Covariant overrides on the Buffer Hierachy

[Richard Warburton]

Hi Peter,


> I'm suggesting this alternative, because Buffer methods can stay final in
> this case. This is more JIT-friendly. And, if I'm not mistaken, client code
> compiled using JDK8 onto which this API change was backported, would still
> run with JDK8 (or JDK7 when compiled with -target 1.7) onto which the API
> change was not back-ported.
>

Thanks for suggesting this alternative. I think there are a few downsides
to this approach as well though.

1. Anyone with code referring to 'ByteBuffer' now gets rawtype generics
errors.
2. Anyone with -Werror (like openjdk!) now fails to compile.
3. This is a more complex change than the one I was proposing and smaller,
simpler, changes seem to be less risky.
4. Developers do genuinely get confused by generics. Not a reason not to
use them ever but a good reason not to introduce them if the issue can be
solved by an alternative approach.

Happy to be corrected if I've misunderstood anything ;)

regards,

  Richard Warburton

  http://insightfullogic.com
  @RichardWarburto <http://twitter.com/richardwarburto>