13. **Storage Pools**: controlling memory management
****************************************************

Ada gives full control to the user for memory management. That allows
for a number of optimization in your application. For instance, if you
need to allocate a lot of small chunks of memory, it is generally more
efficient to allocate a single large chunk, which is later divided
into smaller chunks. That results in a single system call, which
speeds up your application.

This can of course be done in most languages. However, that generally
means you have to remember not to use the standard memory allocations
like *malloc* or *new*, and instead call one of your subprograms. If
you ever decide to change the allocation strategy, or want to
experiment with several strategies, that means updating your code in
several places.

In Ada, when you declare the type of your data, you also specify
through a *‘Storage_Pool* attribute how the memory for instances of
that type should be allocated. And that’s it. You then use the usual
*new* keyword to allocate memory.

GNATColl provides a number of examples for such storage pools, with
various goals. There is also one advanced such pool in the GNAT run-
time itself, called *GNAT.Debug_Pools*, which allows you to control
memory leaks and whether all accesses do reference valid memory
location (and not memory that has already been deallocated).

In GNATColl, you will find the following storage pools:

*`GNATCOLL.Storage_Pools.Alignment`*
   This pool gives you full control over the alignment of your data.
   In general, Ada will only allow you to specify alignments up to a
   limited number of bytes, because the compiler must only accept
   alignments that can be satisfied in all contexts, in particular on
   the stack.

   This package overcomes that limitation, by allocating larger chunks
   of memory than needed, and returning an address within that chunk
   which is properly aligned.

*`GNATCOLL.Storage_Pools.Headers`*
   This pool allows you to allocate memory for the element and reserve
   extra space before it for a header. This header can be used to
   store per-element information, like for instance a reference
   counter, or next and previous links to other elements in the same
   collection.

   In many cases, this can be used to reduce the number of
   allocations, and thus speed up the overall application.