RFR 9: 8138696 : java.lang.ref.Cleaner - an easy to use alternative to finalization

Roger Riggs Roger.Riggs at Oracle.com
Wed Oct 14 13:24:36 UTC 2015


Hi,

Confirmed,  the design and implementation encapsulate the cleanup so it 
can be run consistently
at-most-once either at close or when it is unreferenced.
It has not been a problem for sun.misc.Cleaner because the cleanup is 
*only* done when
the ref is unreachable.  But there are issues about latency in getting 
resources released and reusable.

Roger


On 10/14/2015 9:17 AM, Brian Goetz wrote:
>> Finally, how important is it to be able to unregister a cleaner?  In
>> all the years we've had sun.misc.Cleaner that capability has never
>> been needed, and leaving it out would simplify the API.
>
> I see this as having two big potential benefits (I'll let Roger 
> confirm whether the implementation provides both):
>
>  - Resource release for finalizable objects is generally coded in two 
> places; in the explicit close() / release() method, which we hope 
> people will use, and in the finalizer, in case the object is collected 
> without being closed.  Having two ways to express the same action is 
> error-prone; if there's one definition of "release the resources" then 
> they can't get out of sync.
>
> This requires an atomic means to say "unregister the cleaner, and, if 
> its not yet been run, run it now".
>
>  - If you can unregister the cleaner on the happy path (where the user 
> explicitly closes the object ), then all the enqueue / reference 
> processing / finalization work can be optimized away.
>
>




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