As you are probably aware, I have been working through the memory leak protection / detection code checking that the code is still relevant for Tomcat 9. Having reviewed the history of clearReferencesStatic I'd like to propose removing it in 9.0.x and deprecating it in 8.0.x.
clearReferencesStatic was originally added to address unidentified memory leaks including suspected GC bugs in early JDKs (1.3, 1.4 time frame). It is disabled by default because it is known to break some libraries such as log4j. My reasons for proposing removal are: 1. The presence of GC bugs was just a theory. My own theory is that the suspected GC bugs were actually memory leaks where the root cause had not been identified. 2. In the unlikely event some issues do remain, I'd prefer to identify the root causes and work-around them rather than apply this general fix which is as likely, if not more likely, to break things. 3. Disabling this by default has not caused an increase in the reports of memory leaks. Thoughts? Objections? Mark --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@tomcat.apache.org
