Thanks guys. Indeed, I was totally confused. Maybe 'rootTable' is a little bit confusing... What do you think about changing at least the selector from image side (Smalltalk rootTable)? or it would be even more confusing? Thanks! On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Stefan Marr <squeak@stefan-marr.de> wrote:

Hi:

On 26 Sep 2011, at 13:22, Andreas Raab wrote:

...

The rootTable is used during incremental GC. Its contents are those objects in old space that are roots for objects in new space (see ObjectMemory>>beRootIfOld:). It has nothing to do with the (global) roots of the interpreter; in fact the root table is cleared right at the beginning of fullGC (see senders of #clearRootsTable). The global roots are explicitly enumerated in Interpreter>>markAndTraceInterpreterOops.

Not sure whether it is worthwhile to change such details, but I belief the standard terminology would be 'remembered set'. At least that is the typical name for recorded references between different object sets maintained separately, AFAIK.

And it could avoid confusion.

Best regards Stefan

-- Stefan Marr Software Languages Lab Vrije Universiteit Brussel Pleinlaan 2 / B-1050 Brussels / Belgium http://soft.vub.ac.be/~smarr Phone: +32 2 629 2974 Fax: +32 2 629 3525

-- Mariano http://marianopeck.wordpress.com