Yes, but (conservative) tracing GC doesn't require invasively updating the contents of all your data structures, in exchange for not actually capturing all poin

Yes, but (conservative) tracing GC doesn't require invasively updating the contents of all your data structures, in exchange for not actually capturing all pointer relationships. In C, it's often not really possible or even safe to do that, so I don't see how such a method could work automatically except in very restricted settings.