Preview APIs in the Java Platform

[Alex Buckley]

The heart of "preview features" is the policy story, whereby Java's 
stewards feel it's acceptable to trade off a feature's compatibility in 
the short term [being non-final, it may change] in order to improve its 
quality in the long term. The technical story, whereby `javac` and 
`java` have a mechanism to control the use of preview features, is a 
sideshow. I don't wish to use the jdk-dev list to discuss hypotheticals 
about what a non-JDK project might do to support its own evolution.

Alex

On 3/4/2020 11:35 AM, Bill Shannon wrote:
> That's unfortunate.
> 
> It seemed like the mechanism could be useful for other projects, even if
> the policy for use of that mechanism wasn't identical to the Java SE policy.
> 
> Would you recommend that we propose a similar but different mechanism in
> Java SE that could be used by layered products?
> 
> Or do you believe that layered products should be allowed to introduce
> preview features similar to Java SE?
> 
> Or perhaps you see a way to support the needs of layered products without
> any changes to Java SE?