Time to retire System.runFinalizersOnExit?

[Paul Sandoz]

On Jan 27, 2015, at 5:37 AM, Mandy Chung <mandy.chung at oracle.com> wrote:

> System.runFinalizationOnExit has been deprecated since 1998 (JDK 1.2)
> and this method is inherently unsafe.  I am thinking to propose this method
> in JDK 9 to throw UnsupportedOperationException.
> 
> I believe it's rare for existing applications using System.runFinalizationOnExit.
> My analysis on Maven Central ~315K artifacts that show about ~15 unique
> artifacts calling System.runFinalizationOnExit while they all come from
> only 5 classes.
> 
> Any thought/feedback?
> 

If we do decide to do something perhaps we should remove it from 9 and back port the USO in 8? Why keep it around if it's been deprecated for over 10 years and from your analysis it's used by 0.005% of maven artifacts.

Paul.