ClassFileTransformer does not apply to anonymous classes

[Rafael Winterhalter]

Hi Coleen, thanks for looking into this. My original mail was the following:

Hello everybody,

classes that are loaded via Unsafe::defineAnonymousClass are not
transformed by a registered ClassFileTransformer. At the same time, it
is possible to retransform / redefine such an anonymous classes using
the instrumentation API.

Here is a rather confusing bug that I encountered when working with an
internally used Java agent after upgrading a code base to Java 8:

The Java agent attaches at runtime (agentmain). It then registers a
ClassFileTransformer that also applies for retransformation.
Afterwards, all loaded classes that fullfil a given condition are
explicitly registered to be retransformed by the agent. (Doing so,
anonymous classes are returned by
Instrumentation::getAllLoadedClasses.) This resulted in the following
behavior of the agent:

a) If the agent was attached after an anonymous class was loaded, the
retransformation would apply to an anonymous class.
b) If the agent was attached "too early", the (non-re-)transformation
would not apply to an anonymous class.

I wonder if it is intentional that a ClassFileTransformer is not
applied when an anonymous class is loaded. Personally, I find this
counter-intuitive, especially when converting anonymous inner classes
to lambda expressions where many users of instrumentation do not
forsee the behavioral change. It also puts a very unforseeable limit
to the instrumentation API. I would therefore like to suggest that
ClassFileTransformers are also applied to anonymous classes when
Unsafe::defineAnonymousClass is called just as when going via
ClassLoader::defineClass.

I can tell that this behavior has not only affected me as I had this
question comming up by multiple users of my open-source code
generation library.

What is your view on this?

Thank you for your feedback!
Best regards, Rafael

2016-01-22 15:00 GMT+01:00 Coleen Phillimore <coleen.phillimore at oracle.com>:
>
>
> On 1/22/16 4:11 AM, Andrew Dinn wrote:
>>
>> On 21/01/16 22:14, Rafael Winterhalter wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Andrew,
>>> if there is any update on the matter, I would of course love to hear
>>> about it.
>>> Unfortunately, I never received an answer to my question, but maybe I
>>> picked the wrong list.
>>> Thank you for your support on this issue!
>>
>> I'm pretty sure this is the right list. But I don't know who cold answer
>> the question. I know that Coleen Phillmore (added explicitly to CC)
>> often deals with ClassFileTransformer issues. Coleen, can you answer?
>
>
> Can you send the question again?  I didn't see it.  I also mostly look at
> JVM code and rarely deal with the Java side.
>
> I'm also adding Dan, Serguei and Markus.
>
> Thanks,
> Coleen
>
>>
>> regards,
>>
>>
>> Andrew Dinn
>> -----------
>> Senior Principal Software Engineer
>> Red Hat UK Ltd
>> Registered in UK and Wales under Company Registration No. 3798903
>> Directors: Michael Cunningham (US), Michael O'Neill (Ireland), Paul
>> Argiry (US)
>
>