Why does SwingWorker stop unexpectedly?

Question

I wanted to try out some ideas using SwingWorker since I haven't used it too much. Instead, I ran into an issue and I can't figure out what's wrong.

Here's a short SSCCE that demonstrates this problem (I know people here like SSCCEs):

import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
import javax.swing.SwingWorker;

public class SwingWorkerTest
{
    public static void main (String[] args)
    {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater (new Runnable ()
        {
            @Override
            public void run ()
            {
                new MySwingWorker (500).execute ();
                new MySwingWorker (900).execute ();
                new MySwingWorker (1200).execute ();
            }
        });
    }
}

class MySwingWorker extends SwingWorker<Void, Void>
{
    private int ms;

    public MySwingWorker (int ms)
    {
        this.ms = ms;
    }

    @Override
    protected Void doInBackground()
    {
        Thread t = Thread.currentThread ();

        for (int i = 0; i < 50; i++)
        {
            try
            {
                Thread.sleep (ms);
            }
            catch (InterruptedException e)
            {
                e.printStackTrace ();
            }

            System.out.println ("I am thread with " + ms + " sleep in iteration " + i + ": " + t.getName () + " (" + t.getId () + ")");
        }

        return null;
    }
}

So my program should create 3 SwingWorkers that print a line on the screen then sleep for the specified number of milliseconds and then print the line again and sleep again etc. I create the SwingWorkers from within Swing's thread because otherwise they wouldn't even start.

So the expected output is:

I am thread with 500 sleep in iteration 0: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-1 (15)
I am thread with 900 sleep in iteration 0: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-2 (16)
I am thread with 500 sleep in iteration 1: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-1 (15)
I am thread with 1200 sleep in iteration 0: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-3 (17)
I am thread with 500 sleep in iteration 2: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-1 (15)
I am thread with 900 sleep in iteration 1: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-2 (16)
I am thread with 500 sleep in iteration 3: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-1 (15)
I am thread with 1200 sleep in iteration 1: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-3 (17)
I am thread with 500 sleep in iteration 4: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-1 (15)
I am thread with 900 sleep in iteration 2: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-2 (16)
I am thread with 500 sleep in iteration 5: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-1 (15)
I am thread with 500 sleep in iteration 6: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-1 (15)
I am thread with 900 sleep in iteration 3: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-2 (16)
I am thread with 1200 sleep in iteration 2: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-3 (17)
I am thread with 500 sleep in iteration 7: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-1 (15)
.............

and so on for a total of 150 lines (3 workers x 50 iterations for each)

Instead, the output I get is:

I am thread with 500 sleep in iteration 0: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-1 (15)
I am thread with 900 sleep in iteration 0: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-2 (16)
I am thread with 500 sleep in iteration 1: SwingWorker-pool-1-thread-1 (15)

And that's it. Just 3 lines. After this the program exits. There's no stacktrace anywhere from that try catch block.

1). Where is the worker with the 1200ms sleep ? Actually, if I replace 1200ms with 1000ms, then this worker also prints 1 line... yes, only one. Weird...

2). Why do the workers stop ? (and I don't get 150 lines of stuff)

I ran this program using JRE 7 Update 11 on Windows 7 64-bit.

PS: I'm pretty sure that the bug mentioned here was fixed in this version of JRE, since I do get 2 distinct values (15 and 16) as thread ID's printed on the console. This was the first thing I suspected.

Answer 1

I believe that you need to show a visualized Swing top level Window in order to keep the Swing event thread alive. Otherwise the program will shut down for lack of non-daemon threads.

Edit:
To prove that the SwingWorker thread is a Daemon thread, just add a line of code to test it:

System.out.println("I am thread with " + ms + " sleep in iteration "
   + i + ": " + t.getName() + " (" + t.getId() + ")");

// **** added
System.out.println("Daemon?: " + Thread.currentThread().isDaemon());