Coin Considerations

[Dalibor Topic]

Reinier Zwitserloot wrote:
> I like that idea. So, you mean the entire source code, all of it, as  
> one annotation (vs. a path)?

Yeah. Supplying the sources behind the line information referenced in
other portions of debug info, basically. Dumping the entire source code
for a file rather then subsets has the advantage that correct licensing, 
javadoc and attribution information could trivially travel along with 
the generated binary class file.

I picked StoredSource rather then OpenSource, as the latter would
have a pretty specific meaning, whereas I guess the proprietary 
software devs could make efficient use of such a feature, too.

 - If that's what you had in mind, I'm in  
> favour of it. Though - isn't that a change in javac, and not in the JLS?

I'd see is as an addition to the predefined annotations, so it would
require adding its spec to §9.6.1, at least.

It's more of a small productivity booster for those 'where is the
source for this apparently semi-random snapshot JAR on my classpath
that I'm getting this weird exception from' moments, then a real
change of the language. 

On the con side, it may require some fiddling with JVMTI & friends 
to expose the stored source code in a standard way to IDEs and debugging 
tools. So I'm not really sure if it fits into the Coin domain, but since 
you asked I figured I'd come out with the half-baked idea.

If the idea sounds useful, I'll play with it a bit further - 
but feel free to run with it yourself.

cheers,
dalibor topic

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