Avro ThreadLocal objects linger around on Tomcat un-deploy

[Satwik Hebbar <sa...@storediq.com>]

We are using Apache Avro as a JSON interface between our Python application and some third party Java libraries that we run within a Tomcat service. We decided to simply extend the org.apache.avro.ipc.ResponderServlet class to implement our own servlet. The servlet is really simple, in that it instantiates the ResponderServlet super-class in the constructor, and overrides the init() and destroy() methods to do some house-keeping for the third party libraries that we run in the servlet.

When Tomcat un-deploys our webapp however, we see a number of SEVERE errors warning of ThreadLocal-related memory leaks.
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SEVERE: The web application [/hotwire] created a ThreadLocal with key of type [org.apache.avro.Schema$3] (value [org.apache.avro.Schema$3@4464784f]) and a value of type [java.lang.Boolean] (value [true]) but failed to remove it when the web application was stopped. Threads are going to be renewed over time to try and avoid a probable memory leak.
Jan 24, 2013 2:19:36 AM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader checkThreadLocalMapForLeaks
SEVERE: The web application [/hotwire] created a ThreadLocal with key of type [org.apache.avro.generic.GenericDatumReader$1] (value [org.apache.avro.generic.GenericDatumReader$1@2016ad9d]) and a value of type [org.apache.avro.util.WeakIdentityHashMap] (value [org.apache.avro.util.WeakIdentityHashMap@30e02ee0]) but failed to remove it when the web application was stopped. Threads are going to be renewed over time to try and avoid a probable memory leak.
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We are probably doing something naive somewhere because we were unable to find any help anywhere on the web or on this mailing list for this scenario. Nevertheless, we're hoping someone here can tell us where we're going wrong.

Here's a glimpse into our servlet.

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public class HotWire extends ResponderServlet{

    public HotWire() throws IOException

    {

              super(new SpecificResponder(Engine.class, new EngineImpl()));

    }



    @Override

        public void init() {

        try {

         super.init();

                 try {

                      init_engine();

                      } catch (EngineInitException e) {

                      e.printStackTrace();

                      }

            } catch (ServletException e) {

                 e.printStackTrace();

            }

        }



        @Override

        public void destroy() {

            super.destroy();

            shutdown_engine();

        }



        public static class EngineImpl implements EngineInterface  {

            public Boolean create(Parameters message) {

                Boolean status = null;

                try {

                    status = engine.create_object(message);

                } catch (SemanticException | IOException e) {

                    e.printStackTrace();

                }

                return status;

            }



}
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Thanks,
Satwik.