> I wouldn't say we're missing an opportunity, because the thing we're missing doesn't exist in any meaningful sense
That's a not-uncommon sort of missed opportunity! But I believe Inferno does this, the Dis VM which runs the entire (hosted) operating system has a GC which is reused by Limbo, the systems language. But it didn't catch on.
There's no technical reason for the division between a process GC and an OS GC, and it would be nice to see what could be done by eliminating it. There are good practical reasons it hasn't happened, but it's hard for me to imagine it making anything worse, and it's easy to see things which could improve, including safe(r) shared-memory between processes.
That's a not-uncommon sort of missed opportunity! But I believe Inferno does this, the Dis VM which runs the entire (hosted) operating system has a GC which is reused by Limbo, the systems language. But it didn't catch on.
There's no technical reason for the division between a process GC and an OS GC, and it would be nice to see what could be done by eliminating it. There are good practical reasons it hasn't happened, but it's hard for me to imagine it making anything worse, and it's easy to see things which could improve, including safe(r) shared-memory between processes.