I've been scanning a number of the slow machine test bugs that are reported and wanted to check to see if anyone has looked into time dependencies in the regression tests previously. From what I've been able to learn so far individual bugs can use the "timeout" parameter to indicate to the test harness an expected time to run.
The test harness has command line arguments where it can filter out tests that take too long (timelimit) or can apply a multiplier to to the timeout when conditions are known to slow down the process (timeoutFactor). e.g. 8X for a slow machine or running with -Xcomp I see that there are some wrappers that can be applied around running a particular test to allow processing before main(). Could this mechanism be exploited so the harness command line options could be made known to the time dependent tests as command line arguments or as system properties? My thought is the current timeout granularity is too large and only applies to the full test execution. If a test knew that a timeoutFactor was to be applied, it could internally adjust the time dependent delays appropriately. e.g. not every sleep(), await(), join() with timeouts would need the timeoutFactor applied. Before any test could be updated the information would need to be available from the test context. Any feedback/pointers appreciated! See timeoutFactorArg jtreg/src/share/classes/com/sun/javatest/regtest/Main.java runOtherJVM() jtreg/src/share/classes/com/sun/javatest/regtest/MainAction.java maxTimeoutValue jtreg/src/share/classes/com/sun/javatest/regtest/RegressionParameters.java