how is Java's epsilon no garbage collector a useful feature for the average developer?

Question

I understand the uses for benchmarking between different garbage collectors and JVM developers.

Also for extremely efficient programs that don't create garbage then not having a garbage collector is useful, also for very short lived programs.

What are some other use cases for this garbage collector?

Answer 1

The goals of this collector are described in JEP 318: Epsilon: A No-Op Garbage Collector:

• Performance testing.
• Memory pressure testing.
• VM interface testing.
• Extremely short lived jobs.
• Last-drop latency improvements.
• Last-drop throughput improvements.

The performance testing features can be very useful since the test environment will be much more predictable without GC potentially kicking in and performing expensive stop-the-world full GC cycle.