On Sun, Jul 6, 2014 at 7:45 PM, Filip Pizlo <fpi...@apple.com> wrote:
> On Jul 6, 2014, at 9:30 AM, "Mark S. Miller" <erig...@google.com> wrote: > > On Sun, Jul 6, 2014 at 7:47 AM, Katelyn Gadd <k...@luminance.org> wrote: > >> There are some fairly recent es-discuss threads about weak references. >> I don't know if there is a consensus yet (it is very hard to tell) but >> some people like Brendan are on record that there are real use cases >> that require them. I've been pushing hard for them, along with the >> author of embind. The question is mostly whether solving those >> problems is worth the cost of exposing GC to content JS (though, if >> memory serves, there was a claim in one of the discussion threads that >> you can implement weakrefs without exposing GC - I'm not sure if that >> was an 'I've figured it out' statement or just a hypothesis). >> > > I would be very curious. It seems impossible by definition. Could you (or > anyone) please try to find this? Thanks. > > What I have claimed is that we can isolate the communications channel that > this provides in ways that make it a reasonable (IMO) security risk. > Perhaps this is what you are thinking of? > > > I've read this exchange and might be missing context. I'm intrigued by it > and want to know more. > > Is the main opposition to weak references just the security implications > of information revealed by GC? Has anyone quantified how much information > is leaked, or proved that this information cannot be obtained through > already exposed APIs or language features? I presume it has something to > do with detecting if anyone else has a reference to an object. > Security is one concern, but I think that Mark's proposal covers this with the "only collect weakrefs between turns" semantics. I CC'd a few people who voiced strong opposition on our dev mailing list. Posts containing arguments for their position are: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine.internals/V__5zqll3zc/zCjQrnnMtAMJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine.internals/V__5zqll3zc/FHx26ioYyUkJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine.internals/V__5zqll3zc/hLJiNqd8Xq8J https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine.internals/V__5zqll3zc/IByxb_ZjulgJ And an argument for alternative solutions to common weakref use cases: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.tech.js-engine.internals/V__5zqll3zc/Zweq9VEqI0cJ There's a lot more in that thread, but I think this roughly covers the main arguments against weakrefs.
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