#8255: GC Less Operation -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: sirinath | Owner: Type: feature request | Status: closed Priority: lowest | Milestone: _|_ Component: Compiler | Version: 7.7 Resolution: invalid | Keywords: Operating System: Unknown/Multiple | Architecture: Unknown/Multiple Type of failure: Runtime | Difficulty: Project (more performance bug | than a week) Test Case: | Blocked By: Blocking: | Related Tickets: -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Changes (by thoughtpolice): * status: new => closed * resolution: => invalid Comment: ARC does not make sense for a language like Haskell. Objective-C is already a language where you manually manage memory in essence anyway, and it's possible to screw ARC up too by breaking conventions. All the compiler does is insert `retain`/`release` calls for you, and it's not much more fancy than that. Haskell is a very different language and we do not manually manage memory - we do not have a distinction between things like 'values' and 'references', or have to concern ourselves with the lifetime of an object. This alone means ARC is inapplicable. There are other actual mechanical problems with ARC (like the fact it doesn't handle cycles without manual breaks, via weak pointers,) but that's really besides the point I'm afraid, since the idea in itself doesn't really make a lot of sense in the context of a high level garbage collected language. -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8255#comment:5 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler