class SplittableRandom

[Doug Lea]

(Catching up...)

On 07/19/13 14:00, Mike Duigou wrote:

>> Using a shared static SecureRandom.generateSeed() to generate the seed is
>> probably the easiest way to get a good seed that is portable.

I agree and updated accordingly.


> I have previous experience mucking in this area. Attempting to use
> SecureRandom will likely encounter order of initialization issues as it is
> loaded from security providers and is only functional/available very late in
> the VM boot process.

Because SplittableRandom is a new class, there won't be any
immediate within-JDK dependencies, so this shouldn't be a
problem.

>
> I had considered suggesting adding a vm interface to access the platform
> native secure random number generation (/dev/random or rand_s). This would be
> useful for early boot and perhaps for speeding up seeding of SecureRandom.
>

Good idea. I started to explore doing something like this only
for SplittableRandom, but then noticed that it would be better to
benefit from more general improvements to SecureRandom in using
OS-supported randoms: When OS support exists (which is almost
always these days), it could and should be made simpler and faster
to use. (Additionally, a "getLongSeed()" method would be handy, avoiding
two byte-array conversions in what is probably the most common use case.)

-Doug