[squeak-dev] Re: [Pharo-dev] Image Segment semantics and weakness

Eliot Miranda eliot.miranda at gmail.com
Mon Oct 20 19:41:51 UTC 2014


On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 8:26 AM, stepharo <stepharo at free.fr> wrote:

>  While I as a big fan of imageSegment and proposed to mariano to work on
> imageSegment2 (it was the original idea for his phd)
> he convinced us that imagesegment were not worth their complexity.
>

I absolutely agree.


> So why do you want to have imageSegment?
>

Because of backwards-compatibility.  If Spur does not provide image
segments then the barrier to entry for Terf, eToys and Squeak may be too
high.  Spur is supposed to be a plug-in replacement for Cog, not something
that requires lots of effort to port to.


> Stef
>
>
>
> On 20/10/14 03:01, Eliot Miranda wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
>      I want to check my understanding of reference semantics for image
> segments as I'm close to completing the Spur implementation.  Specifically
> the question is whether objects reachable only through weak pointers should
> be included in an image segment or not.
>
>  Remember that an image segment is created from the transitive closure of
> an Array of root objects, the *segment roots*. i.e. we can think of an
> image segment as a set of objects created by tracing the object graph from
> the segment roots.
>
>  The segment always includes the segment roots.  Except for the roots,
> objects are excluded from the segment that are also reachable form the
> roots of the system (the *system roots*, effectively the root
> environment, Smalltalk, and the stack of the current process).
>
>  Consider a weak array in the transitive closure that is not reachable
> from the system roots, and hence should be included in the segment.
> Objects referenced from that weak array may be in one of three categories
>
>  - reachable from the system roots (and hence not to be included in the
> segment)
> - *not* reachable form the system roots, but reachable from the segment
> roots via strong pointers (and hence to be included in the segment)
> - *not* reachable form the system roots, *not* reachable from the segment
> roots via strong pointers
>
>  Should this last category be included or excluded from the segment?  I
> think that it makes no difference, and excluding them is only an
> optimization.  The argument is as follows.  Imagine that immediately after
> loading the image segment there is a garbage collection.  That garbage
> collection will collect all the objects in the last category as they are
> only reachable from the weak arrays in the segment.  Hence we are free to
> follow weak references as if they are strong when we create the image
> segment, leaving it to subsequent events to reclaim those objects.
>
>  An analogous argument accounts for objects reachable from ephemerons.
> Is my reasoning sound?
> --
> best,
> Eliot
>
>
>


-- 
best,
Eliot
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