Create deployment in parallel to starting the container

[nlisker]

When running an Arquillian test, first the container is booted, then the deployment is created (usually with ShrinkWrap), then it is deployed into the container and finally the tests are run.

Starting the container and creating the deployment are both time consuming operations and they are independent. It could save time to have them run in parallel, and when both are ready to do the deployment.

[rhusar]

@nlisker Interesting idea - as these aspects are orthogonal, they can run in parallel. We could also make this opt-in, so we can add it to any version with no breaking risk. I have been experiment with a POC last month; I ll keep you posted.

[nlisker]

Nice! I'm mostly using Arquillian in remote mode nowadays because it saves me relaunching the server and gives me better reproducibility, but I'll follow this development too.

I was thinking that CompletableFuture could handle this well, something like:

CompletableFuture<URL> startContainer = CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> {
	// ...
});

CompletableFuture<WebArchive> createDeployment = CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> {
	// ...
});

CompletableFuture<?> deploy = startContainer.thenCombine(createDeployment, (serverURL, deploymentArchive) -> {
	// deploy
});

deploy.join();

[rhusar]

@nlisker That's pretty much what the POC looks like. It does somewhat violate how the event firing mechanism works, so needs some evaluation if it's a real problem or not.

For curiosity, some of my work includes https://github.com/wildfly/wildfly/tree/main/testsuite/integration/clustering where we use containers in custom mode for manual lifecycle control - that way we can control lifecycle of the container and simulate different HA/clustering scenarios.