From: ian AT cygnus DOT com (Ian Lance Taylor) Subject: (none) 8 Apr 1998 08:36:07 -0700 Message-ID: <199804081510.LAA23864.cygnus.cygwin32.developers@subrogation.cygnus.com> References: <199804081301 DOT JAA24373 AT tweedledumb DOT cygnus DOT com> To: cgf AT cygnus DOT com Cc: cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 09:01:11 -0400 (EDT) From: cgf AT cygnus DOT com >On a traditional Unix system, making this change would mean that every >process would require 128 MB in the swap file, and your system would >rapidly run out of swap space. I don't know how the Windows >equivalent of a swap file works, so I don't know whether there would >be any equivalent problem. Since the this just essentially sets aside a contiguous address range I could envision an OS which would be intelligent enough to avoid allocating swap space until parts of the memory region were committed. I'm having a difficult time, however, imagining a *Windows* operating system that would be this intelligent. Good point. Unix does not distinguish between allocating memory space and committing it. 1) Teach fork to copy a noncontiguous heap. I'd be happy to tackle that one. I don't think it would be *that* hard. We need to do this in any case. We should not be restricted to a fixed size heap no matter what the fixed size is. Ian