> What I was trying to get at is that if you're relying on System.gc(),
> you're skating on the edge, memory-wise, tweaking the exact behavior
> of the GC.
>
> I didn't mean to suggest it's not helpful; I've followed with interest
> your reports of your experience. But I'd characterize calling
> System.gc() as an optimization hack, not a workaround for a system
> problem.
>
> By all means, do the extra GC. It can make the difference between a
> useful and useless app.
>
> I was really responding to Stephen's comment:
> "Is Dalvik such a crappy virtual machine that it can't be bothered to
> run the garbage collector before spitting out an OutOfMemory
> exception? "
>
> To which the answer is, "no, detects it when it runs the GC. But
> sometimes in special cases, an extra GC can free up memory that the
> first one couldn't".
>
> Could DalvicVM handle bitmaps better? Yes. But I wouldn't call it a
> "crappy VM", and it runs the GC before failing.
>
And that was the whole point. In fact, the posted algorithm could try
to get into a loop, running the GC and trying to load the bitmap
again, until it succeeded (not likely) or the VM crashed and it would
be equally misguided. I was specifically objecting to that hopeful GC
run in an OutOfMemory situation, before allocating a huge data
structure again, while in a possibly non-recoverable state.
Catching OutOfMemoryError allows one to at least try to cleanup before
death - it is not a plugin system for the garbage collector.
Now, an explicit GC *before* big allocations could help. This would at
the very least allow the VM to free memory (if any) before the fact.
I'd take it as a hint to the virtual machine.
-- Stephen
Sent from my Emacs
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