42 Garbage Collector (42GC)

Introduction

This project provides a basic implementation of a Garbage Collector for the C programming language that is normally already built into other higher level languages such as Java, C# or Python.

What is a Garbage Collector (GC)

In simple words, a GC helps programmers to clean up the memory that their program allocates dynamically, so they don't have to. In C, memory has to be managed manually using the *alloc functions family and free. Memory leaks occur when memory allocated using *alloc is not free'd. The 42GC library aims to ease programmers' life by freeing allocated memory automatically, while still giving them full control over memory management tasks.

Why 42

This library is made in order to, but not limited to, support other projects in C within the 42 school network's Common Core. The code conforms to the latest 42 norm (approved by the Norminette V3) and can be easily integrated into any 42 projects that allow malloc and free, by simply adding the source code to the user's libft (the first 42 project).

Start using 42GC

• Clone this repository and copy all files from the srcs folder to your project's folder
• Include the ft_gc.h header file in your code
• Add all source files (ft_gc_*.c) to your Makefile
• Simply replace all your malloc's with ft_gc_malloc everywhere in your project, then remove (or put into comments) all free's. The removal of free's is critical, otherwise passing a pointer returned by ft_gc_malloc to free will crash your program. Call ft_gc_free_all() one single time at the exit point of the program to free all dynamic allocations. That's it.

Compile the library

• The source code in the srcs folder can be compiled using the normally imposed flags at 42 -Wall -Werror -Wextra
• Running make from the repository's root compiles the code to a static library. The resulting files libftgc.a and ft_gc.h are stored inside the lib folder after compilation
• Compilation is done using the clang compiler. If you prefer gcc or something else, change it in the Makefile's CC variable. For debugging, add -g to the CFLAGS variable
• Some examples are included as commented code. Running make examples will compile them to binaries and place them inside the folder examples

Documentations

If your program is small, runs only for a short duration and consumes little memory, ft_gc_malloc and ft_gc_free_all are all you need. However, the library is much more capable than that. For detailed information and advanced features of 42GC, refer to the Documentations.

Reporting issues

Please report any issues with the project, especially norm errors, to the Issue section of this project.