We are developing a common testbed to compare various statistics of
different GC strateies on top of a modified O'Caml.  Using a prototype
system we have generational copying, mark & sweep, reference counting,
and their variants.  We are not sure if our approach conflicts with
systhread support, though.

The answer depends on what kind of GC and the quality of GC
performance you require.  If you are not concerned about the execution
performance, it is not so difficult, say two-four weeks.  If you need
optimized performance, you need to modify the compiler because many GC
strategies that can be accelerated by reducing the number of
read/write barrier execution.  If you are interested in modern GC
strategies such as tag-free GC then you probably modify almost all
part of O'Caml implementation.

Ken Wakita

In message (<4.3.2.7.0.20000719094927.00aaee20@chasm.org>)
from Jack Point <point@chasm.org>,
talking about "Different GCs for OCaml",
on Wed, 19 Jul 2000 09:50:27 -0700

point> How easy would it be to try different GC strategies with OCaml?