"
COPYRIGHT (c) 1991 by Claus Gittinger
All Rights Reserved
This software is furnished under a license and may be used
only in accordance with the terms of that license and with the
inclusion of the above copyright notice. This software may not
be provided or otherwise made available to, or used by, any
other person. No title to or ownership of the software is
hereby transferred.
"
Array variableSubclass:#WeakArray
instanceVariableNames:'watcher dependents'
classVariableNames:'RegistrationFailedSignal AlreadyInitialized'
poolDictionaries:''
category:'Collections-Arrayed'
!
WeakArray comment:'
COPYRIGHT (c) 1991 by Claus Gittinger
All Rights Reserved
$Header: /cvs/stx/stx/libbasic/WeakArray.st,v 1.10 1995-03-08 23:40:27 claus Exp $
'!
!WeakArray class methodsFor:'documentation'!
copyright
"
COPYRIGHT (c) 1991 by Claus Gittinger
All Rights Reserved
This software is furnished under a license and may be used
only in accordance with the terms of that license and with the
inclusion of the above copyright notice. This software may not
be provided or otherwise made available to, or used by, any
other person. No title to or ownership of the software is
hereby transferred.
"
!
version
"
$Header: /cvs/stx/stx/libbasic/WeakArray.st,v 1.10 1995-03-08 23:40:27 claus Exp $
"
!
documentation
"
WeakArrays can be used to trace disposal of objects; in contrast to other
objects, references by WeakArrays will NOT keep an object from dieing.
Instead, whenever an object kept in a WeakArray dies, its entry is nilled,
and the WeakArray informed by the storage manager.
You can use WeakArrays to track disposal of objects which keep external
world resources. For example, FileStreams must close their underlying
file when disposed (otherwise you could run out of OS filedescriptors).
This can be done by keeping the FileStream objects in a weakArray, and
keep a parallel array of filedescriptors. Whenever a fileStream gets
free, search both arrays for an index where the stream is nil, but the
filedescriptor is non-nil. Then close that file, and nil the filedescriptor
entry. Notice, that there is a class (Registry) which does exactly this in
a more programmer friendly way.
Another application is caching of data: keep it in a weakArray, so the
data in that cache will not be unreclaimable due to being cached.
(for example, the ResourcePack class uses a WeakArray to cache recently
used resource data for a while).
The way in which weakArrays get informed by the runtime system is via
an interrupt (DisposeInterrupt). The reason for not sending messages
directly from the VM is to make it possible to run the finalization
code at lower priority or from another class.
Also, as a side effect, it is possible to delay finalization by blocking
interrupts.
This interrupt is cought in ObjectMemory and informs the weakArray,
which in turn informs its watcher and pissibly the dependents.
Having two mechanisms here (i.e. watcher & dependent) is a historic leftover;
I dont know, which of the two mechanisms will survive in the long run -
I started with the watcher, but now switch to dependencies since they seem
to offer more flexibility (although watcher notification ).
Be prepared, that the watcher mechanism may vanish in the future
(i.e. use dependents for your applications).
NOTICE: WeakArray handling adds some overhead to the VM (each weakarray
is scanned after each GC). It is uncertain, if the current mechanism works well
with (say) ten-thousands of weakArrays.
instanceVariables:
watcher if non-nil, gets informed via #informDispose
that the weakArray has lost pointers.
dependents get informed via #change
that the weakArray has lost pointers.
classVariables:
RegistrationFailedSignal raised if a weakArray cannot be
registered by the VM. This only happens,
if the VM has to resize its shadow tables
and is running out of malloc-memory.
"
! !
!WeakArray class methodsFor:'initialization'!
initialize
"setup the private signal"
RegistrationFailedSignal isNil ifTrue:[
ErrorSignal isNil ifTrue:[super initialize].
RegistrationFailedSignal := ErrorSignal newSignalMayProceed:true.
RegistrationFailedSignal nameClass:self message:#registrationFailedSignal.
RegistrationFailedSignal notifierString:'weakArray registration failed'.
]
! !
!WeakArray class methodsFor:'instance creation'!
new:size
"return a new weakArray with size slots"
"This is a kludge: I would like to set WEAK-flag in the classes
initialize method, but (currently) the order in which the class-initialize
methods are called is not defined ...
... therefore it could happen, that a WeakArray is used by other
classes initialize method BEFORE this method is evaluated.
To avoid this, the WEAK bit in the class is set here, when the very first
WeakArray is created."
AlreadyInitialized isNil ifTrue:[
self flags:(Behavior flagWeakPointers).
AlreadyInitialized := true
].
^ (self basicNew:size) registerAsWeakArray
! !
!WeakArray methodsFor:'GC registration'!
registerAsWeakArray
"register the receiver in the VM -
i.e. tell the VM to nil disposed entries in the receiver
and notify the disposeInterruptHandler whenever that happened."
|ok|
%{
OBJ __addShadowObject();
ok = __addShadowObject(self, 0);
if (ok == false) {
/*
* this happens when too many shadow objects are
* already there, collect garbage to get rid of
* obsolete ones, and try again.
* since a full collect is expensive, we try
* a scavenge first, doing a full collect only if
* that does not help.
*
* THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE A GOOD IDEA: although it reduces
* the number of shadow objects that have to be
* processed at GC time, it may create a long delay here,
* at shadow object creation time.
* Dont know which is better ...
*/
nonTenuringScavenge(__context);
ok = __addShadowObject(self, 0);
if (ok == false) {
/*
* try more ...
*/
scavenge(__context);
ok = __addShadowObject(self, 0);
if (ok == false) {
/*
* hard stuff - need full collect
*/
#ifdef OLD
__garbageCollect(__context);
#else
markAndSweep(__context);
#endif
ok = __addShadowObject(self, 0);
if (ok == false) {
/*
* mhmh - it seems that there are really many shadow
* objects around - force creation
*/
ok = __addShadowObject(self, 1);
if (ok == false) {
/* no chance - something must be wrong */
}
}
}
}
}
%}.
ok ifFalse:[
"
the VM was not able to register the new weakArray
This can only happen, if the VM has to resize its tables,
and a malloc request failed. Usually, this smells like big
trouble being on the way (soon running out of memory in
other places as well).
Configure your OS for more swap space.
"
^ RegistrationFailedSignal raiseRequestWith:self
]
! !
!WeakArray methodsFor:'notification'!
lostPointer
"I lost a pointer; tell watcher and dependents.
This is sent from the finalization in ObjectMemory."
dependents notNil ifTrue:[
self changed.
].
watcher notNil ifTrue:[
watcher informDispose
]
! !
!WeakArray methodsFor:'copying'!
postCopy
"copying alone does not really help - we have to tell
the VM, that there is a new WeakArray around ...
Q: who copies weakArrays ?"
dependents := nil.
self registerAsWeakArray.
! !
!WeakArray methodsFor:'accessing'!
dependents
"return the dependents of the receiver"
^ dependents
!
dependents:aCollection
"set the dependents of the receiver"
dependents := aCollection
!
watcher
"return the watcher of the receiver.
The watcher-stuff is a leftover from an old implementation
and will vanish soon"
^ watcher
!
watcher:anObject
"set the watcher of the receiver.
The watcher-stuff is a leftover from an old implementation
and will vanish soon"
watcher := anObject
! !