[riena-dev] Losing my reference

[Stefan Liebig <Stefan.Liebig@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rienars,

While strolling through the usages of our ExtensionInjector (as part of 
a QA task) I realized that we are producing memory leaks. This happens 
every time e.g. when we wire instances (i.e. perform service and/or 
extension injection) that have been created from extensions (this 
happens automagicaly). These instances do not have a dedicated life 
cycle - they do not get disposed or stopped in such a way that the 
injectors could take care of that. These instances simply will not be 
used when no longer needed and than they will be garbage collected.
Unfortunately this will not happen when they have been wired because the 
injectors keep a reference to those instances and the injectors also 
register themselves as listeners to the framework (osgi/equinox). This 
connection to the framework will only be cut when the injectors get stopped!

To avoid this leaking I have ´renovated´ the injectors. They do no 
longer keep a strong reference to their ´targets´ - they use now a 
WeakRef which is a utility class that uses internally a WeakReference to 
track the reference to the ´targets´. When such a reference is about to 
be reclaimed by the garbage collector the WekRef's notification callback 
method is called and .. drum roll .. the injector will be stopped.

Since this is very delicate stuff - please watch out for weird or 
unexpected behavior in Riena. ;-)

Tschüß,
Stefan


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