[GHC] #8189: Default to infinite stack size?

[GHC]

#8189: Default to infinite stack size?
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        Reporter:  nh2         |            Owner:
            Type:  bug         |           Status:  new
        Priority:  high        |        Milestone:  7.8.1
       Component:  Runtime     |          Version:  7.6.3
  System                       |         Keywords:
      Resolution:              |     Architecture:  Unknown/Multiple
Operating System:              |       Difficulty:  Easy (less than 1 hour)
  Unknown/Multiple             |       Blocked By:
 Type of failure:  Runtime     |  Related Tickets:
  crash                        |
       Test Case:              |
        Blocking:              |
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Comment (by simonmar):

 We can't tell whether the heap is full by looking at `total_allocated`,
 because the GC needs to run first (`total_allocated` basically tells you
 how much memory was allocated since the last GC).  I can't think of a good
 way to determine whether we ran out of heap because a lot of stack was
 allocated - it's guesswork.

 Should there be a default maximum heap size? I'm hesitant to do this
 because enabling the maximum heap size also enables the automagic
 machinery that switches on the compacting collector when we get near the
 maximum heap size, and the compacting collector is much less well battle-
 tested than the standard copying GC, not to mention much slower.  On the
 other hand having a maximum heap size with the copying GC doesn't work
 terribly well, because the copying GC wastes so much memory.

 We could just set the default maximum stack size to be some sensible
 fraction of real memory?

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8189#comment:18>
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