GC assertions: using the garbage collector to check heap properties

  • Authors:

  • Edward Aftandilian;Samuel Z. Guyer

  • Affiliations:

  • Tufts University, Medford MA;Tufts University, Medford MA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Memory systems performance and correctness: held in conjunction with the Thirteenth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS '08)
  • Year:
  • 2008

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This paper introduces GC assertions, a system interface that programmers can use to check for errors, such as data structure invariant violations, and to diagnose performance problems, such as memory leaks. GC assertions are checked by the garbage collector, which is in a unique position to gather information and answer questions about the lifetime and connectivity of objects in the heap. We introduce several kinds of GC assertions, and we describe how they are implemented in the collector. We also describe our reporting mechanism, which provides a complete path through the heap to the offending objects. We show results for one type of assertion that allows the programmer to indicate that an object should be reclaimed at the next GC. We find that using this assertion we can quickly identify a memory leak and its cause with negligible overhead.