For ports that have a system malloc which is not garbage collected (eg
unix, esp32), the stream object for the DB must be retained separately to
prevent it from being reclaimed by the MicroPython GC (because the
berkeley-db library uses malloc to allocate the DB structure which stores
the only reference to the stream).
Although in some cases the user code will explicitly retain a reference to
the underlying stream because it needs to call close() on it, this is not
always the case, eg in cases where the DB is intended to live forever.
Fixes issue #5940.
No functionality change is intended with this commit, it just consolidates
the separate implementations of GC helper code to the lib/utils/ directory
as a general set of helper functions useful for any port. This reduces
duplication of code, and makes it easier for future ports or embedders to
get the GC implementation correct.
Ports should now link against gchelper_native.c and either gchelper_m0.s or
gchelper_m3.s (currently only Cortex-M is supported but other architectures
can follow), or use the fallback gchelper_generic.c which will work on
x86/x64/ARM.
The gc_helper_get_sp function from gchelper_m3.s is not really GC related
and was only used by cc3200, so it has been moved to that port and renamed
to cortex_m3_get_sp.
Damien George
Jim Mussared
Thomas Friebel