<AWT Dev> Review Request for 8039749: Migrate needed functionality from all subclasses of java.awt.Robot in jdk/test directory to the ancestor

[Dmitriy Ermashov]

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for your review.

At first, let me focus on fact that the actual motivation of moving 
functionality to java.awt.Robot is the Jigsaw project. We (SQE) will be 
unable to use internal java API after the project will be finished 
(ExtendedRobot just will not compile, for example) and it will be a 
reason of failing huge amount of regression and functional tests.

As for waitForIdle() method, we do not change it's use-case. The 
java.awt.Robot class is used only for GUI actions. And waitForIdle() is 
used for ensuring of finishing all events in EventQueue.
The implementation with realSync() just flushes native queue as well and 
it is just an improved version of existing one.

Anyway, the changing of waitForIdle() implementation is discussable. The 
other solution may be in adding new method with realSync call.

Thanks,
Dima

On 08/27/2014 03:16 PM, Anthony Petrov wrote:
> Hi Dmitriy,
>
> While I realize that all the new methods are useful when writing JDK 
> regression tests, do you have any evidence that would suggest that 
> these same methods could be useful to and/or have been requested by 
> external developers? All of them look like convenient APIs and I'm not 
> entirely convinced if we should ultimately add them all to our public 
> Robot API. Personally, I don't see a problem with using the custom 
> ExtendedRobot class specifically for tests. This also helps reduce the 
> JDK and JRE static footprints, btw. But then again, I'm not an SQE 
> engineer.
>
> I don't have a strong opinion on this and I'm leaving the final 
> decision to Sergey and other AWT team members, but I just thought I'd 
> bring this up here.
>
> As for the implementation, I see that you're adding realSync() calls 
> in some places where they were not previously there. For example, 
> calling Robot.waitForIdle() before the fix would not cause a 
> realSync() to occur, while after your fix it does. This is a 
> significant change from threading and native event queue 
> synchronization perspectives, and I'm not sure if this should be done. 
> Again, I do know that in tests it is useful to call realSync() here 
> and there, but I'm not sure we should spread the calls all over the 
> Robot implementation simply because of this reason. The calls may in 
> fact produce some unwanted side-effects for existing applications 
> employing the Robot (e.g. introducing unwanted delays, or performing 
> excessive synchronization while the app didn't really need it, etc.) I 
> consider this change very risky.
>
> -- 
> best regards,
> Anthony
>
> On 8/26/2014 5:40 PM, Dmitriy Ermashov wrote:
>> Hi awt team!
>>
>> A few months ago we have consolidated methods required by functional and
>> regression tests in ExtendedRobot class. After a period of extensive
>> testing, it's time to migrate them to java.awt.Robot.
>>
>> Please review the changeset:
>> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~dermashov/8039749/webrev.00/
>>
>> Corresponding bug:
>> https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8039749
>>
>> Note that this change is an important prerequisite to a massive
>> regression and functional test suites change for Jigsaw.
>> As one can see the webrev contains changes in class signature. The CCC
>> request will take place after the code review.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Dima