Is there an ExecutorService that uses the current thread?

What I am after is a compatible way to configure the use of a thread pool or not. Ideally the rest of the code should not be impacted at all. I could use a thread pool with 1 thread but that isn't quite what I want. Any ideas?

ExecutorService es = threads == 0 ? new CurrentThreadExecutor() : Executors.newThreadPoolExecutor(threads);

// es.execute / es.submit / new ExecutorCompletionService(es) etc

You can use Guava's MoreExecutors.newDirectExecutorService(), or MoreExecutors.directExecutor() if you don't need an ExecutorService.

If including Guava is too heavy-weight, you can implement something almost as good:

public final class SameThreadExecutorService extends ThreadPoolExecutor {
  private final CountDownLatch signal = new CountDownLatch(1);

  private SameThreadExecutorService() {
    super(1, 1, 0, TimeUnit.DAYS, new SynchronousQueue<Runnable>(),
        new ThreadPoolExecutor.CallerRunsPolicy());
  }

  @Override public void shutdown() {
    super.shutdown();
    signal.countDown();
  }

  public static ExecutorService getInstance() {
    return SingletonHolder.instance;
  }

  private static class SingletonHolder {
    static ExecutorService instance = createInstance();    
  }

  private static ExecutorService createInstance() {
    final SameThreadExecutorService instance
        = new SameThreadExecutorService();

    // The executor has one worker thread. Give it a Runnable that waits
    // until the executor service is shut down.
    // All other submitted tasks will use the RejectedExecutionHandler
    // which runs tasks using the  caller's thread.
    instance.submit(new Runnable() {
        @Override public void run() {
          boolean interrupted = false;
          try {
            while (true) {
              try {
                instance.signal.await();
                break;
              } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                interrupted = true;
              }
            }
          } finally {
            if (interrupted) {
              Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
            }
          }
        }});
    return Executors.unconfigurableScheduledExecutorService(instance);
  }
}

Java 8 style:

Executor e = Runnable::run;

Here's a really simple Executor (not ExecutorService, mind you) implementation that only uses the current thread. Stealing this from "Java Concurrency in Practice" (essential reading).

public class CurrentThreadExecutor implements Executor {
    public void execute(Runnable r) {
        r.run();
    }
}

ExecutorService is a more elaborate interface, but could be handled with the same approach.

I wrote an ExecutorService based on the AbstractExecutorService.

/**
 * Executes all submitted tasks directly in the same thread as the caller.
 */
public class SameThreadExecutorService extends AbstractExecutorService {

    //volatile because can be viewed by other threads
    private volatile boolean terminated;

    @Override
    public void shutdown() {
        terminated = true;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean isShutdown() {
        return terminated;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean isTerminated() {
        return terminated;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean awaitTermination(long theTimeout, TimeUnit theUnit) throws InterruptedException {
        shutdown(); // TODO ok to call shutdown? what if the client never called shutdown???
        return terminated;
    }

    @Override
    public List<Runnable> shutdownNow() {
        return Collections.emptyList();
    }

    @Override
    public void execute(Runnable theCommand) {
        theCommand.run();
    }
}