[BUG] Low Space problem in 3.0 (and 3.1.3696)

Raab, Andreas Andreas.Raab at disney.com
Sun Feb 25 22:34:38 UTC 2001


> What would be involved in adding a way to allow Squeak to 
> request (and use) more memory from the host OS? 

You'd have to make sure that it's either a continuous extension of the block
already allocated or that GC can work with 'holes' in the object memory.
Making it a continuous block of memory is actually not that hard given that
the OS has some means of reserving (but not committing) virtual memory.
Trivial on Win32 and I think on most Unixes (equipped with mmap()) and
probably on MacOS/X as well.

However, that's not quite the entire story. You have to keep in mind that at
some point you could a) run out of swap space (which is a Very Bad Thing if
it really happens) and b) that an infinite loop would keep allocating huge
amounts of memory. As it is, you get a low space warning when you hit the
boundary and the low space warning is a useful thing to have.

[Hm ... makes me wonder how the commercial ST versions deal with that
problem. Anyone dare to comment?!]

Cheers,
  - Andreas





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