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by aidenn0 1072 days ago
Beohm is not refcounting, it's a tracing GC.
1 comments
vkazanov 1072 days ago
Boehm is not tracing, it's a conservative GC.

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

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aidenn0 1072 days ago
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).

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