Description
There are two "Glossary" chapter in the User Guide. One in the tutorial that was added long time ago, and another recently added at the top level. They have different purposes.
- The Glossary in the Tutorial introduces important concepts to first-time MMTk hackers so that they can proceed with ease. It is also a good place to let the reader know the overall structure of MMTk, which is surprisingly missing in the Tutorial.
- The Glossary at the top level is intended to be a central place to define terms we use in MMTk and explain them in greater details. It is intended to be linked from all different places in the User Guide to avoid duplication.
We can restructure the Glossary in the tutorial, probably renaming it to "Important Concepts" or "Concepts" or "Overview of MMTk" as well, so that it introduces those concepts topic by topic, and link to the top-level Glossary for details.
For example, instead of listing terms:
allocator: Code that allocates new objects into memory.
collector: Finds and frees memory occupied by 'dead' objects.
dead: An object that is not live.
We can add a section that introduces what a garbage collector does:
A [collector](inser-link-here) identifies and collects [dead](insert-link-here) objects...And there are other things worth introducing in this chapter, including mutators, allocators, schedulers, and work packets.