JVM - Are WeakReferences collected in minor GC?

Question

I was wondering about that since that would make them less useful. If so, is there a way to make memory weakly referenced only \"garbage\" on major GC?

Answer 1

You may be thinking of SoftReferences which may be closer to what you want.

Minor collections will collect any object in the young space. A WeakReference to an object in the young space will be collected on a minor GC. A WeakReference to an object in the tenured space will be collected on tenured collection e.g. Full GC. BTW You can have concurrent collections of only the tenured space.