Controlling race condition at startup
concurrency, java
Solution
That's a strange mix of library and built-in concurrency controls. Something like this is much cleaner:
public class MyClass {
private static final CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(1);
public void initialise() {
initStuff();
latch.countDown();
}
public void doStuff() {
try {
latch.await();
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
throw new RuntimeException("Uh oh!", ex);
}
doOtherStuff();
}
}
Problem
I have some code that I want to have some one time initialisation performed. But this code doesn't have a definite lifecycle, so my logic can be potentially invoked by multiple threads before my initialisation is done. So, I want to basically ensure that my logic code "waits" until initialisation is done. This is my first cut. ``` public class MyClass { private static final AtomicBoolean initialised = new AtomicBoolean(false); public void initialise() { synchronized(initialised) { initStuff(); initialised.getAndSet(true); initialised.notifyAll(); } } public void doStuff() { synchronized(initialised) { if (!initialised.get()) { try { initialised.wait(); } catch (InterruptedException ex) { throw new RuntimeException("Uh oh!", ex); } } } doOtherStuff(); } } ``` I basically want to make sure this is going to do what I think it's going to do -- block doStuff until the initialised is true, and that I'm not missing a race condition where doStuff might get stuck on a Object.wait() that will never arrive. Edit: I have no control over the threads. And I want to be able to control when all of the initialisation is done, which is why doStuff() can't call initialise(). I used an AtomicBoolean as it was a combination of a value holder, and an object I could synchronize. I could have also simply had a "public static final Object lock = new Object();" and a simple boolean flag. AtomicBoolean conveniently gave me both. A Boolean can not be modified. The CountDownLatch is exactly what I was looking for. I also considered using a Sempahore with 0 permits. But the CountDownLatch is perfect for just this task.