How to force garbage collection in Java?

Question

Your best option is to call System.gc() which simply is a hint to the garbage collector that you want it to do a collection. There is no way to force and immediate collection though as the garbage collector is non-deterministic.

The jlibs library has a good utility class for garbage collection. You can force garbage collection using a nifty little trick with WeakReference objects.

RuntimeUtil.gc() from the jlibs:

   /**
    * This method guarantees that garbage collection is
    * done unlike <code>{@link System#gc()}</code>
    */
   public static void gc() {
     Object obj = new Object();
     WeakReference ref = new WeakReference<Object>(obj);
     obj = null;
     while(ref.get() != null) {
       System.gc();
     }
   }

The best (if not only) way to force a GC would be to write a custom JVM. I believe the Garbage collectors are pluggable so you could probably just pick one of the available implementations and tweak it.

Note: This is NOT an easy answer.

Using the Java™ Virtual Machine Tool Interface (JVM TI), the function

jvmtiError ForceGarbageCollection(jvmtiEnv* env)

will "Force the VM to perform a garbage collection." The JVM TI is part of the JavaTM Platform Debugger Architecture (JPDA).