new installation: "tcmalloc not present" warning with windows binaries

[jasuser0]

Hello, after updating SWI-Prolog windows installation to version >8.2 by default binaries are linked against tcmalloc when available. The documentation (in 4.41.2 Heap memory (malloc)) says: "If SWI-Prolog core detects that tcmalloc is the current allocator and provides the following additional predicates." but not clearly the consequences "then" and "if not". My question: Shall I ignore this warning when "check installation" is run because there is no "tcmalloc for windows"? The URL http://www.swi-prolog.org/build/issues/tcmalloc.html says: "contact the packager of the distribution and point at this page." With SWI-Prolog version <8.2 for windows there was no such warning. Thanks for help!

[JanWielemaker]

As is, we do not build the Windows binaries against tcmalloc. Possibly we should. I do not know how hard it is and what the risks are to replace Windows malloc(). Windows allocation works quite different. The benefits of tcmalloc mostly shine for long-living threaded server processes. Most of that stuff seems to run on Linux/Unix.

I don't know the best solution yet. Avoid the warning? Better explain at the tcmalloc.html page? Include tcmalloc?