Motivation
There's currently no way to determine whether an arbitrary ByteBuf
behaves internally like a "singluar" buffer or a composite one, and this
can be important to know when making decisions about how to manipulate
it in an efficient way.
An example of this is the ByteBuf#discardReadBytes() method which
increases the writable bytes for a contiguous buffer (by readerIndex)
but does not for a composite one.
Unfortunately !(buf instanceof CompositeByteBuf) is not reliable, since
for example this will be true in the case of a sliced CompositeByteBuf
or some third-party composite implementation.
isContiguous was chosen over isComposite since we want to assume "not
contiguous" in the unknown/default case - the doc will it clear that
false does not imply composite.
Modifications
- Add ByteBuf#isContiguous() which returns true by default
- Override the "concrete" ByteBuf impls to return true and ensure
wrapped/derived impls delegate it appropriately
- Include some basic unit tests
Result
Better assumptions/decisions possible when manipulating arbitrary
ByteBufs, for example when combining/cumulating them.
Motivation
region is preserved when capacity is increased, not just the readable
part. The behaviour is still different however when the capacity is
_decreased_ - data outside the currently-readable region is zeroed.
Modifications
Update ByteBuf capacity(int) implementations to also copy the whole
buffer region when the new capacity is less than the current capacity.
Result
Consistent behaviour of ByteBuf#capacity(int) regardless of whether the
new capacity is greater than or less than the current capacity.
Motivation
Underlying array allocations in UnpooledHeapByteBuf are intended be done
via the protected allocateArray(int) method, so that they can be tracked
and/or overridden by subclasses, for example
UnpooledByteBufAllocator$InstrumentedUnpooledHeapByteBuf or #8015. But
it looks like an explicit allocation was missed in the copy(int,int)
method.
Modification
Just use alloc().heapBuffer(...) for the allocation
Result
No possibility of "missing" array allocations when ByteBuf#copy is used.
Motivation
There are a few minor inconsistencies / redundant operations in the
ByteBuf implementations which would be good to fix.
Modifications
- Unnecessary ByteBuffer.duplicate() performed in
CompositeByteBuf.nioBuffer(int,int)
- Add missing checkIndex(...) check to
ReadOnlyByteBufferBuf.nioBuffer(int,int)
- Remove duplicate bounds check in
ReadOnlyByteBufferBuf.getBytes(int,byte[],int,int)
- Omit redundant bounds check in
UnpooledHeapByteBuf.getBytes(int,ByteBuffer)
Result
More consistency and slightly less overhead
Motivation:
We can just use Objects.requireNonNull(...) as a replacement for ObjectUtil.checkNotNull(....)
Modifications:
- Use Objects.requireNonNull(...)
Result:
Less code to maintain.
Motivation:
There are currently many more places where this could be used which were
possibly not considered when the method was added.
If https://github.com/netty/netty/pull/8388 is included in its current
form, a number of these places could additionally make use of the same
BYTE_ARRAYS threadlocal.
There's also a couple of adjacent places where an optimistically-pooled
heap buffer is used for temp byte storage which could use the
threadlocal too in preference to allocating a temp heap bytebuf wrapper.
For example
https://github.com/netty/netty/blob/4.1/buffer/src/main/java/io/netty/buffer/ByteBufUtil.java#L1417.
Modifications:
Replace new byte[] with PlatformDependent.allocateUninitializedArray()
where appropriate; make use of ByteBufUtil.getBytes() in some places
which currently perform the equivalent logic, including avoiding copy of
backing array if possible (although would be rare).
Result:
Further potential speed-up with java9+ and appropriate compile flags.
Many of these places could be on latency-sensitive code paths.
Motivation:
Currently there is not a clear way to provide a byte array to a netty
ByteBuf and be informed when it is released. This is a would be a
valuable addition for projects that integrate with netty but also pool
their own byte arrays.
Modification:
Modified the UnpooledHeapByteBuf class so that the freeArray method is
protected visibility instead of default. This will allow a user to
subclass the UnpooledHeapByteBuf, provide a byte array, and override
freeArray to return the byte array to a pool when it is called.
Additionally this makes this implementation equivalent to
UnpooledDirectByteBuf (freeDirect is protected).
Additionally allocateArray is also made protect to provide another override
option for subclasses.
Result:
Users can override UnpooledHeapByteBuf#freeArray and
UnpooledHeapByteBuf#allocateArray.
Motivation:
The `#ensureAccessible` method in `UnpooledHeapByteBuf#capacity` used
to prevent NPE if buffer is released and `array` is `null`. In all
other implementations of `ByteBuf` the accessible is not checked by
`capacity` method. We can assign an empty array to `array`
in the `deallocate` and don't worry about NPE in the `#capacity`.
This will help reduce the number of repeated calls of the
`#ensureAccessible` in many operations with `UnpooledHeapByteBuf`.
Modifications:
1. Remove `#ensureAccessible` call from `UnpooledHeapByteBuf#capacity`.
Use the `EmptyArrays#EMPTY_BYTES` instead of `null` in `#deallocate`.
2. Fix access checks in `AbstractUnsafeSwappedByteBuf` and
`AbstractByteBuf#slice` that relied on `#ensureAccessible`
in `UnpooledHeapByteBuf#capacity`. This was found by unit tests.
Result:
Less double calls of `#ensureAccessible` for `UnpooledHeapByteBuf`.
Motivation:
The constrcutors a protected atm but the classes are public. We should make the constructors public as well to make it easier to write your own ByteBufAllocator.
Modifications:
Change constructors to be public and add some javadocs.
Result:
Easier to create own ByteBufAllocator.
Motivation:
Often its useful for the user to be able to get some stats about the memory allocated via an allocator.
Modifications:
- Allow to obtain the used heap and direct memory for an allocator
- Add test case
Result:
Fixes [#6341]
Motivation:
PooledByteBuf.capacity(...) miss to enforce maxCapacity() and so its possible to increase the capacity of the buffer even if it will be bigger then maxCapacity().
Modifications:
- Correctly enforce maxCapacity()
- Add unit tests for capacity(...) calls.
Result:
Correctly enforce maxCapacity().
Motivation:
In some ByteBuf implementations we not correctly implement getBytes(index, ByteBuffer).
Modifications:
Correct code to do what is defined in the javadocs and adding test.
Result:
Implementation works as described.
Motivation:
Some ByteBuf implementations do not override all necessary methods,
which can lead to potentially sub-optimal behavior.
Also, SlicedByteBuf does not perform the range check correctly due to
missing overrides.
Modifications:
- Add missing overrides
- Use unwrap() instead of direct member access in derived buffers for
consistency
- Merge unwrap0() into unwrap() using covariant return type
- Deprecate AbstractDerivedByteBuf and its subtypes, because they were
not meant to be public
Result:
Correctness
Motivation
See ##3229
Modifications:
Add methods with position independent FileChannel calls to ByteBuf and its subclasses.
Results:
The user can use these new methods to read/write ByteBuff without updating FileChannel's position.
As discussed in #3209, this PR adds Little Endian accessors
to ByteBuf and descendants.
Corresponding accessors were added to UnsafeByteBufUtil,
HeapByteBufferUtil to avoid calling `reverseBytes`.
Deprecate `order()`, `order(buf)` and `SwappedByteBuf`.
Motiviation:
We have a lot of duplicated code which makes it hard to maintain.
Modification:
Move shared code to HeapByteBufUtil and use it in the implementations.
Result:
Less duplicated code and so easier to maintain.
Motivation:
sun.misc.Unsafe allows us to handle heap ByteBuf in a more efficient matter. We should use special ByteBuf implementation when sun.misc.Unsafe can be used to increase performance.
Modifications:
- Add PooledUnsafeHeapByteBuf and UnpooledUnsafeHeapByteBuf that are used when sun.misc.Unsafe is ready to use.
- Add UnsafeHeapSwappedByteBuf
Result:
Better performance when using heap buffers and sun.misc.Unsafe is ready to use.
Motivation:
Because of how we use reference counting we need to check for the reference count before each operation that touches the underlying memory. This is especially true as we use sun.misc.Cleaner.clean() to release the memory ASAP when possible. Because of this the user may cause a SEGFAULT if an operation is called that tries to access the backing memory after it was released.
Modification:
Correctly check the reference count on all methods that access the underlying memory or expose it via a ByteBuffer.
Result:
Safer usage of ByteBuf
that are not assigned to the same EventLoop. In general get* operations should always be safe to be used from different Threads.
This aslo include unit tests that show the issue
The API changes made so far turned out to increase the memory footprint
and consumption while our intention was actually decreasing them.
Memory consumption issue:
When there are many connections which does not exchange data frequently,
the old Netty 4 API spent a lot more memory than 3 because it always
allocates per-handler buffer for each connection unless otherwise
explicitly stated by a user. In a usual real world load, a client
doesn't always send requests without pausing, so the idea of having a
buffer whose life cycle if bound to the life cycle of a connection
didn't work as expected.
Memory footprint issue:
The old Netty 4 API decreased overall memory footprint by a great deal
in many cases. It was mainly because the old Netty 4 API did not
allocate a new buffer and event object for each read. Instead, it
created a new buffer for each handler in a pipeline. This works pretty
well as long as the number of handlers in a pipeline is only a few.
However, for a highly modular application with many handlers which
handles connections which lasts for relatively short period, it actually
makes the memory footprint issue much worse.
Changes:
All in all, this is about retaining all the good changes we made in 4 so
far such as better thread model and going back to the way how we dealt
with message events in 3.
To fix the memory consumption/footprint issue mentioned above, we made a
hard decision to break the backward compatibility again with the
following changes:
- Remove MessageBuf
- Merge Buf into ByteBuf
- Merge ChannelInboundByte/MessageHandler and ChannelStateHandler into ChannelInboundHandler
- Similar changes were made to the adapter classes
- Merge ChannelOutboundByte/MessageHandler and ChannelOperationHandler into ChannelOutboundHandler
- Similar changes were made to the adapter classes
- Introduce MessageList which is similar to `MessageEvent` in Netty 3
- Replace inboundBufferUpdated(ctx) with messageReceived(ctx, MessageList)
- Replace flush(ctx, promise) with write(ctx, MessageList, promise)
- Remove ByteToByteEncoder/Decoder/Codec
- Replaced by MessageToByteEncoder<ByteBuf>, ByteToMessageDecoder<ByteBuf>, and ByteMessageCodec<ByteBuf>
- Merge EmbeddedByteChannel and EmbeddedMessageChannel into EmbeddedChannel
- Add SimpleChannelInboundHandler which is sometimes more useful than
ChannelInboundHandlerAdapter
- Bring back Channel.isWritable() from Netty 3
- Add ChannelInboundHandler.channelWritabilityChanges() event
- Add RecvByteBufAllocator configuration property
- Similar to ReceiveBufferSizePredictor in Netty 3
- Some existing configuration properties such as
DatagramChannelConfig.receivePacketSize is gone now.
- Remove suspend/resumeIntermediaryDeallocation() in ByteBuf
This change would have been impossible without @normanmaurer's help. He
fixed, ported, and improved many parts of the changes.
- Fixes#826
Unsafe.isFreed(), free(), suspend/resumeIntermediaryAllocations() are not that dangerous. internalNioBuffer() and internalNioBuffers() are dangerous but it seems like nobody is using it even inside Netty. Removing those two methods also removes the necessity to keep Unsafe interface at all.
This pull request introduces the new default ByteBufAllocator implementation based on jemalloc, with a some differences:
* Minimum possible buffer capacity is 16 (jemalloc: 2)
* Uses binary heap with random branching (jemalloc: red-black tree)
* No thread-local cache yet (jemalloc has thread-local cache)
* Default page size is 8 KiB (jemalloc: 4 KiB)
* Default chunk size is 16 MiB (jemalloc: 2 MiB)
* Cannot allocate a buffer bigger than the chunk size (jemalloc: possible) because we don't have control over memory layout in Java. A user can work around this issue by creating a composite buffer, but it's not always a feasible option. Although 16 MiB is a pretty big default, a user's handler might need to deal with the bounded buffers when the user wants to deal with a large message.
Also, to ensure the new allocator performs good enough, I wrote a microbenchmark for it and made it a dedicated Maven module. It uses Google's Caliper framework to run and publish the test result (example)
Miscellaneous changes:
* Made some ByteBuf implementations public so that those who implements a new allocator can make use of them.
* Added ByteBufAllocator.compositeBuffer() and its variants.
* ByteBufAllocator.ioBuffer() creates a buffer with 0 capacity.
* UnsafeByteBuf is gone. I added ByteBuf.unsafe() back.
* To avoid extra instantiation, all ByteBuf implementations implement the ByteBuf.Unsafe interface.
* To hide this implementation detail, all ByteBuf implementations are package-private.
* AbstractByteBuf and SwappedByteBuf are public and they do not implement ByteBuf.Unsafe because they don't need to.
* unwrap() is not an unsafe operation anymore.
* ChannelBuf also has unsafe() and Unsafe. ByteBuf.Unsafe extends ChannelBuf.unsafe(). ChannelBuf.unsafe() provides free() operation so that a user does not need to down-cast the buffer in freeInbound/OutboundBuffer().
To perform writes in AioSocketChannel, we get a ByteBuffer view of the
outbound buffer and specify it as a parameter when we call
AsynchronousSocketChannel.write().
In most cases, the write() operation is finished immediately. However,
sometimes, it is scheduled for later execution. In such a case, there's
a chance for a user's handler to append more data to the outbound
buffer.
When more data is appended to the outbound buffer, the outbound buffer
can expand its capacity by itself. Changing the capacity of a buffer is
basically made of the following steps:
1. Allocate a larger new internal memory region.
2. Copy the current content of the buffer to the new memory region.
3. Rewire the buffer so that it refers to the new region.
4. Deallocate the old memory region.
Because the old memory region is deallocated at the step 4, the write
operation scheduled later will access the deallocated region, leading
all sort of data corruption or even segfaults.
To prevent this situation, I added suspendIntermediaryDeallocations()
and resumeIntermediaryDeallocations() to UnsafeByteBuf.
AioSocketChannel.doFlushByteBuf() now calls suspendIntermediaryDealloc()
to defer the deallocation of the old memory regions until the completion
handler is notified.
An AssertionError is triggered by a ByteBuf when beginRead() attempts to
access the buffer which has been freed already. This commit ensures the
buffer is not freed before performing an I/O operation.
To determine if the buffer has been freed, UnsafeByteBuf.isFreed() has
been added.
This commit introduces a new API for ByteBuf allocation which fixes
issue #643 along with refactoring of ByteBuf for simplicity and better
performance. (see #62)
A user can configure the ByteBufAllocator of a Channel via
ChannelOption.ALLOCATOR or ChannelConfig.get/setAllocator(). The
default allocator is currently UnpooledByteBufAllocator.HEAP_BY_DEFAULT.
To allocate a buffer, do not use Unpooled anymore. do the following:
ctx.alloc().buffer(...); // allocator chooses the buffer type.
ctx.alloc().heapBuffer(...);
ctx.alloc().directBuffer(...);
To deallocate a buffer, use the unsafe free() operation:
((UnsafeByteBuf) buf).free();
The following is the list of the relevant changes:
- Add ChannelInboundHandler.freeInboundBuffer() and
ChannelOutboundHandler.freeOutboundBuffer() to let a user free the
buffer he or she allocated. ChannelHandler adapter classes implement
is already, so most users won't need to call free() by themselves.
freeIn/OutboundBuffer() methods are invoked when a Channel is closed
and deregistered.
- All ByteBuf by contract must implement UnsafeByteBuf. To access an
unsafe operation: ((UnsafeByteBuf) buf).internalNioBuffer()
- Replace WrappedByteBuf and ByteBuf.Unsafe with UnsafeByteBuf to
simplify overall class hierarchy and to avoid unnecesary instantiation
of Unsafe instances on an unsafe operation.
- Remove buffer reference counting which is confusing
- Instantiate SwappedByteBuf lazily to avoid instantiation cost
- Rename ChannelFutureFactory to ChannelPropertyAccess and move common
methods between Channel and ChannelHandlerContext there. Also made it
package-private to hide it from a user.
- Remove unused unsafe operations such as newBuffer()
- Add DetectionUtil.canFreeDirectBuffer() so that an allocator decides
which buffer type to use safely
