garbage collector

[Sanjiv Kumar Gupta]

I am trying to understand the implementation of the Kaffe garbage collector.
The first step of the Mark phase there is to wall all root Objects and mark
them as grey. Could anybody tell me what do we mean by root Objects or root
set etc. and why do we start marking from them.

Regards
Sanjiv

-----Original Message-----
From: wang wenzhong [mailto:mypigeon at 263.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 2:14 PM
To: kaffe at rufus.w3.org
Subject: garbage collector




The garbage collector begin its mark phase from scaning and marking
registered root references object,then walk and mark other reachable
objects.

The file gcRefs.c defines two functions:gc_add_ref and gc_rm_ref,the first
one add a persistent reference to an object (stored in a hashtable ),the
next function remove a persistent reference to an object. 

I know many functions invoke gc_add_ref to add a references to an object,but
I hardly find corresponding invoking about gc_rm_ref .

I want to know,how garbage collector (or kaffe ?) maintain it's hashtable of
root references object(not only add,but also delete) ?

thanks