Monday, May 07, 2012

GC KeepAlive method–what it really does

Quite useful, I was missing this corner..
Below is quote from documentation as it is provided by code author.



// This method DOES NOT DO ANYTHING in and of itself.  It's used to
// prevent a finalizable object from losing any outstanding references
// a touch too early. The JIT is very aggressive about keeping an
// object's lifetime to as small a window as possible, to the point
// where a 'this' pointer isn't considered live in an instance method
// unless you read a value from the instance. So for finalizable
// objects that store a handle or pointer and provide a finalizer that
// cleans them up, this can cause subtle ----s with the finalizer
// thread. This isn't just about handles - it can happen with just
// about any finalizable resource.
//
// Users should insert a call to this method near the end of a
// method where they must keep an object alive for the duration of that
// method, up until this method is called. Here is an example:
//
// "...all you really need is one object with a Finalize method, and a
// second object with a Close/Dispose/Done method. Such as the following
// contrived example:
//
// class Foo {
// Stream stream = ...;
// protected void Finalize() { stream.Close(); }
// void Problem() { stream.MethodThatSpansGCs(); }
// static void Main() { new Foo().Problem(); }
// }
//
//
// In this code, Foo will be finalized in the middle of
// stream.MethodThatSpansGCs, thus closing a stream still in use."
//
// If we insert a call to GC.KeepAlive(this) at the end of Problem(), then
// Foo doesn't get finalized and the stream says open.
[MethodImplAttribute(MethodImplOptions.InternalCall)]
[ReliabilityContract(Consistency.WillNotCorruptState, Cer.Success)]
public static extern void KeepAlive(Object obj);