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I am writing a fairly large, multithreaded application, with many differing roles for threads (e.g. event processing, metrics, networking). Currently, if there is any inconsistency that cannot be handled, it will manifest itself as an exception. Since there's really no way to recover from some of them, I've been rethrowing it as a runtime exception of type ApplicationDeathException.

Any classes that need to handle shutdown would call it from a catch block for this exception, and then rethrow it in order for it to propagate up the stack).

I am considering killing off all other threads in this same manner by calling Thread#stop(Throwable) upon them. Most are fine with sudden termination, and can catch this exception should there be a need for shutdown logic. They will simply have the exception propagate up the stack, performing shutdown logic whereever needed, and eventually just killing the thread in the end. Are there any hidden dangers that I'm missing with this approach?

nanofarad
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Thread.stop has been deprecated since it is unsafe (see the Javadoc). Instead have each thread monitor a boolean flag of some sort (see Java: How to stop thread? and likely countless other threads on SO).

In situations like this I typically implement some sort of thread pool manager that is responsible for cleanly shutting down running threads. Then when something really bad happens you only need to notify the manager to shut things down.

Community
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Haywood Slap
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  • I understand that what you mention is a valid approach. My current question is a bit different, namely whether there are any dangers in terms of deadlocks or other pitfalls that my approach would run into. – nanofarad Apr 19 '14 at 22:04
  • Whether your approach might deadlock really depends on what your threads are doing, your implementation, what resources are being held, etc. I think your approach looks sound (other than using Thread.stop), but that doesn't mean there aren't opportunities for deadlocks. – Haywood Slap Apr 20 '14 at 00:42
  • All resources are being released on shutdown, there's no need for anything new to be explicitly acquired. – nanofarad Apr 20 '14 at 00:44