Matthew Phillips (Dec 04 2023 at 15:11): Matthew Phillips (Dec 04 2023 at 15:11):I've been trying to understand the Roc codebase and one thing I'm having trouble with is understanding how garbage collection is done? I don't see any references in the codebase so I assume that's something Roc's getting in the rust layer some how?
Folkert de Vries (Dec 04 2023 at 15:21):you mean the roc compiler (a rust program) or the output of that compiler (a roc program)
Matthew Phillips (Dec 04 2023 at 15:24):roc program
Anton (Dec 04 2023 at 15:29):We use reference counting instead of garbage collection. Richard has probably compared the two in a talk, but I don't think we have that written down somewhere.
Matthew Phillips (Dec 04 2023 at 15:32):That's good to know! Did I miss it in the code?
Matthew Phillips (Dec 04 2023 at 15:34):this a place to start maybe... https://github.com/roc-lang/roc/blob/7b1c009ca2bb07dc10a80136c1dccfc4de9996d2/crates/roc_std/src/storage.rs#L20
Anton (Dec 04 2023 at 15:39):I did find a bit of documentation.
I think we most commonly use the term refcount in the codebase.
Anton (Dec 04 2023 at 15:41):Lots of rc as well.
Matthew Phillips (Dec 04 2023 at 15:44):Thank you, this helps a lot.
Last updated: Jul 26 2025 at 12:14 UTC