Questions about pointers in GHC

[Ben Gamari]

Xuanrui Qi <me at xuanruiqi.com> writes:

> Hi all,
>
Hi,

> I have a few questions about heap-allocated memory pointers in GHC.
> Both code and data live in the heap, and both can have pointers to
> other objects. However, according to my understanding, most
> heap-allocated objects would be immutable. Moreover even if objects
> might be mutated, most pointers should not be updated. I have heard
> that the runtime system might implement several features by updating
> pointers, but I am not sure which features are they.
>
Code generally doesn't live on the dynamically-allocated heap. Rather,
it is mmap'd immutably into the process's address space. However,
closures, which can live in the heap, generally contain pointers to
code and can indeed be mutated.

> My question is thus: (1) is there a way to trace mutations of heap
> objects (for instance by modifying the GC system code) [I don't need
> to know what is the change, all I want to know is what has been
> changed],

Indeed it is possible. The RTS already tracks most mutations via a write
barrier to ensure safety of its generational GC. See the recordMutable
macro defined in Cmm.h.

> and (2) is there a way where I could trace pointer updates
> [in this case I'd like to know both the old and objects, preferably by
> name]? More specifically, are these possible by annotating/changing
> the runtime system only (i.e. not touching code generation)?
>
This will be a fair bit harder, requiring modification of the RTS's
mutation operations (see PrimOps.cmm and Updates.cmm) at very least.

Cheers,

- Ben
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