[erlang-questions] Max heap size

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

On 28/04/16 8:31 PM, Lukas Larsson wrote:
>
> The documentation is part of the pull request, the options and 
> behavior are described here: 
> https://github.com/erlang/otp/pull/1032/commits/629c6c0a4aea094bea43a74ca1c1664ec1041e43#diff-0fc9fb0d3e12721dd1574a543916e8c6R4349

Good stuff.  "The heap size of a process is quite hard to predict, 
especially the
+              amount of memory that is used during the garbage collection."

You can say that again.   Advice about what to DO about that fact would be
welcome at this point.

     "When contemplating to use this option,"

s/to use/using/.
>
>      - what are the units in which 'size' is measured?
>
>
> It is the same as min_heap_size and all other options that we that 
> effect the process heap, the internal word size,
Worth saying *explicitly*.  I'm used to C, Java, and C# specifying 
thread sizes in bytes,
which the current Java documentation admits is a problem.
does something sane
>
>     - what is the performance cost of this?
>
>
> If not enabled, it costs one branch per gc
Brag of it.

All things considered, I now see that this is  thoroughly thought out,
and unlikely to be needed very often, but valued greatly on the few
occasions when it is needed.