How does the garbage collector work in Go?

13 Tem 02:20

Go's garbage collector (GC) operates based on the tri-color marking algorithm. Since it performs memory scans by stopping the running program (stop-the-world), pause times are critical. Modern Go (1.5+) uses a concurrent GC running on the host, reducing pause times to the millisecond level. To minimize pause times, the GC operates under a slight load continuously, starting collection before memory pressure builds up. In practice, you can monitor GC performance in your Go program by setting the `GODEBUG=gctrace=1` environment variable. This gives you detailed logs about GC cycles, duration, and pause times. If your application involves memory-intensive operations, adjusting the `GCPercent` parameter can be helpful—setting a higher value (e.g., 200 instead of the default 100) makes the GC trigger less frequently. However, remember to carefully monitor your application's memory usage when doing this.