Java SWING GUI update

Today I stumbled upon a problem updating GUI SWING controls in java from a single threaded appliaction. Adding a simple invokeLate method did not work for me. jTextArea was still not updating properly. The code for updating text area looked like this:

       final String MESSAGE = newLine;

       SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

           public void run() {

               jTextArea1.setText(Log.now() + ": " + MESSAGE + "\n" + jTextArea1.getText());

               jTextArea1.setCaretPosition(0);

           }

       });

I added a second thread and some Thread.sleep(10);'s between actions to give time for GUI thread to do its job. Unfortunately this gave me nothing. You have to create a Thread class:

public class CloneThread implements Runnable{

  private int index;

  private VMCloneInfo vmClInfo;

  public CloneThread(int index, VMCloneInfo vmClInfo) {

      this.index = index;

      this.vmClInfo = vmClInfo;

  }

  public void run() {

      VBoxClonerView.getVBoxClonerView().cloneVM(index, vmClInfo);

  }

}

and use ExecutorService. This is the key element for all this to work.

ExecutorService myExecutor = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();

myExecutor.execute((Runnable) new CloneThread(jComboBox1.getSelectedIndex(), vmCloneInfo));