It's interesting reading this, wondering how much C++26 static reflection could improve the ergonomics of a system like this. Like, if you tag the class with a specific attribute, can you have have it generate the Trace() function automatically? Can you have it automatically wrap the other GC classes using the Member<> template? I think implementing the Trace() function might be doable (you'd do it in the GarbageCollected<> base class that uses CRTP, right?), but maybe not wrapping the types, I'm not sure if reflection allows you to modify types of fields in that way.
Automatic trace definetly yes, however since they also removed GC support from the standard it's quite useless (exact object tracing is useless if you cannot accurately scan the stack).
Also co-routines with it's under the hood management of coroutine stack probably would've complicated GC support even more...
C++11 GC was useless from the start, I don't get how it ended up being voted in.
At the time the two main customers of having a C++ GC would be Unreal C++ and C++/CLI, the design that landed on the standard serves neither of them, thus no one adopted it.
Peeked a bit more at the C++ 11 stuff, it seems very Boehm specific and yes quite uesless (I doubt the C++/CLI people ever considered the stuff in the standard).
Having written a bunch of more or less complete GC based runtimes, the boundary between C++ code and runtime code is often painful mostly due to GC tracking and reading the article I can only concur with what they're doing with Oilpan for V8/Chrome.
Having had a way in C++ to interrogate the current stack and then trace objects (via C++26 reflections) would've sufficed and probably alleviated the need for a separate GC.
Yes indeed, and that is why it got removed from the standard eventually, however the question remains how was this even voted in.
Which is why I became kind of vocal regarding existing practice, or at least preview for community feedback, as there are already several examples of stuff landing into the standard that were not properly baked to start with.
