Re: Avoiding Running Out Of Memory
bugbear wrote:
Lew wrote:
markspace wrote:
"Lawrence D'Oliveiro" wrote:
ThisImage.recycle();
I don't see a type for ThisImage in your code, and the Java API
doesn't seem
to have a recycle method. What API is this?
With a little help from my friend Google I found:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/Bitmap.html
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/Bitmap.html#recycle()
which tells us its purpose is to
"Free the native object associated with this bitmap, and clear the
reference to the pixel data. This will not free the pixel data
synchronously; it simply allows it to be garbage collected if there are
no other references."
Google also showed me that the use of 'Bitmap#recycle()' has turned up
in the OP's scenario before.
It's odd, though. The method's documentation also avers,
"This is an advanced call, and normally need not be called, since the
normal GC process will free up this memory when there are no more
references to this bitmap.
There's a distinction between what that doc says, and taking steps to
ensure that all references to the bitmap are null'd out or destroyed
as soon as possible.
That's just it. The docs say that normal use should suffice for that, but I
think they ignore the question of out-of-JVM resources (native). It's well
known that nuliing a reference is generally unnecessary (with notable
exceptions) and can even hinder rather than help GC (according to Brian
Goetz). All that's usually needed is for references to go out of scope, the
preferred way to facilitate GC.
The normal "steps to ensure that all references" die include knowing what
references you keep, in order to avoid packratting.
I imagine the recycle call is intended to facilitate the latter.
I conclude that the purpose is more to facilitate release of native resources,
based on the docs and the answers from others in this thread.
--
Lew
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
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