elk/BUGS

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Generational/Incremental Garbage Collector
The generational, incremental garbage collector still is considered
experimental, although it stands up well in some real applications.
Here is a list of known problems:
o On a Sun (Sun-4/SunOS4 or 5) when compiling Elk with gcc (2.6.3
or older), the generational garbage collector sometimes loops
(when working in non-incremental mode). This can be circumvented
by compiling src/proc.c (yes, proc.c, not heap.c) without the -O
option. We are not sure yet whether this is a bug in Elk or in gcc.
o Running out of memory when expanding the heap shouldn't be handled
as a fatal error. Instead, the garbage collector should clean up
and then invoke Uncatchable_Error() to return control to the Scheme
program.
o The return value of ExpandHeap() is sometimes ignored.
o When running the program
(garbage-collect-status 'generational 'incremental)
(define (f) (make-list 10000 'a) (f))
(f)
the pairs in the lists become stable quickly and aren't reclaimed,
as the current algorithm favors heap expansions over full collections.
o With the same test program, the GC sometimes crashes with SIGSEGV
after having expanded the heap to 9MB.
o Under HP-UX 9.0 and AIX 4.1, the GC doesn't work in incremental mode
(a broken-heart is passed to Memoize_Frame() after an ExpandHeap()).
o The percentage displayed at the end of a GC run is sometimes wrong.