ruby/ruby — pull request #414 by funny-falcon (2013-10-04 11:33:21+00:00)
Title: xwillfree - promise to free memory

This patch changes semantic of RUBY_GC_MALLOC_LIMIT.
Instead of being "periodical trigger" it becomes more like "safety trigger"
which fires in allocation increase (instead of allocation amount).
So that there is less need to tune RUBY_GC_MALLOC_LIMIT at all, and default
8Mb becomes meaningful.

Before GC relaxation in commit 8c0033a `make check` ran 13% faster
(292s instead of 338s) and doesn't seems to use more memory. It is now
runs at the same speed, but I propose to revert some part of GC
relaxation (in a second commit).

Tradeoffs for patch simplicity:
- it is not exact: only String, Array, Object, Struct, Bignum and Time are
handled
- only one function (xwillfree) introduced. Perhaps, more readable api
could be useful.
- xwillfree exposed to the public (ruby.h). Perhaps, it should be in an
internal.h, but st.c doesn't include internal.h .
But may be it could be useful for extensions.