RFR: 8184765: Dynamically resize SystemDictionary

[coleen.phillimore at oracle.com]

On 10/31/17 12:39 PM, John Rose wrote:
> On Oct 30, 2017, at 8:50 PM, David Holmes <david.holmes at oracle.com 
> <mailto:david.holmes at oracle.com>> wrote:
>>
>> The flag should not be experimental - enabling resizable tables is 
>> not an experiment that the user is controlling, it is the default 
>> behaviour that we intend to occur. The flag is there to turn it off 
>> if for some reason this doesn't work
>
> This describes a diagnostic flag, not a product flag.  We mask those
> flags to avoid polluting the list of true product flags with 
> diagnostic hooks.
>
>> - the flag should be a product flag.
>
> Hence, it should be a diagnostic flag, if we think there is a long-term
> diagnostic benefit to turning it off.  Otherwise it should be removed as
> Gerard suggests.  Diagnosis could be for either bugs or performance.
>
> If there is a non-diagnostic reason, where we expect a user to flip it
> more or less permanently for their use case, it could be product.

I agree this should be a diagnostic flag.   Technically we shouldn't 
need it because this feature has been well developed and tested, but 
we've been erring on the side of caution lately.

Do we still need a CSR for the diagnostic flag?

>
> Experimental flags should be short-lived.
>

Hopefully the diagnostic flag should be short-lived as well.

Thanks,
Coleen
> — John