SafeVarargs classfile encoding

[Joe Darcy]

Rémi Forax wrote:
> On 01/21/2011 07:50 PM, Joe Darcy wrote:
>> Hi Rémi.
>>
>> A few comments, in the entirety of the "jdk" repository, there were a 
>> total of five methods where it was appropriate to add this 
>> annotation, which is not a very high density!  For Coin, to keep the 
>> features small, we're avoiding JVM changes and defining a new 
>> attribute is a JVM changes of sorts.
>
> Here is the JVM spec change:

[sni]

The size of the JVM change is not the problem; the fact that potentially 
all class file consuming tools would need to know about the attribute 
is.  Additionally, this would be a new kind of side-effect of annotating 
a method.

>
>>
>> Using an annotation to store this information avoids the need to add 
>> a new core reflection API to access it, Method.isSafeVarargs, etc.
>
> Why SafeVarargs need to be visible using reflection API ?

Why should the information be excluded?  This annotation is a statement 
about the semantics of the method.

> By example, Synthetic attribute is not visible using reflection API.
>

Some synthetic information is exposed in core reflection:

http://download.java.net/jdk7/docs/api/java/lang/Class.html#isSynthetic()
http://download.java.net/jdk7/docs/api/java/lang/reflect/Constructor.html#isSynthetic()
http://download.java.net/jdk7/docs/api/java/lang/reflect/Method.html#isSynthetic()
http://download.java.net/jdk7/docs/api/java/lang/reflect/Field.html#isSynthetic()

-Joe