[Vm-dev] Re: Performance of primitiveFailFor: and use of primFailCode

[Igor Stasenko]

On 25 May 2011 02:40, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 5:34 PM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 25 May 2011 00:51, Craig Latta <craig at netjam.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Hi Igor--
>> >
>> >> > ...now I'm looking forward to ephemeron conflicts. :)
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> What conflicts?
>> >>
>> >> Please elaborate :)
>> >
>> >     Oh, none yet, I just suspect there will be some with the stuff I
>> > wrote to GC stale methods.
>>
>> Yes. This could be a problem. Consider a following:
>>
>> MyClass>>someMethod
>>  ^ #( 'abc' 'def' )
>>
>>
>> ephemeron := Ephemeron new
>>   key: self someMethod first
>>   value: somethingElse.
>>
>> So, we created an ephemeron, whose key are object which came from
>> method's literals. And even worse,
>> as it shown above, it could be not a direct literal, but nested object.
>>
>> Now, if you GC this stale #someMethod , it will apparently turn
>> ephemeron's value to be weakly referenced,
>> and its key will be lost and replaced by nil.
>
> Uh, no.  The ephemeron refers to the string 'abc' that happened to be referenced by the method.  But that string won't be garbage collected until there are no references to it in the system, including from the ephemeron.  i.e. the ephemeron will either need to nil its key or itself be collected before the 'abc' string can be collected.

No.
Ephemeron's key held weakly. Right?
So, if key points to that 'abc' , and the only strong reference to
'abc' is via such method,
then if you remove method from system, the ephemeron's key will be
replaced by nil .. and rest of logic which follows, but its not
interesting..

Because same will happen if you just use weak objects:

array := WeakArray with: (self someMethod first) "which answers a
literal from that method".

now, imagine that you want to temporarily unload such "stale" method
from memory, but make sure that system pretends that it is still in
memory (if it is intended),
and still reachable from roots, you have to do something to make sure
that weak ref, held by array are not gone.

So, if you can solve this problem for usual weak refs, then you solve
that for ephemerons too.

> There is no magic here with references to objects from methods.  In Smalltalk, methods are just objects.  [and in the Cog VM there is a little bit of chicanery to preserve the illusion that there are no machien code methods involved, but that's what it does; hide the machine code].
>

-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.