RFR: 8071507: (ref) Clear phantom reference as soft and weak references do

[Mandy Chung]

> On Dec 17, 2015, at 6:05 PM, Tao Mao <yiyeguhu at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Kim,
> 
> 34  * <p> Suppose the garbage collector determines at a certain point in time
>   35  * that an object is <a href="package-summary.html#reachability">
>   36  * phantom reachable</a>.  At that time it will atomically clear
>   37  * all phantom references to that object and all phantom references to
>   38  * any other phantom-reachable objects from which that object is reachable.
>   39  * At the same time or at some later time it will enqueue those newly-cleared
>   40  * phantom references that are registered with reference queues.
> 
> XYZRefenrece concept is never being understood too well besides the authors who spend time grinding words. WeakReference (https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/ref/WeakReference.html) states this: "At that time it will atomically clear all weak references to that object and all weak references to any other weakly-reachable objects from which that object is reachable through a chain of strong and soft references."
> 
> On line 38, can we also add "through a chain of strong, soft, and weak references." to the above, which I think is the case?
> 

Yes it is and this is not strictly needed. For phantom reference case, this can be left “unqualified” as it’s basically a chain of any reference type.

> In addition, in src/java.base/share/classes/java/lang/ref/package-info.java, can we add WeakHashMap (https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/WeakHashMap.html) as a concrete example of so-called canonicalized mappings to help readers understand its usage? I always need to look up for what "canonicalized mappings" really means and end up with "OK, it's WeakHashMap”.

In the Notification section, it does reference WeakHashMap (although it might not contain the exact description you are looking at).

Mandy

> Thanks.
> Tao Mao
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 1:30 PM, Kim Barrett <kim.barrett at oracle.com> wrote:
> On Dec 4, 2015, at 1:07 PM, Kim Barrett <kim.barrett at oracle.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Dec 3, 2015, at 6:04 PM, Mandy Chung <mandy.chung at oracle.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> [Indeed, this whole section isn't strictly necessary; all of it can be
> >>> inferred from information in other places.]
> >>
> >> Agree.  This section is no longer necessary and maybe just remove it:
> >
> > I wasn't actually intending to suggest removal.  It seems like there
> > is useful overview information to be had here, rather than requiring
> > readers to make not necessarily obvious inferences.  My impression is
> > that readability is valued more highly than terseness in Java
> > documentation.
> 
> Sorry for the long gap in the discussion.  Mandy and I have been
> talking about what to do about the "Automatically-cleared references"
> section that was the topic of some debate.  We've decided to eliminate
> it, which led us to some additional modifications.
> 
> Here's the latest set of webrevs:
> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~kbarrett/8071507/jdk.06/
> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~kbarrett/8071507/hotspot.06/
> 
> They've been rebased to hs-rt tip, which required resolving a minor
> merge conflict with a nearby change to logging in
> referenceProcessor.cpp.  Other than that, there are only specification
> wording changes.  Here's the incremental change from the previous
> version:
> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~kbarrett/8071507/jdk.06.inc/
> 
> We are treating the discussions around changing PhantomReference to
> forbid a null queue as out of scope for this change.  As Mandy said
> earlier, she might propose a separate change for that in the future.
> 
>