lua-users home
lua-l archive

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]


Fabien wrote:
I'd be really interested into a porting guide to embedded devices as well. The main issue I had with my platform (ARM9, 256KB of available RAM, couple MB of flash) is with memory. The GC doesn't naturally "think" in terms of how much memory is there left. I guess I'm far from being the first one to hack it, and some people probably did a much better job than mine; it's a shame that this work isn't shared, e.g. on the wiki, and I hope someone will be able to write a lua gem about it.

256K of RAM? Luxury!

I ended up using two approaches. The first was a small heap that I
allocated at link time, and then a little code to allocate more
when I needed it - which was all the time.

The second route was to specify all the RAM that Lua could use at
link time. A heap that grows is really only appropriate for a
general purpose computer where you want to minimize a program's
footprint to leave room for other stuff.

Having some statistical informations about typical memory usage would be great as well: is it worth implementing special tricks to speed up allocation and/or limit fragmentation on the sometimes naive memory allocators one gets on embedded platforms? Are there some known ways to do this?

That's a good question! I'd love to hear some opinions on fragmentation.

I notice that many blocks get allocated during parsing and then they are
reduced later. In this case, is it better to use best-fit or first fit?

Ralpg