Static references are cleared--does Android unload classes at runtime if unused?

Question

I have a question specific to how the classloading / garbage collection works in Android. We have stumbled upon this issue a few times now, and as far as I can tell, Android behaves different here from an ordinary JVM.

The problem is this: We're currently trying to cut down on singleton classes in the app in favor of a single root factory singleton which sole purpose is to manage other manager classes. A top level manager if you will. This makes it easy for us to replace implementations in tests without opting for a full DI solution, since all Activities and Services share the same reference to that root factory.

Here's how it looks like:

public class RootFactory {

    private static volatile RootFactory instance;

    @SuppressWarnings("unused")
    private Context context; // I'd like to keep this for now

    private volatile LanguageSupport languageSupport;
    private volatile Preferences preferences;
    private volatile LoginManager loginManager;
    private volatile TaskManager taskManager;
    private volatile PositionProvider positionManager;
    private volatile SimpleDataStorage simpleDataStorage;

    public static RootFactory initialize(Context context) {
        instance = new RootFactory(context);
        return instance;
    }

    private RootFactory(Context context) {
        this.context = context;
    }

    public static RootFactory getInstance() {
        return instance;
    }

    public LanguageSupport getLanguageSupport() {
        return languageSupport;
    }

    public void setLanguageSupport(LanguageSupport languageSupport) {
        this.languageSupport = languageSupport;
    }

    // ...
}

initialize is called once, in Application.onCreate, i.e. before any Activity or Service is started. Now, here is the problem: the getInstance method sometimes comes back as null -- even when invoked on the same thread! That sounds like it isn't a visibility problem; instead, the static singleton reference hold on class level seems to actually have been cleared by the garbage collector. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions here, but could this be because the Android garbage collector or class loading mechanism can actually unload classes when memory gets scarce, in which case the only reference to the singleton instance will go away? I'm not really deep into Java's memory model, but I suppose that shouldn't happen, otherwise this common way of implementing singletons wouldn't work on any JVM right?

Any idea why this is happening exactly?

PS: one can work around this by keeping "global" references on the single application instance instead. That has proven to be reliable when one must keep on object around across the entire life-time of an app.

UPDATE

Apparently my use of volatile here caused some confusion. My intention was to ensure that the static reference's current state is always visible to all threads accessing it. I must do that because I am both writing and reading that reference from more than one thread: In an ordinary app run just in the main application thread, but in an instrumentation test run, where objects get replaced with mocks, I write it from the instrumentation thread and read it on the UI thread. I could have as well synchronized the call to getInstance, but that's more expensive since it requires claiming an object lock. See What is an efficient way to implement a singleton pattern in Java? for a more detailed discussion around this.

Answer 1

Both you (@Matthias) and Mark Murphy (@CommonsWare) are correct in what you say, but the gist seems lost. (The use of volatile is correct and classes are not unloaded.)

The crux of the question is where initialize is called from.

Here is what I think is happening:

• You are calling initialize from an Activity *
• Android needs more memory, kills the whole Process
• Android restarts the Application and the top Activity
• You call getInstance which will return null, as initialize was not called

Correct me if I'm wrong.

---

Update:
My assumption – that initialize is called from an Activity * – seems to have been wrong in this case. However, I'll leave this answer up because that scenario is a common source of bugs.

Answer 2

I have never in my life seen a static data member declared volatile. I'm not even sure what that means.

Static data members will exist until the process is terminated or until you get rid of them (e.g., null out the static reference). The process may be terminated once all activities and services are proactively closed by the user (e.g., BACK button) and your code (e.g., stopService()). The process may be terminated even with live components if Android is desperately short on RAM, but this is rather unusual. The process may be terminated with a live service if Android thinks that your service has been in the background too long, though it may restart that service depending on your return value from onStartCommand().

Classes are not unloaded, period, short of the process being terminated.

To address the other of @sergui's points, activities may be destroyed, with instance state stored (albeit in RAM, not "fixed storage"), to free up RAM. Android will tend to do this before terminating active processes, though if it destroys the last activity for a process and there are no running services, that process will be a prime candidate for termination.

The only thing significantly strange about your implementation is your use of volatile.

Answer 3

Static references are cleared whenever the system feels like it and your application is not top-level (the user is not running it explicitly). Whenever your app is minimized and the OS wants some more memory it will either kill your app or serialize it on fixed storage for later use, but in both cases static variables are erased. Also, whenever your app gets a Force Close error, all statics are erased as well. In my experience I saw that it's always better to use variables in the Application object than static variables.