NettyServer initialization

[Patrick Linehan]

I'm having a bit of trouble using NettyServer (using Avro 1.3.3 plus the
"AVRO-405-coolwhy-new" patch).  The server's socket isn't bound in the
constructor, it is bound in a thread started by the constructor, which
means there is a delay before methods like "getPort" can be used.

Here's a snippet that exhibits the problem:

public static void main(String[] args) {
  Server server = new NettyServer(
    new SpecificResponder(
      Mail.class,
      new MailImpl()),
    new InetSocketAddress(0));
  while (true) {
    try {
      server.getPort();
    } catch (NullPointerException e) {
      System.err.println("npe");
      continue;
    }
    break;
  }
  System.err.println("done");
}

The above code prints "npe" a number of times before finally
printing "done".  There is no way to detect, AFAICT, when the server is
ready to start using.  My current hack is to just sleep for a few seconds
after construction.

Is there any reason the setup is done in a different thread?  Would
you accept a patch to instead perform the initialization in the constructor?