New candidate JEP: 451: Prepare to Disallow the Dynamic Loading of Agents

[Jack Shirazi]

Thanks, "These warnings aim to prepare users for a future release which 
disallows the dynamic loading of agents by default" is pretty clearly 
deprecating frictionless agent loading. The non-goal part is the attach 
API, not agent loading.

I understand the motivation, and have listed multiple reasons why I feel 
they are insufficient. But again, I'm happy to accept that my opinion 
may be the minority, or may be the majority. I'm saying let's try to 
find out


On 16/05/2023 15:07, Alan Bateman wrote:
> On 16/05/2023 13:53, Jack Shirazi wrote:
>> :
>>
>> - this one deprecates a feature (agent attachment works well now with 
>> no friction, considerable friction is added when the deprecation 
>> becomes final); most JEPs are a clear enhancement rather than feature 
>> deprecation
>
> This JEP doesn't propose to deprecate the agent mechanism, it's an 
> explicit non-goal to deprecate it. Instead it's about emitting a 
> warning when a native or Java agent is loaded at runtime. Separate 
> work for JDK 21 has added a JFR event when agents are loaded as it is 
> useful to have in a recording too.
>
> Most JEPs may be about new features but JEPs are also used to 
> communicate significant changes,  deprecations, and removals. If you 
> look through the list of JEPs [1] you will find several on deprecation 
> where the authors have put consideration effort into explaining the 
> motivation.
>
> -Alan
>
> [1] https://openjdk.org/jeps/0