Progress on the Gilectomy

[Paul Rubin]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:
> Or let's look at it a different way. Instead of using a PyObject* in C
> code, you could write C++ code that uses a trivial wrapper class that
> holds the pointer, increments its refcount on construction, and
> decrements that refcount on destruction.

That's the C++ STL shared_ptr template.  Unfortunately it has the same
problem as Python refcounts, i.e. it has to use locks to maintain thread
safety, which slows it down significantly.

The simplest way to start experimenting with GC in Python might be to
redefine the refcount macros to do nothing, connect the allocator to the
Boehm GC, and stop all the threads when GC time comes.  I don't know if
Guile has threads at all, but I know it uses the Boehm GC and it's quite
effective.