I agree, but at the same time CLASS retention is really the worst of both worlds in my opinion. It doesn't have any (convenient) runtime benefit, but you can be sure that someone will depend on it at runtime by parsing the class files (this happens surprisingly often). I'd really like to see this be SOURCE initially and only after it is well understood, move it to RUNTIME in some future version of the platform (and then make it a public API instead of a jdk specific thing). Regards, Jeroen
-----Original Message----- From: core-libs-dev-bounces@openjdk.java.net [mailto:core-libs-dev- bounces@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Martin Buchholz Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2013 0:42 To: mark.reinhold@oracle.com Cc: core-libs-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: Re: @Supported design issues
One more thought. @Supported has RUNTIME retention, and it will be inevitable that some people will check the annotation at runtime. As a practical matter, once the annotation is added, it will never be removed (or removed only if the corresponding API is itself removed), (for fear of breaking someone), including by third parties like IcedTea.