Annotating lambda expressions

[Ron Pressler]

I see no problem with cast annotations not being retrievable via
straightforward reflection just as I see no problem annotating the
generated method (which should always exist *somewhere*): in both cases,
those annotations are intended for use by tools that analyze the entire
project's source/bytecode (e.g. for typechecking/instrumentation) rather
than by specific reflective queries.

What bothers me is that a capability that was trivial with inner classes is
now lost when using lambdas.

Ron Pressler
paralleluniverse.co
@puniverseco <https://twitter.com/puniverseco> on Twitter

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 10:38 PM, Alex Buckley <alex.buckley at oracle.com>
wrote:

> On 7/10/2015 2:31 AM, Maurizio Cimadamore wrote:
>
>> On 10/07/15 09:43, Ron Pressler wrote:
>>
>>> (Related to
>>>
>>> http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/compiler-dev/2015-January/009220.html
>>> )
>>>
>>> It is useful to add an annotation to a lambda expression -- as in
>>> foo(@Special () -> { ...}) -- which will be applied to the static
>>> method implementing the lambda (not to the interface the lambda
>>> implements). This would allow instrumentation tools operating on
>>> method implementations to handle lambdas. So far, AFAICT, this is not
>>> possible (or am I wrong?).
>>>
>> This is not possible, currently - as Remi said; you have annotations on
>> declarations (i.e. variable, classes, methods) - you have annotation on
>> types (i.e. type of a cast, type argument, etc.) - but you don't have
>> annotations on _expressions_.
>> I take it that, under the current translation scheme, there seems to be
>> a plausible description for what should happen when the lambda is
>> annotated; but what if the lambda is turned into a method reference (by
>> some IDE refactoring, or human intervention) ? In that case it is not
>> guaranteed that there would still be a physical place where to put the
>> annotation (unless we tell the compiler to 'expand' all annotated method
>> references).
>>
>
> Yes, the problem with annotations-on-expressions is not the language
> grammar but the storage of the annotations in the class file. With no
> standard way of translating source expressions to bytecode, there can be no
> standard API for retrieving annotations-on-expressions from bytecode. More
> broadly, there has never been a standard reflective API capable of
> inspecting method bodies.
>
> This explains why JSR 308 stayed away from annotations-on-expressions --
> we were not in a position to let them be read back. It was already bad
> enough that some annotations-on-types are stored in the class file at the
> level of individual bytecodes (e.g. an annotation on the type of a cast) so
> are not retrievable by any standard reflective API.
>
> Alex
>
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