News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust. Parent comment

Re:Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust by zozbot234 on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @02:16PM (#22239749)
> Since the whole point of the region is that the GC doesn't scan it, nothing in the region will be able to keep anything outside the region alive.

You can treat external references as GC roots.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust by int_19h on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @06:15PM (#22242205)
How do you know that they exist, if you're not scanning that memory?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust by zozbot234 on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @07:29PM (#22242764)
The data structure code can take care of this by registering GC roots with the garbage collector (and de-registering them if an external reference changes). It's no different in principle than any other smart pointer.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust by tatersolid on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @09:56PM (#22243606)
> You can treat external references as GC roots.

Which brings you back to doing an expensive scan of the large off-heap data structure you were trying to avoid.

[ Parent | on HN ]