Possible javac bug around final and covariant overrides

[David M. Lloyd]

While exploring adding covariant overrides for Buffer classes, it was 
discovered that javac is not making synthetic methods for covariant 
overrides match the finality of the covariant method.

Simple illustration:

   public class Test {
       public Object foo() { return null; }
   }
   public class TestSub extends Test {
       public final String foo() { return null; }
   }

Yields (javap output):

   public class Test {
     public Test();
     public java.lang.Object foo();
   }
   public class TestSub extends Test {
     public TestSub();
     public final java.lang.String foo();
     public java.lang.Object foo(); // <- not final?!
   }

Is there a good reason for this?  Hypothetically it would seem that this 
might prevent HotSpot from modifying calls to the synthetic method to be 
monomorphic.  Is this a legitimate concern?

-- 
- DML