RFR(s): 4285505: deprecate java.lang.Compiler

[Tim Ellison]

On 07/09/16 23:45, Krystal Mok wrote:
> I see that on the JBS page, your most recent comment says it's been decided
> that for JDK9 it's okay to deprecate and forRemoval=true, while also
> mentioning the uses of this class in IBM's implementation.
> 
> Does that mean IBM has agreed on the deprecation of this class?

Yep, I've seen those references and am ok with the deprecation in JDK9.

> I thought J9 had features that allowed Java applications to do 
> fine-grained control over the JIT compiler at runtime, e.g. force
> compilation of specified methods *at some certain point* in the
> program.

Not sure what you are thinking of there Kris.  We do implement the five
public methods on Compiler to do pretty much what you would expect:

java.lang.Compiler.command(Object any) - this only does something for a
couple of custom arguments, most objects passed to it are simply ignored.

java.lang.Compiler.compileClass(Class<?> clazz) - the JIT will compile
all methods in the given class. These compilations are synchronous, i.e.
the application thread that called the API will wait until all
compilations are finished.

java.lang.Compiler.compileClasses(String s) - the JIT will compile all
methods from classes that match the given string.

java.lang.Compiler.disable() - disables all future JIT compilations.

java.lang.Compiler.enable() - resumes JIT compilations.

IMO dropping these APIs would not be a great loss.

> What JEP 165 is proposing can only statically configure JIT behaviors for
> HotSpot. The same approach doesn't seem to cover what J9 used to support.
> 
> Could you please share more background on the discussions that led to the
> decision?

As you would expect, IBM and Oracle talk regularly about all things
Java, and this topic was raised as a heads-up that it was coming to
OpenJDK.  So there really isn't any background to the discussion.

Regards,
Tim
(IBM Java team)

> On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 2:50 PM, Stuart Marks <stuart.marks at oracle.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Tomorrow's headline: Oracle Proposes To Remove Java JIT Compiler
>>
>> :-)
>>
>>
>> On 9/7/16 2:44 PM, Remi Forax wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, i like this patch :)
>>>
>>> Aleksey, It's worst than what you think because for a lot of people
>>> Compiler == java compiler and not JIT compiler so they try to compile a
>>> .java file with the method compileClasses(String).
>>>
>>> I'm glad this class will disappear soon.
>>>
>>> Rémi
>>>
>>> ----- Mail original -----
>>>
>>>> De: "Aleksey Shipilev" <ashipile at redhat.com>
>>>> À: "Stuart Marks" <stuart.marks at oracle.com>, "core-libs-dev" <
>>>> core-libs-dev at openjdk.java.net>
>>>> Envoyé: Mercredi 7 Septembre 2016 23:34:02
>>>> Objet: Re: RFR(s): 4285505: deprecate java.lang.Compiler
>>>>
>>>
>>> On 09/07/2016 11:52 PM, Stuart Marks wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Please review this small patch to deprecate java.lang.Compiler for
>>>>> removal.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes, +1.
>>>> This class is very confusing to have these days.
>>>>
>>>> -Aleksey
>>>>
>>>