Is there a way to wait for the change on an atomic integer

Question

Is there a way to wait on an AtomicInteger so that I don't have to keep sleeping my current thread and keep checking on the AtomicInteger like this

while(atomicInt.get() >= 0) {
    Thread.sleep(1000)
}

I know there is such a thing as a CountDownLatch but that only allows me to decrement I also need it to be able to increment

Further BackStory - I have a loop creating threads and I need to wait on one of the threads execution to finish before creating a new thread. I however am using an Executors.newFixedThreadPool(numThreads) and the only way to wait on it seems to be to call the shutdown method await termination and then create a new threadPool so instead I was using an atomic integer to keep track of how many threads were running and/or on the queue so that when that number decreased I could continue with the loop.

Answer 1

I think a closer match to what you want is a Phaser. My rough understanding is that its a bit like an incrementing counter where you can block until the number is incremented.

// This constructor one party (so it expects one advance per phase).
Phaser phaser = new Phaser(1);
try {
  // This will timeout as phase 0 hasn't arrived yet.
  phaser.awaitAdvanceInterruptibly(0, 1, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
  fail();
}
catch (TimeoutException expected) {
}

// Arrive phase 0
phaser.arrive();
phaser.awaitAdvance(0);
try {
  // Phase 1 will timeout..
  phaser.awaitAdvanceInterruptibly(1, 1, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
  fail();
}
catch (TimeoutException expected) {
}

// Arrive phase 1
phaser.arrive();
phaser.awaitAdvance(0);
phaser.awaitAdvance(1);