I have a small app that uses an Array as a queue. Works well enough but
(seems) to suffer from GC lockouts
Items are added and removed (<< and shift) from the Array frequently and
the queue itself rarely gets very large, 10s to 100s of records, but the
throughput is 100,000s of records
Which is, I assume, causing it to periodically freeze. The question is:
1) Should I manually start GC after every shift operation. Will this trade
off frequent small GC interruptions for less big freezes
2) Should I manually start GC after X shifts. Will large GC events be more
efficient
3) Should I create a fake Array such as below and have much larger GC events
Any pointers or will it just be trying stuff and measuring?
class SlowArray
DEAD_ZONE = 5
def initialize
@data = []
@size = 0
@read_from = 0
end
def <<(value)
@data << value
@size += 1
end
def shift
if @size == 0
return nil
else
x = @data[@read_from]
@read_from += 1
if @read_from == DEAD_ZONE
@data = @data[DEAD_ZONE..-1]
GC.start
@read_from = 0
end
@size -= 1
return x
end
end
def size
@size
end
end