# Finalization

Many garbage collectors provide a facility for executing user code just before
an object is collected. This can be used to reclaim any system resources
or non-garbage-collected memory associated with the object. Experience has
shown that this can be a useful facility. It is indispensable in cases
in which system resources are embedded in complex data structures (e.g. file
descriptors in the `include/cord.h`).

Our collector provides the necessary functionality through
`GC_register_finalizer` in `include/gc.h`, or by inheriting from `gc_cleanup`
in `include/gc_cpp.h`).

However, finalization should not be used in the same way as C++ destructors.
In well-written programs there will typically be very few uses
of finalization. (Garbage collected programs that interact with explicitly
memory-managed libraries may be an exception.)

In general the following guidelines should be followed:

  * Actions that must be executed promptly do not belong in finalizers. They
  should be handled by explicit calls in the code (or C++ destructors if you
  prefer). If you expect the action to occur at a specific point, this
  is probably not hard.
  * Finalizers are intended for resource reclamation.
  * Scarce system resources should be managed explicitly whenever convenient.
  Use finalizers only as a backup mechanism for the cases that would be hard
  to handle explicitly.
  * If scarce resources are managed with finalization, the allocation routine
  for that resource (e.g. open for file handles) should force a garbage
  collection (two if that does not suffice) if it finds itself short of the
  resource.
  * If extremely scarce resources are managed by finalization (e.g. file
  descriptors on systems which have a limit of 20 open files), it may
  be necessary to introduce a descriptor caching scheme to hide the resource
  limit. (E.g., the program would keep real file descriptors for the 20 most
  recently used logically open files. Any other needed files would be closed
  after saving their state. They would then be reopened on demand.
  Finalization would logically close the file, closing the real descriptor
  only if it happened to be cached.) Note that most modern systems (e.g. Irix)
  allow hundreds or thousands of open files, and this is typically not
  an issue.
  * Finalization code may be run anyplace an allocation or other call to the
  collector takes place. In multi-threaded programs, finalizers have to obey
  the normal locking conventions to ensure safety. Code run directly from
  finalizers should not acquire locks that may be held during allocation.
  This restriction can be easily circumvented by registering a finalizer which
  enqueues the real action for execution in a separate thread.

In single-threaded code, it is also often easiest to have finalizers queue
actions, which are then explicitly run during an explicit call by the user's
program.

## Topologically ordered finalization

Our _conservative garbage collector_ supports a form of finalization (with
`GC_register_finalizer`) in which objects are finalized in topological order.
If _A_ points to _B_ and both are registered for finalization, it is
guaranteed the _A_ will be finalized first. This usually guarantees that
finalization procedures see only unfinalized objects.

This decision is often questioned, particularly since it has an obvious
disadvantage. The current implementation finalizes long chains of finalizable
objects one per collection. This is hard to avoid, since the first finalizer
invoked may store a pointer to the rest of the chain in a global variable,
making it accessible again. Or it may mutate the rest of the chain.

Cycles involving one or more finalizable objects are never finalized.

## Why topological ordering?

It is important to keep in mind that the choice of finalization ordering
matters only in relatively rare cases. In spite of the fact that it has
received a lot of discussion, it is not one of the more important decisions
in designing a system. Many, especially smaller, applications will never
notice the difference. Nonetheless, we believe that topologically ordered
finalization is the right choice.

To understand the justification, observe that if _A_'s finalization procedure
does not refer to _B_, we could fairly easily have avoided the dependency.
We could have split _A_ into _A'_ and _A''_ such that any references to _A_
become references to _A'_, _A'_ points to _A''_ but not vice-versa, only
fields needed for finalization are stored in _A''_, and _A''_ is enabled for
finalization. (`GC_register_disappearing_link` provides an alternative
mechanism that does not require breaking up objects.)

Thus assume that _A_ actually does need access to _B_ during finalization.
To make things concrete, assume that _B_ is finalizable because it holds
a pointer to a C object, which must be explicitly deallocated. (This is likely
to be one of the most common uses of finalization.) If _B_ happens to be
finalized first, _A_ will see a dangling pointer during its finalization. But
a principal goal of garbage collection was to avoid dangling pointers.

Note that the client program could enforce topological ordering even if the
system did not. A pointer to _B_ could be stored in some globally visible
place, where it is cleared only by _A_'s finalizer. But this puts the burden
to ensure safety back on the programmer.

With topologically ordered finalization, the programmer can fail to split
an object, thus leaving an accidental cycle. This results in a leak, which
is arguably less dangerous than a dangling pointer. More importantly, it is
_much_ easier to diagnose, since the garbage collector would have to go out of
its way not to notice finalization cycles. It can trivially report them.

Furthermore unordered finalization does not really solve the problem
of cycles. Consider the above case in which _A_'s finalization procedure
depends on _B_, and thus a pointer to _B_ is stored in a global data
structure, to be cleared by _A_'s finalizer. If there is an accidental pointer
from _B_ back to _A_, and thus a cycle, neither _B_ nor _A_ will become
unreachable. The leak is there, just as in the topologically ordered case, but
it is hidden from easy diagnosis.

A number of alternative finalization orderings have been proposed, e.g. based
on statically assigned priorities. In our opinion, these are much more likely
to require complex programming discipline to use in a large modular system.
(Some of them, e.g. Guardians proposed by Dybvig, Bruggeman, and Eby, do avoid
some problems which arise in combination with certain other collection
algorithms.)

Fundamentally, a garbage collector assumes that objects reachable via pointer
chains may be accessed, and thus should be preserved. Topologically ordered
finalization simply extends this to object finalization; an finalizable object
reachable from another finalizer via a pointer chain is presumed to be
accessible by the finalizer, and thus should not be finalized.

## Programming with topological finalization

Experience with Cedar has shown that cycles or long chains of finalizable
objects are typically not a problem. Finalizable objects are typically rare.
There are several ways to reduce spurious dependencies between finalizable
objects. Splitting objects as discussed above is one technique. The collector
also provides `GC_register_disappearing_link`, which explicitly nils a pointer
before determining finalization ordering.

Some so-called "operating systems" fail to clean up some resources associated
with a process. These resources must be deallocated at all cost before process
exit whether or not they are still referenced. Probably the best way to deal
with those is by not relying exclusively on finalization. They should
be registered in a table of weak pointers (implemented as disguised pointers
cleared by the finalization procedure that deallocates the resource). If any
references are still left at process exit, they can be explicitly deallocated
then.

## Getting around topological finalization ordering

There are certain situations in which cycles between finalizable objects are
genuinely unavoidable. Most notably, C++ compilers introduce self-cycles
to represent inheritance. `GC_register_finalizer_ignore_self` tells the
finalization part of the collector to ignore self cycles. This is used by the
C++ interface.

Finalize.c actually contains an intentionally undocumented mechanism for
registering a finalizable object with user-defined dependencies. The problem
is that this dependency information is also used for memory reclamation, not
just finalization ordering. Thus misuse can result in dangling pointers even
if finalization does not create any. The risk of dangling pointers can be
eliminated by building the collector with `-DJAVA_FINALIZATION`. This forces
objects reachable from finalizers to be marked, even though this dependency
is not considered for finalization ordering.
