isAlive() too conservative -- does it cause leaks?

19 Jul 2018

      Hi Simon,

Currently isAlive considers all static closures as being alive. The code:

    // ignore static closures
    //
    // ToDo: This means we never look through IND_STATIC, which means
    // isRetainer needs to handle the IND_STATIC case rather than
    // raising an error.
    //
    // ToDo: for static closures, check the static link field.
    // Problem here is that we sometimes don't set the link field, eg.
    // for static closures with an empty SRT or CONSTR_NOCAFs.
    //
    if (!HEAP_ALLOCED_GC(q)) {
        return p;
    }

I'd expect this to cause leaks when e.g. key of a WEAK is a static object. Is
this not the case? I think this is easy to fix but I may be missing something
and wanted to ask before investing into it. The idea:

- Evacuate all static objects in evacuate() (including the ones with no SRTs)
  (assuming all static objects have a STATIC_FIELD, is this really the case?)

- In isAlive() check if (STATIC_FIELD & static_flag) != 0. If it is then the
  object is alive.

Am I missing anything?

Thanks,

Ömer

isAlive() too conservative -- does it cause leaks?

Ömer Sinan Ağacan