[Python-ideas] cross platform memory usage high water mark for improved gc?

[Aaron Watters]

Hi.  Some months ago I complained on the python-list
that python gc did too much work for apps that allocate
and deallocate lots of structures.  In fact one of my apps
was spending about 1/3 of its time garbage collecting
and not finding anything to collect (before i disabled gc).

My proposal was that python
should have some sort of a smarter strategy for garbage
collection, perhaps involving watching the global
high water mark for memory allocation or other tricks.

The appropriate response was:
"great idea! patch please!" :)

Unfortunately dealing with cross platform
memory management internals is beyond my
C-level expertise, and I'm not having a lot of
luck finding good information sources.  Does anyone
have any clues on this or other ideas for improving
the gc heuristic?  For example, how do you find
out the allocated heap size(s) in a cross platform
way?

This link provides some clues, but I don't really
understand this code well enough to hope to
patch gc.

http://www.xfeedme.com/nucular/pydistro.py/go?FocusId=74&FREETEXT=high%20water%20mark

  -- Aaron Watters
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