Rethinking TypeAnnotation vs Annotation

[Werner Dietl]

Hi all,

an alternative would be to keep Compound only while it is unclear
whether an annotation is a type or declaration annotation and
introduce a new DeclarationCompound class that can be used when only
declaration annotations are expected.
Why not have the type system help us keep things straight?

cu, WMD.




On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Joel Borggrén-Franck
<joel.franck at oracle.com> wrote:
> Hi Eric,
>
> On 06 Feb 2014, at 20:59, Eric McCorkle <eric.mccorkle at oracle.com> wrote:
>
>> In the process of working on the next roadmap step for type annotations,
>> I've realized something.
>>
>> The current implementation, and I think most of everyone's thinking on
>> annotations treats type annotations as a special case of regular
>> annotations.  Indeed, this is sort of the intuitive first thought.
>>
>> But looking at the actual implementation details, I think the reverse is
>> actually true.  Any given annotation is potentially a type annotation,
>> especially earlier in the javac pipeline (where I'm presently generating
>> TypeAnnotationPositions in my new patch).  So, on the implementation
>> front, it makes perfect sense to do things like store
>> TypeAnnotationPositions in Attribute.Compound, as opposed to
>> Attribute.TypeCompound.
>>
>> I think this would also go a long way towards creating the single
>> codepath for attaching annotations that I want to create.
>>
>> Comments?
>
> I have never been a big fan of the TypeCompound class at all. Also reading some more in 9.7.4 it looks like annotation can be both a type anno and a declaration anno. So, from my perspective, dumping TypeCompound and moving its data up to Compound seems like something to try out.
>
> cheers
> /Joel



-- 
http://www.google.com/profiles/wdietl