netty 4; how to initialize client's connection from same thread synchronously

Question

this seems to be simple but I am stuck.

I have a netty server that is configured with single eventLoop, in this event loop I want to connect to other server and I am initializing connection on that eventLoop, also this eventLoop is passed to a client as a worker group, so everything is performed on single thread.

ChannelFuture connectionFuture = b.connect(host, port);
    

I cannot use sync() on the future, as this would block the given eventLoop and fail.

unfortunately the #connect() pushes connection task to be resolved later even though it realizes the connection is performed on the executor thread already.

    private static void doConnect(
            final SocketAddress remoteAddress, 
            final SocketAddress localAddress, 
            final ChannelPromise connectPromise) {

        // This method is invoked before channelRegistered() is triggered.  
        // Give user handlers a chance to set up
        // the pipeline in its channelRegistered() implementation.
        final Channel channel = connectPromise.channel();
        channel.eventLoop().execute(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                if (localAddress == null) {
                    channel.connect(remoteAddress, connectPromise);
                } else {
                    channel.connect(remoteAddress, localAddress, connectPromise);
                }
                connectPromise.addListener(ChannelFutureListener.CLOSE_ON_FAILURE);
            }
        });
    }

and I dont see a way to let event loop to perform any action it needs to initialize a valid channel.

calling SingleThreadEventExecutor#runAllTasks() could be a way to go, but channel is not active after that :/