Effect of large binaries on garbage collection

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

"Simon Peyton-Jones" <simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote,

> | In the current CVS GHC, undoubtedly the right thing to use is
> | Foreign.mallocForeignPtr.  Internally these are implemented as
> | MutableByteArray#, so you get fast allocation and GC, but from the
> | programmer's point of view it's a normal ForeignPtr.
> 
> I wonder how it is for a random FFI user to discover this.  Does some
> advice belong in the FFI spec, or in GHC's FFI chapter?

What is needed is a FFI tutorial (in addition to the spec);
similar to how we have the Gentle Introduction to complement
the Report.

Manuel