[G1]Why run Full GC at System.gc() call?

[Manavjeet Singh]

Thankyou Stefan.
This helps!

On Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 12:57 PM <stefan.johansson at oracle.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> You are correct. When calling System.gc() with G1 a full GC is
> scheduled. You can change this by running with the option:
> -XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrent
>
> Doing so will instead initiate a concurrent cycle by running a young
> collection. There have been discussions if this should be the default
> behavior for G1, but there are arguments both ways. I think the current
> behavior is good, since it makes it really obvious this is an expensive
> operation that we do not really encourage people to use.
>
> One of the few good uses of System.gc() is when you know your
> application doesn't suffer from doing garbage collections, for example,
> you know you have a lot of dead objects and currently no requests you
> have to handle. In this case a full collection is a better fit since it
> will reclaim as much memory as possible, while the concurrent cycle will
> only start reclaiming memory from the old generation in the mixed
> collections that will follow.
>
> I hope this helps,
> Stefan
>
> On 2020-08-23 19:54, Manavjeet Singh wrote:
> > Hi!
> > I was trying to understand what happens when System.gc() is called from a
> > java application with G1 as the garbage collector. I understood
> > G1CollectedHeap::collect() is called and then
> > G1CollectedHeap::try_collect().
> > But going through the code of G1CollectedHeap::try_collect() and using
> the
> > "-verbose" flag while running the java application, I realised only a
> full
> > GC will always be scheduled.
> > Can you please help me understand this design decision or if I am wrong
> in
> > understanding it.
> > Thanks!
> > Manavjeet Singh
> >
>