On 18 November 2014 16:59, Simon Peyton Jones
Isn't it this simple: the Static Pointer Table must be a source of roots for the garbage collector. Of course! An item in the SPT may be looked up at any time.
As Facundo says, the existence of the SPT would solve everything. But we haven't quite figured out how to create a simple SPT yet, so were wondering whether there is an existing generic mechanism to register new GC roots. I guess there is no better solution but to just create an SPT, even if we don't yet have TypeRep's to put in it. With an SPT, and under the assumption of everyone sharing the same binary in the distributed system, there will be no need to hold on to *all* CAF's - just the ones that are known to have a StaticPointer created for them at compile time.