Re: Why ARC over garbage collection?
Re: Why ARC over garbage collection?
- Subject: Re: Why ARC over garbage collection?
- From: Crispin Bennett <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:06:31 +1000
On 16/10/2012, at 1:56 PM, Quincey Morris wrote:
>
> I have no privileged information, or any information at all, really, but I have the impression that GC was one of the things that *enabled* the feasibility of Xcode 4 as such a major reworking of Xcode 3. I also don't get the impression that the problems of Xcode 4 have anything to do with the memory management model. FWIW, I think the troubles in Xcode 4 are mainly a result of the vastly greater ground Xcode 4 now has to cover -- too much complexity, too quickly. Xcode 4 has a lot of new UI elements, it has to integrate the compiler (clang, rather than gcc) in an entirely new way including indexing, and has to integrate an entirely new debugger.
Right. Come to think of it, Xcode has improved quite a bit in stability over time (at least it seems to from my fairly infrequent and short spells of use). That pattern fits the complexity thesis better than a single problematic technology being the source of instability.
>
> As for Xcode using ARC, I've found that the code for GC and ARC is generally identical, except that in going GC->ARC you would pretty much have to reconsider every path of execution to determine whether you'd be introducing retain cycles, and engineer solutions. For well-established apps, it just doesn't seem feasible to do -- and there's probably no payoff for an app like Xcode.
>
> If there's an Xcode 5 coming, I wouldn't be surprised if were ARC, though. :)
Good grief, I hope there won't be in the foreseeable future! Xcode 4 is elegant enough in its fundamentals that it surely has plenty of room to grow yet. I'd much rather Apple improved it incrementally (fixing stability, adding features), rather than start again.
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