RFR: 8023863: deprecate support for statically-generated stubs from RMI (JRMP)

[Stuart Marks]

Hi all,

Please review the following specification change to deprecate RMI/JRMP static 
stubs. This change consists only of deprecations and spec clarifications. There 
are no actual API changes (classes, method signatures, etc.), nor are there any 
behavioral or functional differences. This does not affect RMI/IIOP (CORBA).

More formally, what is being deprecated includes the runtime support for stubs 
and skeletons, some APIs that use only static stubs, and tooling support for 
generating static stubs and skeletons. (A separate, corresponding change will be 
made to the rmic tool page.)

Using statically generated stubs for RMI/JRMP hasn't been necessary since JDK 
5.0, when dynamic stub generation was introduced. Use of skeletons has been 
unnecessary since JDK 1.2 (1998?). The Skeleton interface is already deprecated; 
runtime and tooling support for skeletons is being deprecated now.

All this stuff represents two layers of backward compatibility beneath the top 
layer of RMI/JRMP dynamic stubs. These extra layers increase code complexity, 
maintenance costs, and API surface area. Deprecating them is the first step in 
removing them from the system, which might occur in a future release, or 
possibly spread over the next several releases.


Bug report:

     https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8023863

Webrev:

     http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~smarks/reviews/8023863/webrev.1/

Specdiff:

 
http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~smarks/reviews/8023863/specdiff.1/overview-summary.html


Thanks!

s'marks