JEP 132: More-prompt finalization

[Tony Printezis]

David,

On 01/06/2012 06:14 AM, David Holmes wrote:
> Hi Tony,
>
> On 6/01/2012 8:34 PM, Tony Printezis wrote:
>> If each library could indicate to the GC whether the resource it manages
>> is running low or not, using the API I mentioned, the GC could do the
>> above automatically, behind the scenes, without the user having to do
>> anything else.
>
> I'm not sure a library writer has the necessary information to do 
> this. Seems to me that how an application uses a particular type 
> determines the scarcity of the resource. 

I will be very surprised if the majority of application developers will 
be willing to measure at what rate the application consumes certain 
resources and update said measure when the application changes, load 
increases, OS changes, hardware changes, etc. And, sure, I think there 
will be many cases where the library writer has a good idea / can find 
out the max number of instances of a particular resource (file 
descriptors, sockets, etc.).

Tony

> I can imagine something like:
>
> void setFinalizationLimit(Class<?> cls, int limit)
>
> so that GC runs finalization once a "reference count" reaches "limit". 
> That limits the frequency of finalization, but the actual finalization 
> cost may still be unacceptably high.
>
> Cheers,
> David
>
>> Tony
>>
>>> Afterall the key thing about GC is it relieves the programmer from
>>> having to manage object lifetimes, so if you don't know when the
>>> object is no longer used you don't know when to call close.
>>>
>>> David