RFR: 8065172: More core reflection final and volatile annotations

[Martin Buchholz]

Webrev updated.  Field updaters are gone.  I intend to commit soon.

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Martin Buchholz <martinrb at google.com> wrote:
> Alright, I'm convinced and will revert to using ordinary volatile
> writes instead of CAS.
>
> Y'all have a deeper understanding of the reflection machinery.
>
> Martin
>
> On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 1:52 PM, Peter Levart <peter.levart at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 12/08/2014 10:24 PM, Peter Levart wrote:
>>
>> "Interned" Types can not be guaranteed, since they are rooted on members of
>> j.l.Class (Method, Field, Constructor), which can be GC-ed because of
>> either:
>>
>> - class redefinition
>> - memory pressure (see j.l.Class.reflectionData field, which points to
>> SoftReference<ReflectionData>)
>>
>> ...and next time you request them, new instances will be created and new
>> instances of Types with them.
>>
>> Regards, Peter
>>
>>
>> Even in the absence of above, the Method, Field, Constructor objects
>> obtained from j.l.Class methods are always copied from the "root" objects
>> (because they are mutable - setAccessible()) and with copying, you always
>> get a "fresh" object that has an uninitialized 'genericInfo' field.
>>
>> Even in the absence of all above, by CAS-ing, you don't actually get
>> "interning", since two Type objects from different sources (for example
>> generic return types of two different methods) can be equal, but they will
>> not be same objects. So I can't see a purpose here. We would have to
>> implement Type interning in a global pool to achieve that (like it is
>> guaranteed for j.l.Class objects).
>>
>>
>> Regards, Peter
>>