Can't use a sync.Pool with eaopt.GA

[elwinar]

I've got code that use eaopt.GA to generate the solution for a problem, and the quality of the result is ok.

My Genome struct is a wrapper around a pair of (potentially) huge slices, and this is creating an important pressure on the GC, which has a lot to do to manage them. It's taking more than 60% of the execution time of my program dixit pprof, which is probably optimizable.

One way to optimize would be using a sync.Pool to re-use the struct, like this (many parts omitted for simplicity's sake):

func main() {
	// initializaton code

	err = ga.Minimize(func(rng *rand.Rand) eaopt.Genome {
		return pool.Get().(*Genome)
	})

	// exploitation code
}

type Genome struct {
	set []bool
	refs []uint8
}

pool := sync.Pool{
	New: func() any {
		return &Genome{
			set:  make([]bool, len(x)),
			refs: make([]uint8, len(y)),
		}
	},
}

func (ge Genome) Clone() eaopt.Genome {
	c := pool.Get().(*Genome)
	copy(c.set, ge.set)
	copy(c.refs, ge.refs)
	return c
}

The issue is that there isn't anything that allow me to put the Genome back into the pool when it's not used anymore.

I would suggest adding a Release method to the eaopt.Genome interface that would allow releasing resources, like puting the struct back into the pool or anything else.

Any advice on this would be appreciated.