RFR (L): 8073500: Prevent certain commercial flags from being changed at runtime

[Gerard Ziemski]

> On May 8, 2016, at 6:39 PM, David Holmes <david.holmes at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> On 7/05/2016 2:02 AM, Gerard Ziemski wrote:
>> hi David,
>> 
>>> On May 5, 2016, at 3:55 PM, David Holmes <david.holmes at oracle.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Gerard,
>>> 
>>> How does this relate to the existing Manageable and Product_rw flags ??
>> 
>> Good questions:
>> 
>> #1 Re: Manageable
>> 
>> There is some overlap when it comes to setting the flag during the runtime (ie. vie jcmd), which will need to be reconciled (in a follow up task), but this mechanism is more general (with possibly more writeable types added in the future) and applies to all stages of the VM runtime, including the startup.
>> 
>> 
>> #2 Re: product_rw
>> 
>> I don’t see that used anywhere, we should remove it (in a follow up task).
> 
> I think every time we add yet-another-kind-of-flag we lament that there is not a better way to express this as an attribute of the existing flags type. Writability is an orthogonal concept (as is "managed") to product/develop/experimental/etc and I hate to see yet-another-flag-type added.
> 
> That's just a comment, not a blocker, but also not a review as I only skimmed this.

Thank you for your insight.

I will keep thinking about this and will try to come up with a unifying mechanism. For now, however, I believe this fix is a step in the right direction.


cheers