Reference.reachabilityFence

[David Holmes]

On 25/11/2015 3:27 AM, Vitaly Davidovich wrote:
>>
>> The choice of reachabilityFence was in part motivated by hearing
>> about mistakes in using C# keepAlive where people would place keepAlive
>> before uses of fields, rather than after them. A more accurate name
>> should reduce this error in Java.
>
>
> I don't see how reachabilityFence would help prevent that type of
> mistake/usage.  Having used KeepAlive in .NET, I personally think it's a
> better and more appropriate name and has the "demarcation" aspect (i.e.
> "keep this alive until the point where I wrote KeepAlive").  But, it's a
> bikeshed so I won't get hung up on it.

KeepAlive sounds like it might "tag" the reference in some way so that 
it is always kept alive with a scope - and hence suggests incorrect usage:

Foo f = ...
Reference.keepAlive(f);
...
// oops f not live here after all

keepAliveAtLeastTillHere would be more explicit. reachabilityFence has 
no obvious intepretation so one is forced to consult the documentation 
and check one is using it correctly. :)

Cheers,
David

> On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 12:06 PM, Doug Lea <dl at cs.oswego.edu> wrote:
>
>> On 11/24/2015 09:09 AM, Andrew Haley wrote:
>>
>>> Bikeshedding,
>>>
>>> On 11/24/2015 01:07 PM, Vitaly Davidovich wrote:
>>>
>>>> How about keepAlive? Reference.keepAlive(Object) reads better, IMO.
>>>>
>>>
>>> It does indeed.  Imperative names for methods almost always read better,
>>> IMO.  And although we probably don't don't much care about C#, it too
>>> uses the name KeepAlive() for this.
>>>
>>
>> Well, it is not an imperative notion, it is a demarcation.
>> More like a semicolon than an action. (Which is the realm of fences.)
>>
>> The choice of reachabilityFence was in part motivated by hearing
>> about mistakes in using C# keepAlive where people would place keepAlive
>> before uses of fields, rather than after them. A more accurate name
>> should reduce this error in Java.
>>
>> -Doug
>>
>>
>>