[jdk17u-dev] RFR: 8341779: [REDO BACKPORT] type annotations are not visible to javac plugins across compilation boundaries (JDK-8225377) [v2]

[Goetz Lindenmaier]

On Sat, 1 Nov 2025 21:30:52 GMT, Liam Miller-Cushon <cushon at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> [JDK-8341779](https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8341779) is a redo of the backport of [JDK-8323093](https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8323093), see also discussion in CSR [JDK-8346471](https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8346471).
>> 
>> JDK-8341779 was backported to JDK 21u and released in 21.0.8, as discussed in the CSR this PR proposes integrating it into a future 17u release now that 21.0.8 has been released.
>> 
>> Similar to [JDK-8360406](https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8360406) for 21u, a future backport will disable this logic for 17u by default, and optionally allow the fix to be enabled with `-XDaddTypeAnnotationsToSymbol`.
>> 
>> The patch did not apply cleanly, I resolved one merge conflict due to changes to the internal `TypeMetadata` API for JDK-8303820.
>
> Liam Miller-Cushon has updated the pull request incrementally with two additional commits since the last revision:
> 
>  - Backport 67c4a0826babb55ce56acf2b3b289b51d9d5529e
>  - Resolve merge conflict
>    
>    due to changes to the internal TypeMetadata API for JDK-8303820

Hi @cushon,
do we really need this in 17?
How far is the feature used in 21 by the community given the flag is needed?  Is there any adoption?
Why can't users just go to 25 or 21?
It is not very desireable to have kind of hidden features in an update release.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk17u-dev/pull/4124#issuecomment-3551938289