Hi Mathieu,
On 7/26/07, Mathieu Suen mathk.sue@gmail.com wrote:
I was reading the code of the nextInstance primitive and to undertand I need to know what is a FreeObject:
since Squeak (fortunately) has a garbage collector, the heap does not just consist of actual objects, but also of chunks of unused memory. However, these also have an object header to be more easily handled: during allocation, the memory manager must be able to find a free piece of heap memory to assign it to the newly allocated object. These chunks of free memory are what the VM code calls "free objects".
Why are they inside the image? When are they created?
They are inside the image because the image is a snapshot of a running system, possibly including pieces of free memory. They are created as the garbage collector frees memory when objects are deallocated.
I hope this makes some sense.
Best,
Michael