[PATCH] Review Request - Test bug: 6948101 java/rmi/transport/pinLastArguments/PinLastArguments.java failing intermittently

[Stuart Marks]

On 7/1/12 5:39 PM, David Holmes wrote:
>> Now, how can the test fail? If ref is never cleared, the while loop will
>> never terminate, and we rely on jtreg to timeout and kill this test. It
>> would be good to have a brief comment above the while loop that explains
>> this.
>
> Agreed. Something like
>
> // Might require multiple calls to System.gc() for weak-references processing
> to be complete.
> // If the weak-reference is not cleared as expected we will hang here
> // until timed out by the test harness
>
> Though now I write that I'm unhappy that this will only behave nicely if run
> from jtreg. We do use explicit timeouts in other tests.

So, are you unhappy enough that we should ask Eric to add an explicit timeout?

I don't think it would be that difficult. Perhaps a technique like the 
following would suffice. Get System.currentTimeMillis() before the loop, and 
call it again each time through the loop, and fail if the difference is greater 
than the timeout (e.g., 60 sec). Doesn't involve other threads or even 
Timer/TimerTask.

On the other hand if one is running this test directly instead of through 
jtreg, one can just ^C it if it's taking an unexpectedly long time.

s'marks