runtime: improve AddCleanup documentation

Steer people from SetFinalizer to AddCleanup. Address some of the
*non*-constraints on AddCleanup. Add some of the subtlety from the
SetFinalizer documentation to the AddCleanup documentation.

Updates #67535.
Updates #70425.

Change-Id: I8d13b756ca866051b8a5c19327fd5a76f5e0f3d7
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/go/+/634318
Reviewed-by: Michael Knyszek <[email protected]>
LUCI-TryBot-Result: Go LUCI <[email protected]>
Auto-Submit: Austin Clements <[email protected]>

Author: aclements

src/runtime/mcleanup.go

@@ -12,24 +12,37 @@ import (
 // AddCleanup attaches a cleanup function to ptr. Some time after ptr is no longer
 // reachable, the runtime will call cleanup(arg) in a separate goroutine.
 //
-// If ptr is reachable from cleanup or arg, ptr will never be collected
-// and the cleanup will never run. AddCleanup panics if arg is equal to ptr.
+// A typical use is that ptr is an object wrapping an underlying resource (e.g.,
+// a File object wrapping an OS file descriptor), arg is the underlying resource
+// (e.g., the OS file descriptor), and the cleanup function releases the underlying
+// resource (e.g., by calling the close system call).
 //
-// The cleanup(arg) call is not always guaranteed to run; in particular it is not
-// guaranteed to run before program exit.
+// There are few constraints on ptr. In particular, multiple cleanups may be
+// attached to the same pointer, or to different pointers within the same
+// allocation.
 //
-// Cleanups are not guaranteed to run if the size of T is zero bytes, because
-// it may share same address with other zero-size objects in memory. See
-// https://go.dev/ref/spec#Size_and_alignment_guarantees.
+// If ptr is reachable from cleanup or arg, ptr will never be collected
+// and the cleanup will never run. As a protection against simple cases of this,
+// AddCleanup panics if arg is equal to ptr.
 //
 // There is no specified order in which cleanups will run.
+// In particular, if several objects point to each other and all become
+// unreachable at the same time, their cleanups all become eligible to run
+// and can run in any order. This is true even if the objects form a cycle.
 //
 // A single goroutine runs all cleanup calls for a program, sequentially. If a
 // cleanup function must run for a long time, it should create a new goroutine.
 //
 // If ptr has both a cleanup and a finalizer, the cleanup will only run once
 // it has been finalized and becomes unreachable without an associated finalizer.
 //
+// The cleanup(arg) call is not always guaranteed to run; in particular it is not
+// guaranteed to run before program exit.
+//
+// Cleanups are not guaranteed to run if the size of T is zero bytes, because
+// it may share same address with other zero-size objects in memory. See
+// https://go.dev/ref/spec#Size_and_alignment_guarantees.
+//
 // It is not guaranteed that a cleanup will run for objects allocated
 // in initializers for package-level variables. Such objects may be
 // linker-allocated, not heap-allocated.
@@ -41,6 +54,16 @@ import (
 // allocation may never run if it always exists in the same batch as a
 // referenced object. Typically, this batching only happens for tiny
 // (on the order of 16 bytes or less) and pointer-free objects.
+//
+// A cleanup may run as soon as an object becomes unreachable.
+// In order to use cleanups correctly, the program must ensure that
+// the object is reachable until it is safe to run its cleanup.
+// Objects stored in global variables, or that can be found by tracing
+// pointers from a global variable, are reachable. A function argument or
+// receiver may become unreachable at the last point where the function
+// mentions it. To ensure a cleanup does not get called prematurely,
+// pass the object to the [KeepAlive] function after the last point
+// where the object must remain reachable.
 func AddCleanup[T, S any](ptr *T, cleanup func(S), arg S) Cleanup {
 	// Explicitly force ptr to escape to the heap.
 	ptr = abi.Escape(ptr)

src/runtime/mfinal.go

@@ -350,6 +350,9 @@ func blockUntilEmptyFinalizerQueue(timeout int64) bool {
 //
 // SetFinalizer(obj, nil) clears any finalizer associated with obj.
 //
+// New Go code should consider using [AddCleanup] instead, which is much
+// less error-prone than SetFinalizer.
+//
 // The argument obj must be a pointer to an object allocated by calling
 // new, by taking the address of a composite literal, or by taking the
 // address of a local variable.