Thread-Safe TimedPhase

[archolewa]

We should presumably make TimedPhase thread-safe (though starting and stopping a TimedPhase multiple times is probably abusing the concept). Unfortunately, making TimedPhase thread-safe is tricky because whether or not the timer is running becomes a much trickier concept in a world where any thread could start or stop any TimedPhase at any time.

Therefore, if we wish to make the TimedPhase thread-safe, we should probably also impose a restriction: ATimedPhase can only be started once, and stopped once. Then we provide some utility methods for creating a new TimedPhase with a different name, and the same duration as the original. So something like:

  TimedPhase newTimer(String suffix) {
    if (suffix.equals("") {
           throw new IllegalArgumentException();
   }
    return new TimedPhase(getName() ++ suffix, duration);
   }

Then, if people want to run a timer multiple times, they can do it through a relay style timing, where each timer still has a well-defined notion of started and stopped.

[cdeszaq]

I think making TimedPhase a 1-time-use thing is probably a great idea. There's definitely some more thinking to do around what the multi-start capabilities were allowing for, and seeing if it still makes sense (and if we can continue to support it), but the thread-safety is more important I think.