Review request for 5049299

[Andrew Haley]

Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Andrew Haley:
> 
>>> The latter leads to problems if the maximum heap size is relatively large.
>>> Currently, -Xmx is reserved, and some software fails to build on
>>> vm.overcommit_memory systems due to this.
>> I don't get it.  Why would overcommit cause some software to fail to
>> build?  I can understand it failing if overcommit was turned off.
> 
> Sorry, I meant to write "vm.overcommit_memory=2".

Well, the system is doing what the user asked it to do.  -Xmx means
"please reserve this memory for me, Hal"; if the memory isn't there,
then it's surely quite reasonable for Hal to respond "I'm sorry Dave,
I can't do that."

If you see what I mean.  :-)

Andrew.