From:	ian AT cygnus DOT com (Ian Lance Taylor)
Subject:	(none)
8 Apr 1998 08:36:07 -0700 :
Message-ID:	<199804081510.LAA23864.cygnus.cygwin32.developers@subrogation.cygnus.com>
References:	<199804081301 DOT JAA24373 AT tweedledumb DOT cygnus DOT com>
To:	cgf AT cygnus DOT com
Cc:	cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com

   Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 09:01:11 -0400 (EDT)
   From: cgf AT cygnus DOT com

   >On a traditional Unix system, making this change would mean that every
   >process would require 128 MB in the swap file, and your system would
   >rapidly run out of swap space.  I don't know how the Windows
   >equivalent of a swap file works, so I don't know whether there would
   >be any equivalent problem.

   Since the this just essentially sets aside a contiguous address range I
   could envision an OS which would be intelligent enough to avoid allocating
   swap space until parts of the memory region were committed.  I'm having
   a difficult time, however, imagining a *Windows* operating system that
   would be this intelligent.

Good point.  Unix does not distinguish between allocating memory space
and committing it.

   1) Teach fork to copy a noncontiguous heap.

      I'd be happy to tackle that one.  I don't think it would be *that*
      hard.

We need to do this in any case.  We should not be restricted to a
fixed size heap no matter what the fixed size is.

Ian

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