[foreign] RFR 8215553: Remove SystemABI::freeUpcallStub
Maurizio Cimadamore
maurizio.cimadamore at oracle.com
Tue Dec 18 13:12:23 UTC 2018
Hi,
few months ago we moved to a new model for managing lifecycle of
callbacks, where callbacks were explicitly allocated through a Scope;
when the scope is closed, all callbacks registered onto that scope are
freed.
Back then, I failed to realize that we don't really need an API point to
free the callback - we can just rely on a Cleaner to do its job when the
callback is no longer referenced from Java code. Since a callback will
always be stored in some scope (when active), this will effectively
prevent it from being collected.
Note: this model is very different from what we had before, where
callbacks were NOT allocated using a Scope, but only implicitly by
passing lambdas to functions. In that case, using a Cleaner was bad, as
it sometimes led to GC happening _in the middle_ of a function call.
This can no longer happen, as a Scope will now hold tight on the
callbacks used at any given point in time.
Of course, users of the low-level SystemABI, must pay extra care: as
soon as an upcall symbol goes out of scope, it is ready for collection;
that means that if a client of SystemABI wants an upcall symbol to
remain alive, it has to stash it somewhere. Given the audience of this
SystemABI API, I think this is an acceptable compromise (and one I've
seen elsewhere, e.g. JNR). On the plus side, the API got tighter, as we
no longer need a 'free' method.
Webrev:
http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mcimadamore/panama/8215553/
Cheers
Maurizio
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