RFR: 8005290: remove -showversion from RMI test library subprocess mechanism

[Stuart Marks]

Hi all,

Please review the fix [1] for bug 8005290 [2].

[1] http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~smarks/reviews/8005290/webrev.0/

[2] http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=8005290

I just filed this bug, so it hasn't made it to the public website yet. The 
salient text from the bug report is as follows:

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The RMI test library (jdk/test/java/rmi/testlibrary) has a convenience API (the 
JavaVM class) for launching a JVM subprocess. When starting the subprocess, it 
adds the -showversion option to the JVM command line and waits for the version 
output to arrive from the subprocess before returning to the caller. This is 
intended to avoid race conditions where the test might try to contact the 
subprocess before it's fully initialized.

It turns out this doesn't really work and it's also unnecessary.

The reason it doesn't really work is that the version string is emitted when 
the JVM subprocess has mostly started up, but it hasn't yet executed any user 
code. Even after the version string has been emitted, the caller may still have 
to wait and retry before successfully contacting a service exported by the 
subprocess. The current code returns after two seconds, even if the version 
string hasn't been received from the subprocess. So the caller has to wait and 
potentially retry anyway. Since the callers have to do this anyway, having the 
library wait for the version string isn't helpful.

Other library code (e.g., RMID) starts the subprocess and waits until a 
particular RMI service is ready, so the -showversion mechanism is redundant in 
that case. Finally, many tests start the subprocess and wait until it finishes, 
so they don't need the -showversion mechanism either.

Finally, the -showversion mechanism adds a lot of complexity, as it has to 
interpose between the subprocess output stream and the caller, so we're better 
off just removing it. All RMI tests continue to pass even with this mechanism 
removed.
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This is basically just test cleanup (no library code changes) to clear the way 
for future test enhancements to improve performance and reliability.

Thanks,

s'marks