Question

I have a Runnable implementation that does some work which might take some time and I am trying to schedule it using ScheduledThreadPoolExecutorwith scheduleAtFixedRate method. Now I want to ensure that shut down is graceful that means, Before terminating, task should be allowed to run completely. I have written following code for shutdown.

 public void shutDown() throws Exception {
    try {
        LOG.info("Gracefully shutting down executor");
        executor.shutdown();
        if (!executor.awaitTermination(SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT, TimeUnit.SECONDS)) {
            // cancels currently executing tasks.
            LOG.info("Executor is still alive. Forcing executor thread pool to shut down");
            executor.shutdownNow();

            // Wait a while for tasks to respond to being cancelled
            if (!executor.awaitTermination(SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT, TimeUnit.SECONDS)) {
                LOG.fatal("Executor thread pool did not terminate");
                throw new Exception("Unable to shut down executor thread pool forcefully");
            }
            LOG.info("Executor shut down.");
        }
    } catch (Exception e) {
        LOG.error("Exception shutting down executor", e);
        throw e;
    }
}

But problem with this is, I have to specify time to wait explicitly and I can not predict time taken by task in advance. Is there a way to make executor wait indefinitely until executing task finishes without having to mention time to wait? Or is there a better way to work on above scenario?

Thanks

Jitendra

Answer 1

Simplest solution is to “overprovision” so to speak. I suggest you use a huge timeout period that in no way can be exceeded by the time needed for a single task to execute, like:

// do you have tasks that can take more than 2^63 - 1 days to finish? :)
executor.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.DAYS);