On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 11:38 PM, Roman Cheplyaka
So, let's think what we can do at runtime. Suppose RTS takes the parameter -- upper limit of consumed memory. When it sees that memory consumption is close to upper bound, it can:
1. force garbage collection
This is already implemented. See the -M RTS option.
2. apply some heuristics to find and reduce some chunks which will benefit from reduction in terms of size
For example, by un-evaluating them. It would often be possible to reduce size like that, just so long as they aren't evaluated again the next second. Well, this one would be hard.
3. if nothing helps, throw an exeption. It can be caught in IO and memory-aware program can make apropriate decision -- e.g. abort opening a large file and gracefully warn the user.
That should be relative simple. Get implementing, will you?:D
(And there still is a problem of foreign code whose memory consumption we know nothing about...)
In theory, you could deal with that by hooking malloc. -- Svein Ove Aas