The CLOSER: Automating Resource Management in Java

While automatic garbage collection has relieved programmers from manual memory management in Java-like languages, managing resources remains a considerable burden and a source of performance problems. This paper presents a novel technique for automatic resource management based on static approximation of resource lifetimes. The source-to-source transformation tool, CLOSER, automatically transforms program code to guarantee that resources are properly disposed and handles arbitrary resource usage patterns. CLOSER generates code for directly disposing any resource whose lifetime can be statically determined; when this is not possible, CLOSER inserts conditional disposal code based on interest-reference counts that identify when the resource can be safely disposed.