Name: rmT116609 Date: 04/13/2001


affects all Hotspot versions AFAIK, and -classic too.

SoftReferences are cleared by the VM under low memory conditions. The -Xmx and -
Xms control this behaviour, and it's different under the Server VM compared to
the Client VM apparently.

But, _it's not documented_. This means that any developers wanting to inform
their users how to control their applications memory use have to test it on
each VM they support to figure out how it works, which is time consuming and
annoying.

Please can you document the affect of the -Xm flags on SoftReference clearance
in future. I wouldn't want to think that Sun are letting their vested hardware
interests interfere with the Java platform, now would I? :-)
(Review ID: 120542)
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