Concurrency is a complex subject even experts struggle with, I know
you're a good programmer, I think the discussion will be more fruitful
here, to be honest, I'm just following coding rules that much smarter
developers have devised for me:
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Cheers,
Peter.
Dan Creswell wrote:
Dude,
On 1 April 2013 12:10, Peter Firmstone <[email protected]> wrote:
Hmm, :|
To quote http://docs.oracle.com/javase/**specs/jls/se7/html/jls-17.**
html#jls-17.4<http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-17.html#jls-17.4>
:
A call to |start()| on a thread /happens-before/ any actions in the
started thread.
<comment>
But does that guarantee that construction of objects whose references will
be written to final fields (guaranteed after construction completes) in the
constructor of an object that starts that thread, will happen before or
after the new thread is started? Remembering the jvm is free to not
initialize and reorder something it doesn't think it needs now, but must
after construction is complete.
You gotta stop treating constructors like they're magic!
A constructor has no special semantics in and of itself. It _appears_ like
it does because there is one "special" thing that can be said of
construction: It is dispatched within the context of single thread. Two
separate calls from two separate threads to the constructor are isolated as
a consequence. Constructors are not atomic, confer nothing in terms of
ordering, do not represent a synchronization action or have any other
impact on threading.
So, constructors aren't special, they merely have a set of behaviours
implied by the language specification. One of those amounts to:
If a programmer does nothing thread-impacting in a constructor, the only
way any other thread gets to see the object is through the creating thread
making a reference available to another thread. In which case, there has
been a synchronization which thus causes the entirety of actions in the
constructor to be visible all at once. This "all at once" is because the
constructor must have completed before the reference was made visible to
another thread.
But *if* a programmer does do some thread stuff in the constructor, then
normal rules of synchronization apply. Amongst other things that means:
(1) You can't re-order across a synchronization point.
(2) All changes prior to a synchronization point will be made visible at
that synchronization point.
start() is a synchronization point and thus anything done before it is made
visible to all threads once it's completed. Further start() completes
before the new thread starts (noting that there may be an immediate context
switch at that point such that the parent thread takes no further action
but the synchronization has happened prior to the switch).
Thus, all finals initialized prior to calling start() will be visible to
the new thread. They *may* have been re-ordered for processor performance
reasons (e.g. to keep pipelines full).
So in other words the second thread which started during object
construction might not see the objects the first thread has created in a
fully constructed state as they haven't yet been published.
</comment>
In some cases, such as deserialization, the system will need to
change the |final| fields of an object after construction. |final|
fields can be changed via reflection and other
implementation-dependent means. The only pattern in which this has
reasonable semantics is one in which an object is constructed and
then the |final| fields of the object are updated. The object should
not be made visible to other threads, nor should the |final| fields
be read, until all updates to the |final| fields of the object are
complete. Freezes of a |final| field occur both at the end of the
constructor in which the |final| field is set, and immediately after
each modification of a |final| field via reflection or other special
mechanism.
Even then, there are a number of complications. If a |final| field
is initialized to a compile-time constant expression (ยง15.28
<http://docs.oracle.com/**javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-**
15.html#jls-15.28<http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-15.html#jls-15.28>
)
in the field declaration, changes to the |final| field may not be
observed, since uses of that |final| field are replaced at compile
time with the value of the constant expression.
Another problem is that the specification allows aggressive
optimization of |final| fields. Within a thread, it is permissible
to reorder reads of a |final| field with those modifications of a
|final| field that do not take place in the constructor.
An implementation may provide a way to execute a block of code in a
/|final|-field-safe context/. If an object is constructed within a
|final|-field-safe context, the reads of a |final| field of that
object will not be reordered with modifications of that |final|
field that occur within that |final|-field-safe context.
A |final|-field-safe context has additional protections. If a thread
has seen an incorrectly published reference to an object that allows
the thread to see the default value of a |final||final|-field-safe
context, reads a properly published reference to the object, it will
be guaranteed to see the correct value of the |final| field. In the
formalism, code executed within a |final|-field-safe context is
treated as a separate thread (for the purposes of |final| field
semantics only).
In an implementation, a compiler should not move an access to a
|final| field into or out of a |final|-field-safe context (although
it can be moved around the execution of such a context, so long as
the object is not constructed within that context).
Dan Creswell wrote:
On 1 April 2013 09:24, Peter Firmstone <[email protected]> wrote:
Dan Creswell wrote:
On 1 April 2013 08:11, Peter Firmstone <[email protected]> wrote:
Food for thought: After our pending release, it might be an idea to
make
a combined effort to identify and address as many concurrency issues as
possible, we need to modernize our implementation code so we stay
relevant.
An important task will be updating all our service implementations so
they
DON'T start threads during construction.
The ActiveObject pattern often does start threads at construction. I'd
like
to understand why that is such a problem for you? It surely isn't a big
deal for me but....
It allows fields to be declared final, if a thread is started during
construction the JMM makes no guarantee that thread will see the final
state of that objects fields after construction completes.
Not sure that's true, at least in JDK 7:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/**specs/jls/se7/html/jls-17.**html#jls-17.4<http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-17.html#jls-17.4>
"An action that starts a thread *synchronizes-with* the first action in
the
thread it starts. "
"Two actions can be ordered by a *happens-before* relationship. If one
action *happens-before* another, then the first is visible to and ordered
before the second. "
"If an action *x* *synchronizes-with* a following action *y*, then we also
have *hb(x, y)*. "
i.e. If thread A is doing construction and then starts another thread,
variable assignments prior will be visible to the newly created thread.
That in turn means so long as all critical assignments are done prior to
starting that second thread, there's no problem?
And if that's true, starting a thread in a constructor needn't be avoided,
merely done "carefully". Thus it would be sufficient to ensure all final
variables are assigned prior to thread starting, which isn't so hard to do
or assure. I guess my point is, yes there's some care required but
outright
banning thread start() in constructors is overkill.
?
This is important when that thread accesses fields in the constructed
object.
See:
https://www.securecoding.cert.****org/confluence/display/java/****
TSM03-J.+Do+not+publish+****partially+initialized+objects<**
https://www.securecoding.cert.**org/confluence/display/java/**
TSM03-J.+Do+not+publish+**partially+initialized+objects<https://www.securecoding.cert.org/confluence/display/java/TSM03-J.+Do+not+publish+partially+initialized+objects>
https://www.securecoding.cert.****org/confluence/display/java/****
TSM01-J.+Do+not+let+the+this+****reference+escape+during+**
object+construction<https://**www.securecoding.cert.org/**
confluence/display/java/TSM01-**J.+Do+not+let+the+this+**
reference+escape+during+**object+construction<https://www.securecoding.cert.org/confluence/display/java/TSM01-J.+Do+not+let+the+this+reference+escape+during+object+construction>
This doesn't mean you can't start a thread during construction, but it
does mean you must be very careful if you do; our old code isn't that
careful. ;)
Cheers,
Peter.
