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authorMartin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>2000-06-05 11:41:41 +0000
committerMartin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>2000-06-05 11:41:41 +0000
commit5cc1e1f805934952f38ceb2ca6947c6d2e704937 (patch)
treeea409d5772742e5eb15e781dff397c2e51b665b5 /lib/resource.sgml
parent9238b06a2c6faac8b16e990821c91affde4072c4 (diff)
Documented memory resources.
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+<!--
+ BIRD Programmer's Guide: Resources
+
+ (c) 2000 Martin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>
+-->
+
+<chapt>Resources
+
+<sect>Introduction
+
+<p>Most large software projects implemented in classical procedural
+programming languages usually end up with lots of code taking care
+of resource allocation and deallocation. Bugs in such code are often
+very difficult to find, because they cause only `resource leakage',
+that is keeping a lot of memory and other resources which nobody
+references to.
+
+<p>We've tried to solve this problem by employing a resource tracking
+system which keeps track of all the resources allocated by all the
+modules of BIRD, deallocates everything automatically when a module
+shuts down and it's is able to print out the list of resources and
+the corresponding modules they are allocated by.
+
+<p>Each allocated resource (and from now we'll speak about allocated
+resources only) is represented by a structure starting with a standard
+header (struct <struct/resource/) consisting of a list node (resources are
+often linked to various lists) and a pointer to <struct/resclass/ -- a resource
+class structure pointing to functions implementing generic resource
+operations (such as freeing of the resource) for the particular resource
+type.
+
+<p>There exist the following types of resources:
+
+<itemize>
+<item><it/Resource pools/ (<struct/pool/)
+<item><it/Memory blocks/
+<item><it/Linear memory pools/ (<struct/linpool/)
+<item><it/Slabs/ (<struct/slab/)
+<item><it/Sockets/ (<struct/socket/)
+<item><it/Events/ (<struct/event/)
+<!--
+ are there to keep track of deferred execution.
+ Since BIRD is single-threaded, it requires long lasting tasks to be split to smaller
+ parts, so that no module can monopolize the CPU. To split such a task, just create
+ an <struct/event/ resource, point it to the function you want to have called and call <func/ev_schedule()/
+ to ask the core to run the event when nothing more important will require attention.
+ The actual implementation is system dependent.
+-->
+<item><it/Timers/ (<struct/timer/)
+</itemize>