infer_clone/infer/documentation/issues/STARVATION.md

This error is reported in Java, and specifically on Android. These reports are triggered when a method that runs on the UI thread may block, thus potentially leading to an Application Not Responding error.

Infer considers a method as running on the UI thread whenever:

• The method, one of its overrides, its class, or an ancestral class, is annotated with @UiThread.
• The method, or one of its overrides is annotated with @OnEvent, @OnClick, etc.
• The method or its callees call a Litho.ThreadUtils method such as assertMainThread.

The issue is reported when a method deemed to run on the UI thread

• Makes a method call which may block.
• Takes a lock, and another thread takes the same lock, and before releasing it, makes a call that may block.

Calls that may block are considered:

• Certain I/O calls.
• Two way Binder.transact calls.
• Certain OS calls.
• Future or AsyncTask calls to get without timeouts, or with too large timeouts.

To suppress starvation reports in a method m() use the @SuppressLint("STARVATION") annotation, as follows:

  import android.annotation.SuppressLint;

  @SuppressLint("STARVATION")
  public void m() {
  ...
  }

To signal to Infer that a method does not perform any blocking calls, despite appearences, you can use the @NonBlocking annotation:

  import com.facebook.infer.annotation.NonBlocking;

  @NonBlocking
  public void m() {
  ...
  }

This instructs Infer to filter out any potentially blocking calls in m() (also, transitively), and thus any other method can expect no starvation reports due to a call to m(). You will need to set up your class path appropriately to include the JAR files in infer/annotations for this annotation to work.