Repeating Annotations and backwards compatibility

[Paul Benedict]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 3:54 PM, Alex Buckley <alex.buckley at oracle.com>wrote:

> I thought I made it clear that container annotations are required in the
> ClassFile for legacy users of reflection.


Well, maybe.


> We generate container annotations on an occurrence of repeating
> annotations precisely for their benefit. New users of reflection can use
> new methods which "look through" container annotations, but the container
> annotations are still physically present.
>
>
I thought you were saying that *legacy* container annotations are ONLY for
*legacy* annotations. If a futuristic JPA 3, for example, introduced a new
repeating annotation, it should be unnecessary to also spec out a new
container annotation too. Are you really saying container annotations are
necessary forever?

Paul