Why does parallel stream with lambda in static initializer cause a deadlock?

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I found a bug report of a very similar case (JDK-8143380) which was closed as “Not an Issue” by Stuart Marks:

This is a class initialization deadlock. The test program’s main thread executes the class static initializer, which sets the initialization in-progress flag for the class; this flag remains set until the static initializer completes. The static initializer executes a parallel stream, which causes lambda expressions to be evaluated in other threads. Those threads block waiting for the class to complete initialization. However, the main thread is blocked waiting for the parallel tasks to complete, resulting in deadlock.

The test program should be changed to move the parallel stream logic outside of the class static initializer. Closing as Not an Issue.

I was able to find another bug report of that (JDK-8136753), also closed as “Not an Issue” by Stuart Marks:

This is a deadlock that is occurring because the Fruit enum’s static initializer is interacting badly with class initialization.

See the Java Language Specification, section 12.4.2 for details on class initialization.

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se8/html/jls-12.html#jls-12.4.2

Briefly, what’s happening is as follows.

  1. The main thread references the Fruit class and starts the initialization process. This sets the initialization in-progress flag and runs the static initializer on the main thread.
  2. The static initializer runs some code in another thread and waits for it to finish. This example uses parallel streams, but this has nothing to do with streams per se. Executing code in another thread by any means, and waiting for that code to finish, will have the same effect.
  3. The code in the other thread references the Fruit class, which checks the initialization in-progress flag. This causes the other thread to block until the flag is cleared. (See step 2 of JLS 12.4.2.)
  4. The main thread is blocked waiting for the other thread to terminate, so the static initializer never completes. Since the initialization in-progress flag isn’t cleared until after the static initializer completes, the threads are deadlocked.

To avoid this problem, make sure that a class’s static initialization completes quickly, without causing other threads to execute code that requires this class to have completed initialization.

Closing as Not an Issue.

Note that FindBugs has an open issue for adding a warning for this situation.

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