RFR: 8368528: HttpClient.Builder.connectTimeout should accept arbitrarily large values

[Volkan Yazici]

On Wed, 29 Oct 2025 09:15:31 GMT, Pavel Rappo <prappo at openjdk.org> wrote:

>>> We might soon have saturating addition functionality in `java.time.Instant`; see: #27549
>> 
>> Great tip! 💯 I will hold this PR until #27549 gets merged, and use `Instant::plusSaturated` in `Deadline::plus*` and `::minus` methods.
>> 
>>> I note that `jdk.internal.net.http.common.Deadline` also wants to have saturating subtraction, and I wonder if that's really needed. It seems that the two usages of the `minus` method in the codebase can be reimplemented alternatively. In which case `Deadline` could delete `minus`.
>> 
>> I also have my reservations regarding the rich, yet seldom used API surface of `Deadline`. But revamping it is out of the scope of this work.
>> 
>>> Furthermore, if there's no need for saturating subtraction, do we need the `Deadline` class? What does it provide, that `Instant` does not?
>> 
>> In short, `Instant` is not necessarily generated using a monotonically-increasing `InstantSource`. `Deadline` is introduced to avoid that ambiguity and guaranteed to be always monotonically-increasing. See [this conversation for details](https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/pull/14450#pullrequestreview-1479500686).
>
> @vy, `Instant.plusSaturating` is in the mainline: https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/commit/2758c6fda2f774d98ef0c24535a7f7e9fc722379

I discussed this matter internally with @pavelrappo and @dfuch, and decided to keep the code as is, and not use the recently introduced `Instant::plusSaturating(Duration)`, because:

1. This will result in extra work for backports.
2. Not all `Deadline` methods can take advantage of `Instant::plusSaturating`, e.g., `::between`, `::until`, and `::plus(long,TemporalUnit)`. Instead of some using `Instant::plusSaturating` and some catching `DateTimeException | ArithmeticException`, settle on a single approach to ease the cognitive load.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/27973#issuecomment-3461414361