit 56273de from 2009
already hinted in that direction, though not as prominently.

Since I missed the original discussion between you and Mark, I might
well be completely off, in which case I apologize.

Thanks,
Ludo’.