CloneNotSupportedException should extends RuntimeException not Exception

[Joel Borggrén-Franck]

On 10/15/2012 12:34 AM, David Holmes wrote:
 > Remi,
 >
 > This ship has sailed you can't recall it. CloneNotSupportedException 
 > is a checked exception and needs to remain so for source and binary
 > compatibility.
 >

I see how this is source incompatible and also behaviorally incompatible 
in a few cases, but how is this binary incompatible?

cheers
/Joel

>
> David
>
> On 15/10/2012 2:19 AM, Remi Forax wrote:
>> Hi everybody,
>> CloneNotSupportedException is thrown when a developer calls
>> Object.clone() and forget to mark the current object as Cloneable.
>> Because it's clearly a developer error, CloneNotSupportedException
>> should be a subtype of RuntimeException and not of Exception.
>>
>> I believe this change is backward compatible because RuntimeException is
>> a subclass of Exception,
>> so I propose to first change CloneNotSupportedException to extends
>> RuntimeException.
>>
>> diff -r ff641c5b329b
>> src/share/classes/java/lang/CloneNotSupportedException.java
>> --- a/src/share/classes/java/lang/CloneNotSupportedException.java Sat
>> Oct 13 10:15:57 2012 +0100
>> +++ b/src/share/classes/java/lang/CloneNotSupportedException.java Sun
>> Oct 14 18:16:35 2012 +0200
>> @@ -42,7 +42,7 @@
>> */
>>
>> public
>> -class CloneNotSupportedException extends Exception {
>> +class CloneNotSupportedException extends RuntimeException {
>> private static final long serialVersionUID = 5195511250079656443L;
>>
>> /**
>>
>>
>> And then to clean up the whole JDK (in several patches) to remove all
>> the unnecessary
>> try/catch like the one in by example ArrayList.clone()
>>
>> public Object clone() {
>> try {
>> ArrayList<?> v = (ArrayList<?>) super.clone();
>> v.elementData = Arrays.copyOf(elementData, size);
>> v.modCount = 0;
>> return v;
>> } catch (CloneNotSupportedException e) {
>> // this shouldn't happen, since we are Cloneable
>> throw new InternalError(e);
>> }
>> }
>>
>> will become
>>
>> public Object clone() {
>> ArrayList<?> v = (ArrayList<?>) super.clone();
>> v.elementData = Arrays.copyOf(elementData, size);
>> v.modCount = 0;
>> return v;
>> }
>>
>>
>> cheers,
>> Rémi
>>