RFR: JDK-8237803 Reorganize impl of tool options

Jonathan Gibbons jonathan.gibbons at oracle.com
Fri Jan 24 02:30:19 UTC 2020


Although the underlying problems are different, the general goal of this 
cleanup is similar in nature to that of the recent cleanup for doclet 
options.

In this case, the effect is not as widespread ... just 6 source files 
affected, no tests ... but the changes to the main affected class are 
more substantial, although still primarily a refactoring and just moving 
code around, with no intentional change in functionality.

To describe the changes, let me describe the world before this change:

The ToolOption class followed the javac model for options and used an 
enum to represent the individual supported options. One problem of using 
an enum is that they are implicitly static, and so have never have any 
enclosing context. This means that when analyzing command-line 
arguments, the enum members need to be given an object providing the 
necessary context. In the case of ToolOption, this was a nested Helper 
class, which contained a mix of fields containing the values for some 
options, most notably those used in Start, and a map of objects for the 
values of other options, where the map was literally, 
Map<ToolOption,Object>. This led to "clunky" code to access the values 
in the map and to cast the result to the correct type for each value.

In general, while there were some benefits to using the enum (such as 
being able to refer to some of the options by their member name), the 
cost outweighed the benefits.

The primary change is to invert the nesting relationship between 
ToolOption and its Helper, and to rename and refactor the code accordingly.

To summarize the changes,

1.    ToolOption.Helper becomes a new top-level class ToolOptions, which 
is the new primary abstraction for the accessing everything to do with 
tool options.

2.    ToolOption is changed from a top-level enum to a nested class in 
ToolOptions, with the members becoming a simple List<ToolOption>.

3.    All option values are represented as properly-typed encapsulated 
fields of ToolOptions. The fields are encapsulated, based on the 
feedback for the doclet options review.

4.    The direct use and passing around of the Map jdToolOpts is 
replaced by direct use of the new ToolOptions class.

5.    ToolOptions uses a new ShowHelper interface to separate out the 
functionality for handling options like --help and --verbose. 
Previously, Start implemented ToolOption.Help directly; now, it just 
uses a local anonymous class instead.

6.    ToolOption.java is renamed to ToolOptions.java, to retain history 
and to maximize the opportunity to compare the old and new versions.

There are no significant changes to the high-level option handling in 
Start, which continues to do the double scan, to pick up selection 
options, like -doclet, -docletpath, -locale, before doing the main 
scan.  The handling of OptionException could also be simplified 
(separately), possibly allowing the ShowHelper class to be eliminated.

One of the advantages of using the enum (in the old code) was that it 
allowed symbolic references to options handled in Start.preprocess.  
These references are fixed up by defining string constants for the names 
of the handful of options in question, which is all that is needed.

While the code is generally cleaner for allowing the ToolOption objects 
to be inner classes of ToolOptions, it does mean they can only exist in 
the context of a ToolOptions object. This has an impact on a little-used 
method on the DocumentationTask interface, to determine if an option 
name is supported. The body of the implementing method is moved into 
ToolOptions, which creates a temporary minimal ToolOptions object, 
sufficient to the needs of the isSupportedOption method.

-- Jon

JBS: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8237803
Webrev: http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~jjg/8237803/webrev/



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