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It seems well thought out:

* malloc/free (ref counting GC)

* memory pooling (no heap, stack-based for memory constrained systems)

* third party allocators

* third party GC

Details here: http://ferret-lang.org/#sec-4-2

I love the idea of ref counting, but I'm unsure about the handling of memory cycles. In a plain ref counting implementation, these will not be cleaned up, resulting in a memory leak.

I didn't find anything on cycles in the linked page, maybe the problem is not relevant in most real-world clojure code?

I don't know about "pure" Clojure (as this is), but in "pure" Erlang (which has similar semantics), you simply can't make a reference cycle. Functional languages in general don't really allow them.

Author here. As derefr said with Clojure semantics you can not create cycles.

Thanks, now I think about it, that makes a lot of sense.

You could have provided a link to the memory management section or even mentioned it was ref counting. Otherwise your comment is ... it kills me to say this but pretty useless.

Always look at memory management is more general, and perhaps even more useful, advice than look at the memory management for this one project.

Why? What's "good" vs what's "bad"?