RFR 8029891 : Deadlock detected in java/lang/ClassLoader/deadlock/GetResource.java

Mandy Chung mandy.chung at oracle.com
Wed May 13 15:53:41 UTC 2015


> On May 12, 2015, at 2:26 PM, Peter Levart <peter.levart at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 05/12/2015 10:49 PM, Mandy Chung wrote:
>>> But I think it should be pretty safe to make the java.util.Properties object override all Hashtable methods and delegate to internal CMH so that:
>>> - all modification methods + all bulk read methods such as (keySet().toArray, values.toArray) are made synchronized again
>>> - individual entry read methods (get, containsKey, ...) are not synchronized.
>>> 
>>> This way we get the benefits of non-synchronized read access but the change is hardly observable. In particular since external synchronization on the Properties object makes guarded code atomic like it is now and individual entry read accesses are almost equivalent whether they are synchronized or not and I would be surprised if any code using Properties for the purpose they were designed for worked any differently.
>> 
>> I agree that making read-only methods not synchronized while keeping any method with write-access with synchronized is pretty safe change and low compatibility risk.  On the other hand, would most of the overrridden methods be synchronized then?
> 
> Yes, and that doesn't seem to be a problem. Setting properties is not very frequent operation and is usually quite localized. Reading properties is, on the other hand, a very frequent operation dispersed throughout the code (almost like logging) and therefore very prone to deadlocks like the one in this issue. I think that by having an unsynchronized get(Property), most problems with Properties will be solved - deadlock and performance (scalability) related.


I’m keen on cleaning up the system properties but it is a bigger scope as it should take other related enhancement requests into account that should be something for future.  I think what you propose seems a good solution to fix JDK-8029891 while it doesn’t completely get us off the deadlock due to user code locking the Properties object.

Thanks. 

Mandy




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