Re: Let's get effective!

[Steven L Baur <steve@miranova.com>]

>>>>> "Joe" == Joe Hildebrand <hildjj@fuentez.com> writes:

Joe> Does emacs have an interface to mmap?  It is probably the best
Joe> solution to this problem, on those systems that support it.  It can
Joe> probably be emulated on those that don't.  Those that don't support it
Joe> will just need more memory, or a better OS.

XEmacs does with the relocating allocator.  Emacs does not.  There has
been discussion about this though in the linux-gcc mailing list.
There are patches now available that allow Emacs 19.30 to use Doug
Lea's mmap-based malloc in Linux libc-5.3.5.  It helps, but is not
worth writing home about.  I mailed rms a copy of the XEmacs ralloc.c
this past weekend.  Since it is already copyright assigned to the FSF
I would expect it has an excellent chance of appearing in a future
version of Emacs.

None of this means that effort should be relaxed on cutting down the
excess garbage in Gnus.  My tests indicate that Gnus easily defeats
mmap mallocs at present.

Regards,
-- 
steve@miranova.com baur
Unsolicited commercial e-mail will be proofread for $250/hour.
Andrea Seastrand: For your vote on the Telecom bill, I will vote for anyone
except you in November.