The future of OpenJDK6

[Andrew Haley]

On 03/15/2013 02:02 AM, David Holmes wrote:
> Going OT somewhat ...
> 
> On 15/03/2013 2:47 AM, Jeroen Frijters wrote:
>> Andrew Haley wrote:
>>> Good lord.  Unsafe is probably going to disappear from view when
>>> modularization happens, so people had better get used to its absence.
>>
>> I desperately hope so, but it is probably not realistic given how many high profile frameworks use it.
> 
> Unsafe will never go from OpenJDK6, 7 or 8. In a modular world the 
> relevant API's will need to be promoted to full supported status.

Fully supported?  How?  Unsafe interacts with the VM in somewhat
unpredictable ways by doing things underneath its feet.  In order for
this API to be supported we'd have to define what it actually does in
terms of the JMM.  I guess we could simply say that all of the, er,
interesting cases are UB, in which case supporting it becomes easy.

Andrew.