First stab at a weakref test suite

Ruby
1

Hi all,

I decided to take a stab at creating a minimal test suite for WeakRef
(based on a post by Charles Oliver N. for JRuby). The only problem
is that I get two unexpected failures. I’m not sure if it’s Test::Unit
fighting with me or what.

Consider the following example:

require ‘weakref’
str = ‘hello’
ref = WeakRef.new(str)

p ref ‘hello’
GC.start
p ref ‘hello’
str = nil
p ref # ‘hello’
GC.start
p ref # error

I follow the same pattern in the tests, but it doesn’t raise the
expected error. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Dan

tc_weakref.rb

require ‘test/unit’
require ‘weakref’

class TC_WeakRef < Test::Unit::TestCase
def setup
@ref = nil
@str = ‘hello’
GC.enable
end

def test_weakref_constructor
   assert_respond_to(WeakRef, :new)
   assert_nothing_raised{ @ref = WeakRef.new(@str) }
   assert_kind_of(WeakRef, @ref)
end

# TODO: Figure out why last test fails
def test_weakref
   assert_nothing_raised{ @ref = WeakRef.new(@str) }
   assert_equal('hello', @ref)

   assert_nothing_raised{ GC.start }
   assert_equal('hello', @ref)

   assert_nothing_raised{ @str = nil }
   assert_equal('hello', @ref)

   assert_nothing_raised{ GC.start }
   assert_raise(WeakRef::RefError){ @str = @ref * 3 }
end

def test_weakref_is_alive_basic
   assert_nothing_raised{ @ref = WeakRef.new(@str) }
   assert_respond_to(@ref, :weakref_alive?)
end

# TODO: Figure out why last test fails
def test_weakref_is_alive
   assert_nothing_raised{ @ref = WeakRef.new(@str) }
   assert_equal(true, @ref.weakref_alive?)

   assert_nothing_raised{ GC.start }
   assert_equal(true, @ref.weakref_alive?)

   assert_nothing_raised{ @str = nil }
   assert_equal(true, @ref.weakref_alive?)

   assert_nothing_raised{ GC.start }
   assert_equal(false, @ref.weakref_alive?)
end

def teardown
   @str = nil
   @ref = nil
end

end

2

On Dec 20, 2007, at 21:45 PM, Daniel B. wrote:

str = ‘hello’
I follow the same pattern in the tests, but it doesn’t raise the
expected error. Any ideas?

Since the GC is conservative, references may exist longer than you
expect because the item that should be collected is still referenced
from the stack. I don’t know of an easy way around this.

3

Eric H. wrote:

On Dec 20, 2007, at 21:45 PM, Daniel B. wrote:

I follow the same pattern in the tests, but it doesn’t raise the
expected error. Any ideas?

Since the GC is conservative, references may exist longer than you
expect because the item that should be collected is still referenced
from the stack. I don’t know of an easy way around this.

This is probably the largest reason why a weakref suite will be a little
tricky. My best recommendation would be to loop calling GC.start until
the reference gets collected; perhaps with an upper count… “if we
reach 1000 iterations and it’s not collected, it isn’t working”.

  • Charlie
4

On Dec 21, 2007, at 05:50 AM, Charles Oliver N. wrote:

GC.start until the reference gets collected; perhaps with an upper
count… “if we reach 1000 iterations and it’s not collected, it
isn’t working”.

If it isn’t collected after 1, I doubt it will be collected after
1000. You’d have better luck manipulating the stack (calling methods
recursively that eventually allocate things), but you’re still not
guaranteed that any object will be collected when you want with ruby
1.8 or 1.9.

5

On 21/12/2007, Eric H. [email protected] wrote:

little tricky. My best recommendation would be to loop calling

Yes, the behavior looks very non-deterministic from the outside, it
even depends on naming of the tests. I had better luck making it work
with 1.8 (works as is) but it won’t work with 1.9. The first test that
tests the weakref dies does not succeed, and the second does.

This one works for me but it likely depends on exact state of the heap
or something like that which is system specific:

require ‘test/unit’
require ‘weakref’

class TC_WeakRef < Test::Unit::TestCase
def setup
@ref = nil
@str = “hello”
GC.enable
end

Fails in 1.9 because WeakRef does not have inspect,

and it pretends to be String

def test_weakref_constructor
assert_respond_to(WeakRef, :new)
assert_nothing_raised{ @ref = WeakRef.new(@str) }
assert_kind_of(WeakRef, @ref)
end

TODO: Figure out why last test fails

somehow using the string makes a reference somewhere

def test_weakref_2
str = @str.dup

  assert_nothing_raised{ @ref = WeakRef.new(@str) }
  assert_equal(true, @ref.weakref_alive?)
  assert_equal str, @ref

  assert_nothing_raised{ GC.start }
  assert_equal(true, @ref.weakref_alive?)
  assert_equal str, @ref

  assert_nothing_raised{ @str = nil }
  assert_equal(true, @ref.weakref_alive?)
  assert_equal str, @ref

  assert_nothing_raised{ GC.start }
  #assert_equal(false, @ref.weakref_alive?)
  #assert_raise(WeakRef::RefError){ @str = @ref * 3 }

end

def test_weakref_is_alive_basic
assert_nothing_raised{ @ref = WeakRef.new(@str) }
assert_respond_to(@ref, :weakref_alive?)
end

TODO: Figure out why last test does not fail

def test_weakref_is_alive
assert_nothing_raised{ @ref = WeakRef.new(@str) }
assert_equal(true, @ref.weakref_alive?)

  assert_nothing_raised{ GC.start }
  assert_equal(true, @ref.weakref_alive?)

  assert_nothing_raised{ @str = nil }
  assert_equal(true, @ref.weakref_alive?)

  assert_nothing_raised{ GC.start }
  assert_equal(false, @ref.weakref_alive?)
  assert_raise(WeakRef::RefError){ @str = @ref * 3 }

end

def teardown
@str = nil
@ref = nil
end
end

6

On 22/12/2007, Daniel B. [email protected] wrote:

I took a look at the Python weakref test suite. I quickly realized
that it appeared to be a richer interface. Maybe that’s part of the
problem - the interface we have isn’t testable. Take a look here:

http://www.python.org/doc/2.4/lib/module-weakref.html

Then again, maybe I’m way off base. Anyway, I think we should at least
take a look at it and see if we want to steal any ideas from it. The
corresponding test file is test_weakref.py, btw.

Apparently the reason the python weakref is testable is that you can
explicitly delete an object. At least that’s what the test code seems
to do. This is not possible in ruby, and the ruby gc is not
deterministic enough to always free all unused objects. So it’s not
the weakref what would need changing to make weakref testable but the
memory allocation (and especially deallocation) interface.

Thanks

Michal

7

On Dec 21, 6:50 am, Charles Oliver N. [email protected]
wrote:

tricky. My best recommendation would be to loop calling GC.start until
the reference gets collected; perhaps with an upper count… “if we
reach 1000 iterations and it’s not collected, it isn’t working”.

I took a look at the Python weakref test suite. I quickly realized
that it appeared to be a richer interface. Maybe that’s part of the
problem - the interface we have isn’t testable. Take a look here:

http://www.python.org/doc/2.4/lib/module-weakref.html

Then again, maybe I’m way off base. Anyway, I think we should at least
take a look at it and see if we want to steal any ideas from it. The
corresponding test file is test_weakref.py, btw.

Regards,

Dan