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

[Tao Mao]

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 9:34 PM, Mandy Chung <mandy.chung at oracle.com> wrote:

>
> > 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.
>

Strictly speaking, any reference type but phantom reference.


>
> > 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).
>

Good, I see it.


>
> 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.
> >
> >
>
>
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