[mjpt777]

Can you expand on how you see the writer can "fail"? Also please relate this to other algorithms you see as wait-free but don't have your failure issue. The code is very simple and does not have external dependencies. It is a three step process of advance tail, copy in message, apply header. All within the implementation, all threads make progress and completes in a finite number of steps, and thus wait-free.

https://github.com/real-logic/Aeron/blob/master/aeron-client...

[danbruc]

I will kill or at least pause the thread after it advanced the tail pointer but before it updated the length field in the header. In other wait-free algorithms all the other threads will usually help failed threads to complete their work.

[mjpt777]

Can you point to a respected publication that states that is the definition of a wait-free algorithm, i.e. that other threads must help and it must cope with killing the thread externally?

By kill a thread I assume you mean use the OS to interrupt and terminate the thread from the outside while in such a simple algorithm and yet expect it to cope. Have you tried this on any java.util.concurrent classes and reported the "bugs" you have found? I'd be interested in the feedback you got. :-)