FWIW, making this fix not only reduces the memory leak risk, but has a
number of nice follow-on benefits that can often trigger further
follow-on benefits:
- fewer fields, so reduced footprint;
- fewer fields might mean more objects fall under the scalarization
threshold, when applicable;
- less work in constructors;
- shorter constructors mean more constructors fall under the inlining
threshold;
- more inlining might lead to other optimizations.
So it wouldn't surprise me to see macro-level effects even on programs
without memory leaks.
I filed https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8271623
<https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8271623> to track that
enhancement.
