Re: deprecated use of octave_allocator

[John W. Eaton]

On 01/16/2015 08:26 AM, Andreas Weber wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> since cset a35d381e22b0 from 2011 USE_OCTAVE_ALLOCATOR is undefined per
> default. The help text for this configure switch:
>
> "--enable-octave-allocator: use the obsolete octave_allocator class for
> many of Octave's objects (mostly octave_value types). You probably do
> NOT want to enable this feature."
>
> On the project page http://wiki.octave.org/Projects under Numerical it's
> listed as:
> "Use octave_allocator for memory management in Array classes once g++
> supports static member templates."
>
> What is the intended use for octave_allocator? Should new code (such as
> audiodevinfo.cc in line 648 and 554) use the DECLARE_OCTAVE_ALLOCATOR
> and DEFINE_OCTAVE_ALLOCATOR macros?

The original idea was to improve performance by having a special 
allocator that would make one large allocation with operator new and 
then split it up into smaller objects and manage the pool.  I'm not sure 
that the small increase in performance (if any) justified the added 
complexity.  I think there were some other issues with it, but I can't 
remember.  I'd have to dig up the discussion around the time that the 
configure switch was added.  If it really doesn't provide significant 
improvement in performance, then I think we could just completely remove 
it and delete the item from the projects list (I'm pretty sure that item 
could be deleted anyway).

jwe