RFR (9) 8185133: Reference pending list root might not get marked

[Roman Kennke]

Hi Mikael,

I don't really understand what the problem is. The WR ends up on the
RPL, with its referent cleared, i.e. no longer pointing to the SR? But
we want to keep the SR alive?

Also, Universe::oops_do() already marks the RPL head, doesn't it?

Roman

> Hi all,
>
> Please review this fix to a tricky reference processing / conc marking
> bug affecting G1 in 9.
>
> The bug occurs when a weak reference WR is promoted to old and
> discovered during an initial mark pause. The WR is the referent of a
> soft reference SR. The concurrent reference processor determines that
> SR should be treated as a weak reference due to shortage of memory and
> now WR is reachable only from the reference pending list but not
> explicitly marked in the bitmap since objects promoted during the
> initial mark pause are not marked immediately.
>
> The reason we are not saved by the SATB pre-barrier here is that
> clearing of the referent field of a reference object does not trigger
> the pre-barrier (and that would kind of defeat its purpose).
>
> Before JDK-8156500 this worked because the reference pending list was
> a static field in the Reference class and the reference class was
> scanned during concurrent marking, so we would never lose track of the
> pending list head.
>
> My suggested fix is to explicitly mark the reference pending list head
> oop during initial mark, after the reference enqueue phase.
> This mirrors how other roots are handled in initial mark, see
> G1Mark::G1MarkPromotedFromRoots.
>
> Webrev: http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mgerdin/8185133/webrev.0
> Bug: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8185133
>
> Testing: JPRT, tier2-5 gc tests, a LOT of runs of the failing test.
>
> Many thanks to Kim and Erik Ö for discussions around this issue!
>
> Thanks
> /Mikael