Re: Update on GC performance (github version)

[Paige DePol <lual@...>]

Russell Haley <russ.haley@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd like to look at the GC code at some point. Anything you (or any of
> the authors) can offer about the design and implementation of Lua on
> the mailing list is wonderful.

There is an interesting article[1] on the LuaJIT website that covers a number
of GC algorithms that might be a good starting point. It really helped me
to understand how the current non-generational collector works.

Lua uses the tri-color algorithm, and the LuaJIT author has extended that
to a quad-color algorithm. Dave Hayden posted earlier on this thread about
an algorithm where he added red/yellow flags to implement a generational
garbage collector in Lua 5.3 as well.

~Paige

[1] http://wiki.luajit.org/New-Garbage-Collector#gc-algorithms