RFR(S): 8195731: [Graal] runtime/SharedArchiveFile/serviceability/transformRelatedClasses/TransformSuperSubTwoPckgs.java intermittently fails with Graal JIT

[Tobias Hartmann]

Hi David,

On 02.02.2018 10:15, David Holmes wrote:
> http://openjdk.java.net/jtreg/faq.html#question2.6
> 
> 2.6. Should a test call the System.exit method?
> 
> No. Depending on how you run the tests, you may get a security exception from the harness.
> 
> ---
> 
> Plus if you call System.exit you have to run in othervm mode.
> 
> So generally we avoid System.exit and just fail by throwing an exception from "main" (or whatever the test entry point
> is, depending on which framework it uses - like testng). There are exceptions of course (pardon the pun) and a lot of
> legacy tests use System.exit(97) or System.exit(95) to indicate success or failure.

Thanks for the pointer, that makes sense to me.

>> The problem is that throwing an exception in ClassFileTransformer::transform() is silently ignored:
>> "If the transformer throws an exception (which it doesn't catch), subsequent transformers will still be called and the
>> load, redefine or retransform will still be attempted. Thus, throwing an exception has the same effect as returning
>> null." [1]
>>
>> As a result, the test fails without any information. I've basically copied this code from
>> runtime/RedefineTests/RedefineAnnotations.java [2] were we use System.exit as well. If there's a reason to avoid
>> System.exit here, we can also just print an error and fail later with the generic exception:
>> "java.lang.RuntimeException: 'parent-transform-check: this-has-been--transformed' missing from stdout/stderr"
> 
> This does sounds like a case where you need System.exit to force immediate termination.

Yes, I think so too.

Thanks,
Tobias