A garbage collector implementation in C

Dead simple semi-automatic garbage collector. You allocate stuff by 'binding' them to variable, pointer or a number! Then when you want to 'free' things, just pass 'binding' or your magic number.

That is all!

• Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/pvtmert/simple-gc.git

• cd into repository.

cd simple-gc

• Build & run an example (main.c)

make clean all test

• (Optional) Build & Run in a (docker) container:

docker build -t simple-gc -f dockerfile

docker run --rm -it simple-gc

• Play with it!

Edit main.c with your favorite editor!

• Build project
• Copy *.h files to your project.

Or add as an include location. (-I flag)

• Copy *.a files to your project.

Or add as an library location. (-L flag or direct argument on macOS)

Prototype: void* gc_alloc(size_t size, void* binding, ref_t magic)

Parameters:

• size: Length in bytes to allocate.
• binding: A pointer to bind this allocation.

You can use argc in main for instance.

• magic: A number to specify this (kind-of) allocation. Group-ID.

Note: You can omit binding or magic. As NULL or (ref_t) { 0x00 } respectively.

Returns: void* to allocated data. (Same as malloc-like functions.)

Prototype: void gc_collect(void* binding, ref_t magic)

Parameters:

• binding: Apply GC on those references.
• magic: Apply GC on those numbers. (Groups).

Note: I am not sure what to implement scope-like allocations. See footnotes.

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

MIT

I'd like to implement scope bound allocation system. Which doing gc_alloc only with size argument.

While exiting scope, doing gc_collect again with empty parameters will cause only those scope's data will be erased.

First thing to consider is nested-functions or calling them recursively. Which will cause upper scope to also be deleted. Because I'll check if an alloc_t has both ref and caller empty/NULL. And gc_collect will clean-up all ref and caller empty objects.

Haven't decided what to do. Just in case, I added usages member to keep count of whats being used or not in future.