[concurrency-interest] Is Reference.reachabilityFence() needed in Reference constructor?

[Rezaei, Mohammad A.]

>> Might the following be needed or not:
>>
>>     Reference(T referent, ReferenceQueue<? super T> queue) {
>>         this.referent = referent;
>>         this.queue = (queue == null) ? ReferenceQueue.NULL : queue;
>>         reachabilityFence(referent);
>>     }
>

queue is marked volatile, so a simple reordering of the lines should be just as effective:

     Reference(T referent, ReferenceQueue<? super T> queue) {
         this.queue = (queue == null) ? ReferenceQueue.NULL : queue;
         this.referent = referent;
     }

A simplistic interpretation of GC (as for example seen here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10795505/how-do-garbage-collectors-know-about-references-on-the-stack-frame ) might lead one to believe that referent is reachable until the end of the constructor because it's in the stack frame. The point at which reachability analysis kicks in, in the middle of such a simple two liner and removes the referent from the stack (or other variations such as inlining) is presumably highly implementation dependent and should not be relied on, but I'm guessing that's the reason you're not able to reproduce an early GC.

Thanks
Moh