Freeing memory from a segment allocator?

[Maurizio Cimadamore]

Hi Mark,
A segment allocator is just a plain functional interface - what happens 
when you do "allocate" is up to the allocator implementation.

The few allocators provided by the Panama API do not provide the 
capability you describe - that said, some developers have successfully 
been able to use the Panama API to build allocators which act as memory 
pool, such as this fine example:

https://github.com/openjdk/panama-foreign/pull/509

The workflow with these allocators is like this:

1. You create a memory pool and you store it in some field
2. A client creates a resource scope
3. The scope is used to obtain a "pooled allocator" from the pool
4. The client alocates memory with the pooled allocator
5. When the client scope is closed, all the memory allocated with pooled 
allocator is released back to the pool

In other words, combining resource scopes (which give you a lifecycle 
capability) with a segment allocator (which give you an allocation 
capability) it is possible to define allocators which "recycle" memory 
across multiple clients.

We might, at some point, provide a ready-made memory pool of this sort 
in the API - but right now we're focusing on getting the basics right ;-)

Cheers
Maurizio


On 08/11/2021 23:08, markehammons at gmail.com wrote:
> Is there a way to free a memory segment and return its memory to the segment allocator that it was made from?
>
> Mark Edgar Hammons II
> 0603695656