Currenty Entry objects are packaged in a MarshalledWrapper by Outrigger's and Reggie's proxy code. By making fields in MarshalledWrapper final, we can achieve safe publication in River. This doesn't help Entry's shared among threads in client code performing calculations and storing results in an Entry prior to being submitted back to a Javaspace.
Because Entry fields are public, we can't do much to ensure client code is sharing them safely. I'm more concerned client code will perform unsafe mutations that are outside our control. In that case a Javaspace proxy might not see the last write to an Entry field. Perhaps all we can do is create a web page with best practices? I could really use a hand getting this set up, I'm bogged down at present and don't feel like I'm making much progress. The positive discussion about these issues is heartening. I did see an Oracle blog post that proposed immutable arrays as a feature in a future Java version. Thanks, Peter. ----- Original message ----- > It is very important for us to get this "publish" stuff nailed down so that > there are no problems that keep resurfacing because of this important part of > the JMM. > > We might need to look at the Unsafe class for help with "fences" that could > help > us "commit" changes to memory in a way that eliminates locks, and keeps > developers from littering their code with things which while "necessary", are > subject to misuse, abuse and lack thereof, in such a way as to create these > mysterious behaviors which are almost always epic to discover the root cause. > > For example, using fences on java spaces "writes" as well as "reads" could be > an > important "boundary" to establish between threads. Inbound "notifications" > don't need fences except when they explicitly cross thread boundaries. Using > "synchronized" on methods which change ownership between threads, has always > been the "correct" way to manage APIs which included threading. But, volatile > since JDK1.5, has provided a non-blocking "correct" behavior for > non-array-content values. If we don't want to use synchronized, then Unsafe > fences may be the only way to make things work for arrays as well. > > Gregg Wonderly > > On Jun 11, 2013, at 8:01 AM, Greg Trasuk <tras...@stratuscom.com> wrote: > > > > > So if I understand correctly, we need to make sure that any parameters > > that are passed through the boundary of River code (e.g. anything that > > implements JavaSpace05) need to be marked volatile (can you do that on > > parameters) or stored to a volatile variable. Or there needs to be a > > synchronized block that reads the queues. That sounds moderately > > doable. Is the volatility transitive? i.e. If I make sure that an > > Entry is part of a "happens-before" event, are the fields on the objects > > referenced by that entry also published? > > > > Personally, synchronized is the only thing I've ever trusted. When I > > see things like shared, non-synchronized variables, I think "There be > > dragons here". Is there a lot of that in the codebase? > > > > Cheers, > > > > Greg. > > > > > > On Tue, 2013-06-11 at 08:45, Peter wrote: > > > Ok, so we need to make sure we safely publish an Entry to a volatile field > > > after modifications or make an Entry's fields volatile. > > > > > > Did you know that JERI uses a multiplexing thread pool core? > > > > > > Even when our code appears to be single threaded, once it's exported, it > > > becomes visible to many threads. > > > > > > To avoid potential deadlock from dependant tasks executing out of order > > > JERI > > > always creates a new thread if no free threads are available in its > > > internal > > > thread pool. > > > > > > Regards, > > > > > > Peter. > > > > > > ----- Original message ----- > > > > > > > > On Tue, 2013-06-11 at 08:23, Peter wrote: > > > > > I've been thinking about how Entry objects are immutable in serialized > > > > > form and of course how they are not in unserialized form. > > > > > > > > > > Should Entry fields be final by default? > > > > > > > > > > > > > No. Javaspaces usage is frequently to take an entry, modify it and then > > > > put it back into the space. > > > > > > > > Greg. > > > > > > > > > The JMM makes an exception for Serialization, allowing final fields > > > > > to be > > > > > frozen after construction during deserialization, provided it occurs > > > > > before sharing with other threads. It would allow Entry's to be shared > > > > > safely among threads, as long as their public fields aren't mutable, > > > > > eg: > > > > > an array. > > > > > > > > > > Regards, > > > > > > > > > > Peter. > > > > > > > > > >
