android garbage collection

The garbage collection process in Kotlin for Android is responsible for automatically reclaiming memory that is no longer in use by the application. Here is an explanation of each step involved:

  1. Allocation: The process begins when the application requests memory allocation for an object. This can be done using the new keyword or other object creation methods in Kotlin.

  2. Reachability Analysis: Once an object is allocated, the garbage collector analyzes its reachability. It checks if the object is still being referenced by any active part of the code. If it is, then the object is considered reachable and is not eligible for garbage collection.

  3. Marking: In this step, the garbage collector marks all the reachable objects. It starts from the root objects (such as the main function or any object directly referenced from it) and traverses the object graph to mark all the reachable objects. Any objects that are not marked during this process are considered unreachable.

  4. Sweeping: After marking the reachable objects, the garbage collector sweeps through the memory to reclaim any unreachable objects. The memory occupied by these objects is deallocated and made available for future allocations.

  5. Finalization: If any objects have a finalizer, they go through a finalization process before being reclaimed. The finalizer is a method that is called before the object is garbage collected. It allows the object to perform any necessary cleanup operations.

  6. Deallocation: Once the unreachable objects have been identified and the finalization process is complete, the garbage collector deallocates the memory occupied by these objects. This memory is then added to the free memory pool, ready to be used for future object allocations.

By automating the memory management process, the garbage collector in Kotlin helps developers focus on writing code without worrying about explicitly freeing memory. It ensures that memory is efficiently reclaimed, preventing memory leaks and improving the overall performance of the application.