Deprecate Double.MIN_VALUE?

[David Alayachew]

Thanks Joe.

Ok, so deprecations are basically a super-regulated way to achieve a
certain amount of backwards incompatibility without breaking Java's core
promise?


On Mon, Dec 2, 2024, 11:17 PM Joseph D. Darcy <joe.darcy at oracle.com> wrote:

> There is a policy for managing deprecations:
>
>    https://openjdk.org/jeps/277
>
> Most the incompatible step, actually removing the declaration in question,
> if it occurs at all, would only occur after a warning period.
>
> HTH,
>
> -Joe
> On 12/2/2024 6:24 PM, David Alayachew wrote:
>
> As a data point of one, we use all of the abovementioned constants
> regularly for my day job. In total, we have maybe a couple thousand
> instances of that constant being referenced. Ripping out wouldn't be too
> painful as long as I was told exactly what the replacements were, but I
> wouldn't be thrilled with it.
>
> Also, wouldn't this qualify as a backwards-incompatible change?
>
> On Mon, Dec 2, 2024, 8:32 PM Joseph D. Darcy <joe.darcy at oracle.com> wrote:
>
>> Hmm. I understand the motivation here and the asymmetry with the integral
>> types, but on the whole I don't think deprecating {Float, Double}.MIN_VALUE
>> and recommending use of a differently-named field with the same value would
>> be a net improvement.
>>
>> -Joe
>> On 12/2/2024 3:17 PM, Éamonn McManus wrote:
>>
>> At Google, we've had several issues over the years relating to
>> Double.MIN_VALUE. People have not unreasonably supposed that
>> Double.MIN_VALUE has the same relationship to Double.MAX_VALUE as
>> Integer.MIN_VALUE has to Integer.MAX_VALUE. So they think that
>> Double.MIN_VALUE is the (finite) negative number of largest magnitude,
>> rather than the positive number of smallest magnitude. We're currently
>> thinking of adding a constant MIN_POSITIVE_VALUE to Guava's Doubles
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://guava.dev/releases/snapshot-jre/api/docs/com/google/common/primitives/Doubles.html__;!!ACWV5N9M2RV99hQ!PaT7OCGf7CncxF09sKLO4p39KkraAtzbBbvnOR8O8r2x6Z0e1zru8BqG9LGItQtyxAQkQc8A12DanwunC_ZxkNGO$> class
>> and having static analysis that suggests using that instead of
>> Double.MIN_VALUE, if that is indeed what you meant, or of course using
>> -Double.MAX_VALUE if *that* is what you meant.
>>
>> A few JDK and JavaFX bugs show that Google engineers are not the only
>> ones to be confused by this:
>> https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-4218647
>> https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8092698
>> https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8156186
>>
>> So we also wonder if it would make sense to deprecate Double.MIN_VALUE
>> itself and introduce Double.MIN_POSITIVE_VALUE with the same meaning.
>> Obviously the same thing would apply to Float.
>>
>>
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