Askin' the right questions! The generations are colocated with the objects, and we can release memory back to the OS using the virtual memory shenanigans expla

Askin' the right questions! The generations are colocated with the objects, and we can release memory back to the OS using the virtual memory shenanigans explained in [0]. However, the design and implementation have simplified quite a bit since that article. Now: * We use these generations only for assertions on dereferencing non-owning references, and don't use them for weak references anymore. * We let malloc release memory back to the OS like normal. If the user dereferences something in a released page, we'll get a page fault instead of an assertion failure, but both are handled the same. * When the generation hits INT_MAX, we just let it overflow now instead of blacklisting the allocation forever. These adjustments mean we never need the heap which is a big improvement, and really unlocks Vale as a systems programming language. The purposeful overflowing does mean that only 99.99999998% of invalid memory accesses will halt the program, which is more than enough certainty in practice [1]. (The probability is actually higher, as we increment generations by prime numbers and won't even hit our first possible collision until well after most runs have ended.) [0] https://lobste.rs/s/sglvcc/generational_references_2_3x_faster_than#c_gqakeg https://lobste.rs/s/sglvcc/generational_references_2_3x_fast... [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16759/sponsored-post-keep-your-apps-memory-safe-with-arm-memory-tagging-extension-mte https://www.anandtech.com/show/16759/sponsored-post-keep-you...