[dumdumchan]

So refcounting?

[aidenn0]

Beohm is not refcounting, it's a tracing GC.

[vkazanov]

Boehm is not tracing, it's a conservative GC.

PS admittedly, terminology is not precise enough in this space.

[aidenn0]

I would say that the terminology is pretty good in this space, and BDWGC is a conservative tracing GC. A tracing GC determines reachability by following (i.e. tracing) chains of references. A precise GC will retain exactly the set of reachable objects, a conservative GC will retain potentially more.

Tracing GCs might be precise (or not), they might handle internal-pointers (or not), they might move the data (or not), they might handle variable sized allocations (or not).