A couple garbage collector questions

[Fredrik Lundh]

Douglas Alan wrote:
> Another question: Why didn't Python just include Bohm's conservative
> GC package to implement Python's cycle detection?

it's one of those annoying theory vs. practice things.

lots of people have played with that.  nobody has been able to make
Python+Boehm run faster than reference counting plus Neil's approach.

that doesn't mean that it's impossible, though -- but it probably needs
far more work than "just including" it.  see:

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/python-list/message/122067

and even if this is solved, the Boehm GC isn't very portable, compared
to the rest of the code base...

Cheers /F