[Vm-dev] [ENH] A better finalization support (VM & language side)

Igor Stasenko siguctua at gmail.com
Tue Mar 9 15:54:15 UTC 2010


On 9 March 2010 10:41, Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> On 3/8/2010 4:45 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
>>
>> On 9 March 2010 02:06, Andreas Raab<andreas.raab at gmx.de>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks Igor - if you have been implementing what you've described in this
>>> email I'm all for it. Give me a bit of time to review the code since this
>>> stuff can be tricky.
>>>
>>> One thing I do recall and that you may want to check is that testing
>>> class
>>> membership can be tricky during GC - in fact, the introduction of a weak
>>> format was due to issues with determining the class of some object
>>> correctly. Unfortunately, I do not recall the exact details but it's
>>> worthwhile going through this very carefully and make sure that one can
>>> actually rely on a) the class pointer being valid (and not substituted
>>> while
>>> traversing the object) and b) the pointer in splObjs be valid (and not
>>> substituted).
>>>
>>> I'll give this special attention while looking through the code.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, this is a biggest of my concern.
>
> You know what, I've been looking at it and it looks safe to me. I also
> remembered why it was originally unsafe - it wasn't sweep phase that's the
> problem it is mark phase, where the headers get replaced you can't do a
> proper class membership test (but you need to avoid tracing weak
> references). During sweep, where you hook in, there is no such problem.
>
>> Also maybe i should use a #longAt:put: , or uncheckedXXX put: (forgot
>> the selector) instead of self storePointer: 1 ofObject: oop withValue:
>>
>> because storePointer using the possibleRootStoreIntoValue(), which
>> could have unwanted effects :)
>
> I think using storePointer:ofObject:withValue is the right thing to do. The
> roots table will be cleared if this happens during fullGC, but if this
> happens during IGC, and either list or finalizer are old, then they must be
> properly recorded as root.
>
>> Maybe it could help you with analyzis:
>>  - the code touching a strong references , where all of them is
>> already marked as reachable
>> (because oop is reachable, and hence the list ivar, and hence the
>> list's 'first' ivar).
>> So, its only rearranging them a bit, but doesn't making none of them
>> unreachable, or even worse - making an already non-reachable object be
>> reachable again.
>
> Yes, that sounds right.
>
>> - the weak finalization check runs during sweep phase before
>> compaction. Which means, that objects is not changing their locations
>> during that phase.
>
> It sounds good to me. I *really* like how small the changes are - it makes
> it much easier to verify correctness. I think what we should be doing is
> build VMs to test it and run it for a while (which is easy enough between
> us).
>
> BTW, one tiny thing we'll have to fix is to add a test for splObj array -
> the way the code is written right now it could run afoul of an old image
> that doesn't have anything registered as ClassWeakFinalizer.
>
yes,
in old images it will read a value beyond the splObj oop,
so, its maybe worth adding back the splObj size check before reading this value.

But then it is compared with
(self fetchClassOf: listOop) == (self splObj: ClassWeakFinalizer)

so, what chances that both these values , accidentially will be same ,
when we reading at wrong slot of special objects array?
In most cases, a word, which you reading past the object contents is a
header of the following oop
which can be either a free chunk, or valid object header.
So, i think they are very small.

> But other than that, great job!
>
> Cheers,
>  - Andreas
>
>



-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.


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