bind: replace Java finalizers with PhantomReferences

Android runs a finalizer watchdog that tracks the running time of
finalizers and throws an exception if any runs too long. Our
finalizers do very little work and as such are not affected by the
timeout. However, there has been reports, for example:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24021609/how-to-handle-java-util-concurrent-timeoutexception-android-os-binderproxy-fin

that the watchdog does not take into account periods where the device
goes to sleep in the middle of a finalizer run. So if a given app runs
in the background, the Java GC starts a finalizer and the device goes
to sleep before it returns, an exception will crash the app if the sleep
period extends the watchdog timeout.

The problem might be fixed on some newer version of Android, but the
problem is reported for as late as Android 6.

The suggested workaround is to use PhantomReferences and run a
background thread that take dead references off a ReferenceQueue and
perform cleanup.

This CL builds on the previous CL and splits up the Ref class so Refs
only reference counts Java objects, while a new class GoRef tracks Go
references. The Go references are wrapped in PhantomReferences that in
turn appear on a GoRefQueue to be cleaned up by a background (daemon)
Thread.

Change-Id: I04e3296b851999c612d3baf6a593cc044c2c5bdd
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/106876
Reviewed-by: Hyang-Ah Hana Kim <hyangah@gmail.com>
15 files changed
tree: 50c96b01e4bf544789a0d0e69a931bd694e8da5a
  1. app/
  2. asset/
  3. bind/
  4. cmd/
  5. doc/
  6. event/
  7. example/
  8. exp/
  9. geom/
  10. gl/
  11. internal/
  12. misc/
  13. testdata/
  14. .gitattributes
  15. .gitignore
  16. AUTHORS
  17. codereview.cfg
  18. CONTRIBUTING.md
  19. CONTRIBUTORS
  20. LICENSE
  21. PATENTS
  22. README.md
README.md

Go support for Mobile devices

The Go mobile repository holds packages and build tools for using Go on mobile platforms.

Package documentation as a starting point:

Caution image

The Go Mobile project is experimental. Use this at your own risk. While we are working hard to improve it, neither Google nor the Go team can provide end-user support.

This is early work and installing the build system requires Go 1.5. Follow the instructions on golang.org/wiki/Mobile to install the gomobile command, build the basic and the bind example apps.


Contributions to Go are appreciated. See https://golang.org/doc/contribute.html.