PROPOSAL: Lightweight Properties

[Joseph D. Darcy]

Schulz, Stefan wrote:
>> In effect the Property class becomes the generified Field 
>> object, so that
>> problem is circumvented.
>>     
>
> Well, the generified Field object should be returned by the reference, so that the generic type can be retrieved at compile-time, otherwise it would not make much sense. That's why the example uses the factory method at(<last part of the chain>), otherwise it will be difficult to have compile time type safety.
>
>   
>> The only thing it can not do is to check that the chain is 
>> correct (i.e in the 
>> example above that Foo#bar is a Bar( at compile time.  When the 
>> PropertyBuilding is building the Property  it can, but that 
>> is a little later
>> than I would like - but still a great improvement on 
>> evalutation time, added
>> to which the chained case is a minority case.
>>     
>
> You are right. I forgot about the correctness of the chain. And this will only be possible by a new notation.
>
>   
>> My only question concerns annotations.  It is important that 
>> the Field object
>> is the real one, and not a synthetic partial copy.  The 
>> reason for this is 
>> so that I can access Annotations.  If this will work then I am happy.
>>     
>
> I don't understand this one. You won't annotate the Field class but the field, so the object returned will have to support Annotation retrieval, I guess.
>
>   
>> So if FCM is going to be in -7 then my proposal is 
>> unnecessary.  But of course
>> that makes an assumption and unless I have missed something it seemed
>> to be as far off as Property support.
>>     
>
> FCM won't. But maybe a proposal for Field-Literals might have a chance, as it seems a coin to me. Not much magic about it, I think. But then again, I might miss the hard parts as I have no real insight into javac etc.
>
> @Joe: Would it make sense to file a proposal on Field-Literals or would it be doomed right away? And I am not sure, whether completing such a proposal by Method- and Constructor-Literals would become too big for Coin. Any hint?
>   

I would judge field, method, and constructor literals to be too large 
for Project Coin.

Cheers,

-Joe