Alting Barriers: Synchronisation With Choice in Java Using JCSP

Communicating Sequential Processes for Java (JCSP) is a mature library that implements CSP-derived concurrency primitives in Java. A JCSP system is a hierarchical network of autonomous processes communicating over synchronous (optionally buffered) channels, and multi-way synchronising through barriers. This paper presents a significant extension to the barrier mechanism: the fast resolution of choice between any number of barrier events, channel communications (in either direction) and timeouts. Previously, and in line with all currently released libraries and languages offering the CSP concurrency model, choice was restricted to channel inputs and timeouts.