OpenJDK parser internals

[Steve S]

Hi All,

I'm just started deeply digging into OpenJDK sources (jdk6, langtools).
The following strikes me as odd:

1. Ast tree members (JCTree descendants) expose all theirs members in public
access.
Do I understand right that this is done due to: (1) simplicity, (2)
performance gain?
Is the option to rewrite it with final fields and getters ever considered?

2. Lots of code with old-fashioned for-loop instead of for-each loop (e.g.
iterating over internal linked List).

3. Verbose exception handling approach - e.g. .tools.javac.tree.Pretty - all
the visitor methods wraps implementation in try-catch block though it is
sufficient to provide Pretty.print implementation that only wraps out.write
to try-catch block with throwing UncheckedIOException.

4... Lots of other stuff like code duplication, violation of encapsulation,
etc.

Does someone have a "plan" to refactor this code? I never ever seen in the
jdk7, 8 forks - may be it's worth it?
Looks like it'd be a real pain due to lots of forks and would result in a
outrageously complex merge.

---
Best Regards,
    Alex
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