At 08:17 PM 01/04/2002, Bill Pugh wrote:
>[This came up in a discussion with Hans Boehm -- Bill]
>
>There are a number of circumstances in which it would be useful to
>synchronize constructors; if you need make an object visible to other
>threads during construction, and want to use synchronization to prevent
>methods from being invoked on the object until after construction is complete.
>
>In fact, constructors are the only method that really cries out for
>synchronization in the method declaration, since it allows you to do
>something you can't do with synchronized(this) { ... }. Using synchronized
>(this), you can't get the lock until after the call to the constructor for
>the superclass returns.
>
>The JLS spec says synchronized constructors aren't allowed, explaining
>(incorrectly) that this is since synchronized constructors wouldn't be useful.
>
>However, as far as I can tell, the JVMS allows <init> methods to have the
>ACC_SYNCHRONIZED flag set, even though you can't set this bit in the
>output from javac.
The JVMS 2nd edition, section 4.6 says "A specific instance initialization
method [i.e a constructor] may have at most one of its ACC_PRIVATE,
ACC_PROTECTED and ACC_PUBLIC flags set and may also have its ACC_STRICT
flag set, but may not have any of the other flags in Table 4.5 [which
includes ACC_SYNCHRONIZED] set".
Even if Sun's verifier isn't checking for this others might be. I think the
only way to make a fully compatible extension is to add a new bit.
>I also tried constructing some class files with synchronized constructors,
>and ran it with -Xfuture -Xverify:all under 1.4beta3, and no errors were
>generated. However, as far as I can tell, Hotspot completely ignores
>ACC_SYNCHRONIZED in <init> methods.
>So, are the JVM implementors happy/content with the idea of dealing an
>additional requirement of handling with classfiles that have synchronized
><init> methods? Does this cause any issues in the implementation?
>
>And if we decide to handle it in classfiles, do we also want to change the
>Java source syntax to allow it?
>
> Bill
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