So I tried various different things to reproduce it without the StackOverflow, but no success so far. But I can definitely tell you from many user issue reports that this issue frequently happens. Looking at the logs when this happens, there were no other exceptions reported when this happens.

It however doesn't leave the node in a bad state in most cases, in production this exception usually only occurs once without the same exception happening in later pulses. Having a loop of pulse exceptions that happened with the JVM crash is rarer. It breaks the layout however, so a restart is required.

I would already be happy with a simple index check to not throw an OOB exception in the implementation, I don't think there's any harm in that. While the StackOverflow is a very made-up case, I think even for that it would be good if it wouldn't throw exceptions in later pulses if you're looking for a justification on why to implement an index check.

On 28/03/2025 17:26, Martin Fox wrote:
I’ve been able to reproduce this inside a debugger on my Mac every eighth try or so.

I’m not sure what I’m seeing is all that helpful. Your reproducing case is inducing a stack overflow exception. If the exception occurs while Parent.updateCachedBounds is executing the StackPane will be left in a bad state. This leads to the dirtyChildrenCount exceeding the number of children and then Parent.updateCachedBounds will start throwing the same AIOOBE on every layout pulse.

At least in my debug runs it’s all about the timing of the stack overflow. That probably doesn’t explain why your production app is getting into the same bad state.

And you’re right, this has nothing to do with the Alert. I was confused by the gap between when the exception occurs and when it’s reported.

Martin

On Mar 26, 2025, at 9:20 PM, Christopher Schnick <crschn...@xpipe.io> wrote:

Interesting, that exception does not happen on my macOS 15.3 system. The reproducer somehow also doesn't seem to trigger the IndexOutOfBoundsExceptions on macOS for me, only on Windows so far. On Windows, the large alert is shown as a broken stage with no content and controls for me, which I guess is slightly better than an exception, but also not ideal.  So it seems like the reproducer behavior depends a lot on the specific system.

On 26/03/2025 19:35, Martin Fox wrote:
Christopher,

Yes, there might be more than one issue here. On the Mac the call to Stage.showAndWait is making its way into the Mac glass code where an exception is being thrown leading to another call to Stage.showAndWait. I’ve attached the repeating block below. I don’t see that pattern in the Windows stack trace you provided.

Martin

at ParentBoundsBug.lambda$start$0(ParentBoundsBug.java:25)
at java.base/java.lang.ThreadGroup.uncaughtException(ThreadGroup.java:663) at java.base/java.lang.ThreadGroup.uncaughtException(ThreadGroup.java:658) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/com.sun.glass.ui.Application.reportException(Application.java:452) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/com.sun.glass.ui.mac.MacWindow._setBounds2(Native Method) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/com.sun.glass.ui.mac.MacWindow._setBounds(MacWindow.java:70) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/com.sun.glass.ui.Window.setBounds(Window.java:589) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/com.sun.javafx.tk.quantum.WindowStage.setBounds(WindowStage.java:304) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/javafx.stage.Window$TKBoundsConfigurator.apply(Window.java:1566) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/javafx.stage.Window.applyBounds(Window.java:1424) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/javafx.stage.Window.adjustSize(Window.java:327) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/javafx.stage.Window.sizeToScene(Window.java:284) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/javafx.stage.Window$12.invalidated(Window.java:1215) at javafx.base@25-internal/javafx.beans.property.BooleanPropertyBase.markInvalid(BooleanPropertyBase.java:110) at javafx.base@25-internal/javafx.beans.property.BooleanPropertyBase.set(BooleanPropertyBase.java:145) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/javafx.stage.Window.setShowing(Window.java:1235) at javafx.graphics@25-internal/javafx.stage.Window.show(Window.java:1250)
at javafx.graphics@25-internal/javafx.stage.Stage.show(Stage.java:272)
at javafx.graphics@25-internal/javafx.stage.Stage.showAndWait(Stage.java:427) at javafx.controls@25-internal/javafx.scene.control.HeavyweightDialog.showAndWait(HeavyweightDialog.java:162) at javafx.controls@25-internal/javafx.scene.control.Dialog.showAndWait(Dialog.java:347)
at ParentBoundsBug.lambda$start$0(ParentBoundsBug.java:25)
at java.base/java.lang.ThreadGroup.uncaughtException(ThreadGroup.java:663) at java.base/java.lang.ThreadGroup.uncaughtException(ThreadGroup.java:658)

On Mar 26, 2025, at 10:49 AM, Christopher Schnick <crschn...@xpipe.io> wrote:

Hey Martin,

thank you for looking into this. The initial StackOverflow is a result of me forcing to reproduce the bounds IndexOutOfBoundsException. The StackOverflow can be ignored, it was merely the best method I found to transition the scene graph into a state where the IndexOutOfBoundsExceptions are thrown. The OOBs are not thrown in every run though, it sometimes takes a few tries. In our production application, the same IndexOutOfBoundsExceptions also occur randomly without a previous exception. You can probably also reproduce the IndexOutOfBoundsExceptions without the StackOverflow, but reproducing it was very fragile, so I didn't look into it more.

I don't think it has necessarily something to do with the alert bounds as the IndexOutOfBoundsException is also thrown if you don't show an alert at all. The constant IndexOutOfBoundsExceptions in combination with the alert showAndWait was how our application entered the original crashing state. So the reproducer is more like a two-in-one.

Best
Christopher Schnick

On 26/03/2025 18:33, Martin Fox wrote:
Yes, thank you Christopher for providing a reproducible test case!

I was able to trigger the problem on my Mac on the first try. Since I’m using a modified version of JavaFX the system didn’t crash but instead hit a Java stack overflow error and produced a very long stack trace.

At least on the Mac the problem seems to be that you’re trying to pop an Alert containing a long stack trace. While trying to adjust the Alert’s bounds JavaFX is throwing another exception but I’m not sure why. I’ll continue to look into it.

Thanks again,
Martin

On Mar 25, 2025, at 12:16 PM, Andy Goryachev <andy.goryac...@oracle.com> wrote:

Thank you, Christopher, for clarification!
Personally, I would consider this to be a problem with the application design: the code should limit the number of alerts shown to the user. Do you really want the user to click through hundreds of alerts? Nevertheless, you are right about the need for the platform to gracefully handle the case of too many nested event loops - by throwing an exception with a meaningful message, as Martin proposed inhttps://github.com/openjdk/jfx/pull/1741
Cheers,
-andy

*From:*Christopher Schnick <crschn...@xpipe.io>
*Date:*Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 11:52
*To:*Andy Goryachev <andy.goryac...@oracle.com>
*Cc:*OpenJFX <openjfx-dev@openjdk.org>
*Subject:*Re: [External] : Re: JVM crashes on macOS when entering too many nested event loops

Hey Andy,

so I think I was able to reproduce this issue for our application.

There are two main factors how this can happen:
- We use an alert-based error reporter, meaning that we have a default uncaught exception handler set for all threads which will showAndWait an Alert with the exception message - As I reported yesterday withhttps://mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/openjfx-dev/2025-March/052963.html, there are some rare exceptions that can occur in a normal event loop without interference of the application, probably because of a small bug in the bounds calculation code

If you combine these two factors, you will end up with an infinite loop of the showAndWait entering a nested event loop, the event loop throwing an internal exception, and the uncaught exception handler starting the same loop with another alert. I don't think this is a bad implementation from our side, the only thing that we can improve is to maybe check how deep the uncaught exception loop is in to prevent this from occurring indefinitely. But I would argue this can happen to any application. Here is a sample code, based on the reproducer from the OutOfBounds report from yesterday:

import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.application.Platform;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.Alert;
import javafx.scene.control.Button;
import javafx.scene.layout.Region;
import javafx.scene.layout.StackPane;
import javafx.scene.layout.VBox;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Arrays;
public class ParentBoundsBug extends Application {
@Override
public void start(Stage stage) throws IOException {
        Thread./setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler/((thread, throwable) -> {
            throwable.printStackTrace();
if (Platform./isFxApplicationThread/()) {
var alert = new Alert(Alert.AlertType./ERROR/);
                alert.setHeaderText(throwable.getMessage());
                alert.setContentText(Arrays./toString/(throwable.getStackTrace()));
                alert.showAndWait();
            } else {
// Do some other error handling for non-platform threads
                // Probably just show the alert with a runLater()
                // For this example, there are no exceptions outside the platform thread
}
        });
// Run delayed as Application::reportException will only be called for exceptions
        // after the application has started
Platform./runLater/(() -> {
            Scene scene = new Scene(createContent(), 640, 480);
stage.setScene(scene);
stage.show();
stage.centerOnScreen();
        });
    }
private Region createContent() {
var b1 = new Button("Click me!");
var b2 = new Button("Click me!");
var vbox = new VBox(b1, b2);
        b1.boundsInParentProperty().addListener((observable, oldValue, newValue) -> {
vbox.setVisible(!vbox.isVisible());
        });
        b2.boundsInParentProperty().addListener((observable, oldValue, newValue) -> {
vbox.setVisible(!vbox.isVisible());
        });
        vbox.boundsInParentProperty().addListener((observable, oldValue, newValue) -> {
vbox.setVisible(!vbox.isVisible());
        });
var stack = new StackPane(vbox, new StackPane());
        stack.boundsInParentProperty().addListener((observable, oldValue, newValue) -> {
vbox.setVisible(!vbox.isVisible());
        });
return stack;
    }
public static void main(String[] args) {
/launch/();
    }
}


If the same OutOfBounds exception from the reported I linked happens in the bounds calculation, which happens approximately 1/5 runs for me, this application will enter new event loops until it crashes. If the OutOfBounds doesn't trigger, it will just throw a StackOverflow but won't continue the infinite loop of nested event loops. So for the reproducer it is important to try a few times until you get the described OutOfBounds.

I attached the stacktrace of how this fails. The initial StackOverflow causes infinitely many following exceptions in the nested event loop.

Best
Christopher Schnick

On 25/03/2025 18:28, Andy Goryachev wrote:

    Dear Christopher:
    Were you able to root cause why your application enters that
    many nested event loops?
    I believe a well-behaved application should never experience
    that, unless there is some design flaw or a bug.
    -andy

    *From:*Christopher Schnick<crschn...@xpipe.io>
    <mailto:crschn...@xpipe.io>
    *Date:*Monday, March 10, 2025 at 19:45
    *To:*Andy Goryachev<andy.goryac...@oracle.com>
    <mailto:andy.goryac...@oracle.com>
    *Subject:*[External] : Re: JVM crashes on macOS when entering
    too many nested event loops

    Our code and some libraries do enter some nested event loops
    at a few places when it makes sense, but we didn't do
    anything to explicitly provoke this, this occurred naturally
    in our application. So it would be nice if JavaFX could
    somehow guard against this, especially since crashing the JVM
    is probably the worst thing that can happen.

    I looked at the documentation, but it seems like the public
    API at Platform::enterNestedEventLoop does not mention this.
    From my understanding, the method
    Platform::canStartNestedEventLoop is potentially the right
    method to indicate to the caller that the limit is close by
    returning false.
    And even if something like an exception is thrown when a
    nested event loop is started while it is close to the limit,
    that would still be much better than a direct crash.

    Best
    Christopher Schnick

    On 10/03/2025 18:51, Andy Goryachev wrote:

        This looks to me like it might be hitting the (native)
        thread stack size limit.
        c.s.glass.ui.Application::enterNestedEventLoop() even
        warns about it:
        * An application may enter several nested loops
        recursively. There's no
        * limit of recursion other than that imposed by the
        native stack size.
        -andy

        *From:*openjfx-dev<openjfx-dev-r...@openjdk.org>
        <mailto:openjfx-dev-r...@openjdk.org>on behalf of Martin
        Fox<martinfox...@gmail.com> <mailto:martinfox...@gmail.com>
        *Date:*Monday, March 10, 2025 at 10:10
        *To:*Christopher Schnick<crschn...@xpipe.io>
        <mailto:crschn...@xpipe.io>
        *Cc:*OpenJFX<openjfx-dev@openjdk.org>
        <mailto:openjfx-dev@openjdk.org>
        *Subject:*Re: JVM crashes on macOS when entering too many
        nested event loops

        Hi Christopher,

        I was able to reproduce this crash. I wrote a small
        routine that recursively calls itself in a runLater block
        and then enters a nested event loop. The program crashes
        when creating loop 254. I’m not sure where that limit
        comes from so it’s possible that consuming some other
        system resource could lower it. I couldn’t see any good
        way to determine how many loops are active by looking at
        the crash report since it doesn’t show the entire call stack.
        I did a quick trial on Linux and was able to create a lot
        more loops (over 600) but then started seeing erratic
        behavior and errors coming from the Java VM. The behavior
        was variable unlike on the Mac which always crashes when
        creating loop 254.

        Martin

        > On Mar 7, 2025, at 6:24 AM, Christopher
        Schnick<crschn...@xpipe.io> <mailto:crschn...@xpipe.io>wrote:
        >
        > Hello,
        >
        > I have attached a JVM fatal error log that seemingly
        was caused by our JavaFX application entering too many
        nested event loops, which macOS apparently doesn't like.
        >
        > As far as I know, there is no upper limit defined on
        how often an event loop can be nested, so I think this is
        a bug that can occur in rare situations.
        >
        > Best
        > Christopher Schnick<hs_err_pid.txt>



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