RFR: 8257450: Start of release updates for JDK 17 [v2]

[Joe Darcy]

On Mon, 7 Dec 2020 20:20:58 GMT, Jesper Wilhelmsson <jwilhelm at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> Joe Darcy has updated the pull request with a new target base due to a merge or a rebase. The incremental webrev excludes the unrelated changes brought in by the merge/rebase. The pull request contains eight additional commits since the last revision:
>> 
>>  - Merge branch 'master' into JDK-8257450
>>  - Update tests.
>>  - Merge branch 'master' into JDK-8257450
>>  - Merge branch 'JDK-8257450' of https://github.com/jddarcy/jdk into JDK-8257450
>>  - Merge branch 'JDK-8257450' of https://github.com/jddarcy/jdk into JDK-8257450
>>  - JDK-8257450
>>  - JDK-8257450
>>  - JDK-8257450
>
> src/java.compiler/share/classes/javax/lang/model/SourceVersion.java line 234:
> 
>> 232:      * @since 17
>> 233:      */
>> 234:     RELEASE_17;
> 
> Would it make sense to have a RELEASE_LATEST for the cases that are just updated to the latest release every six months?

That kind of design was considered and rejected with the API was initially added. The use of enum constants in annotations must be an actual enum constant, not just a static final field pointing to a particular enum value. It would be possible to conceptually alias RELEASE_LATEST with whatever actual constant was the latest (16, then 17, then 18...), but that would cause issues with other uses of the API.

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PR: https://git.openjdk.java.net/jdk/pull/1531