serialized annotations use sun.reflect.*

[Mandy Chung]

Jon, Joe,

There should be no issue for jdk classes (such as javac/apt) to have a 
dependency on sun.reflect.annotation.* classes and they're currently in 
the base module.

At some point in time, we would make private API (e.g sun.*) only 
accessible by jdk.  There are two ways to do it:
(1) make the private API to be module-private; or
(2) include the private API as a separate private module that only 
permits by the jdk.

There are private sun.* or com.sun.* APIs that applications might depend 
on.   One idea to support the legacy mode is to put these APIs in a 
private-legacy module so that existing applications can continue to run.

If any sun.reflect.annotation.* become part of the public SE spec, we 
would keep those classes in the base module and remain public then.  As 
the sun.* API is used in the serialized form, I don't know enough if 
there is any other implication if they are made inaccessible other than 
the jdk.  I need to verify this case.

Mandy

On 01/11/10 18:36, Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
> Mandy, Alan,
> 
> In the modularization effort, is it going to be an issue that javac (and 
> apt) has an explicit dependence on sun.reflect.annotation.*? Since JDK 
> 5, the serialized form of annotations has used these otherwise internal 
> classes. This is true both for annotations created by the runtime, and 
> by javac as part of JSR 269. For full details, if you really want to, 
> see 6538914 and 6270734.
> Joe and I are trying to figure out the disposition of these bugs -- 
> whether to use new public classes (and break compatibility) or to accept 
> the status quo that these classes should be part of the public J2SE spec.
> 
> -- Jon