I saw a new garbage collector implementation mentioned in TWIR 411 : Bronze GC along with an arXiv preprint (which is primarily focused on how much does this GC make learning rust and working with references easier). I gave it a closer look as I am interested in any new development in rust GCs (as we…

The bronze code looks mostly like a copy-paste of rust-gc , with unsound methods added to create aliased mutable references.. Also, I don't know if maybe manishearth has licensed the code separately to them, but bronze released obviously copied code under a different license (BSD instead of MPL-2). …

Some of the code is indeed from rust-gc, with appropriate attribution. My understanding is that the licenses are compatible, but if I'm wrong about this, I could look into changing the license. The Bronze project is exploring the usability costs of the restrictions that Rust imposes. Indeed, if one…

IANAL; The licenses are compatible in the sense that you may include code licensed under both in a single distribution. However the MPL is still a copy-left license, and code present in files licensed under the MPL is not allowed to be re-licensed under a more permissive license like BSD. The fil…

Interesting, so like an automatic RefCell without the Ref(Mut)? It sounds like it'd end up basically like the stacked borrows implementation in miri.. Still, the study allowed students to create multiple live mutable references simultaneously though, which is UB in Rust and contradictory to most of…

Indeed, this is language design research. But I view this as an early-stage step toward compatibility with Rust, not with the goal of developing a fundamentally different end language. But as you say, there is still substantial work to be done before something like this could be considered for adopt…

It's mostly this file which seems to be missing MPL, and I believe you're supposed to include the actual text of their copyright header somewhere. But obviously it's your judgement call, this is just my guess!

I don't know, this Bronze idea seems a bit wrong-headed to me. Rust offers you speed AND safety. The high performance comes largely from the efficient use of memory, avoiding garbage collection. I guess that's a good question actually, where does the performance come from? But regardless, yes, it …

There are already perfectly valid solutions to the "usability costs" of Rust: use Go or any of the adjacent languages with GC, rather than have a go at Rust :innocent:. Rust is defined by its safety and deterministic memory management.

I think the idea is promising and would be interested in seeing how it turns out! However, because the ergonomics you are looking into is intrinsically linked to the way mutability and sharing interact, they shouldn't be pushed off as something that should be researched later on. Otherwise, the re…

Bronze GC and aliasing problems

mcoblenz October 10, 2021, 5:20pm 9

Note that certain files are indeed marked with an MPL license because they are derived from corresponding projects. If I've missed something, I would be happy to fix it.

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Bronze GC and aliasing problems

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