Incompatible change to java.lang.instrument.Instrumentation

[Alan Bateman]

On 16/06/2017 06:54, Sven Reimers wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> as part of the process of the code donation from Oracle to Apache for
> NetBeans I tried a compilation of the source code using idk 9-ea+173. The
> compilation fails due to an added method boolean isModifiableModule(Module)
> in java.lang.instrument.Instrumentation.
>
> Should the newly added method on the interface Instrumentation have a
> default implementation to make this change source code compatible from 8 to
> 9, e.g.
>
> default boolean isModifiableModule(Module module) {
>
>      return false;
>
> }
>
>
> Is it already to late for changing this before JDK 9 release?
>
You are correct that adding abstract methods to Instrumentation is an 
incompatible change but the long term assumption in this area has always 
been it wouldn't be implemented outside of the java.instrument module. 
There were 4 abstract methods added to it in Java SE 6 and I don't 
recall anyone screaming (pre-dates default methods of course).

So can you say what NetBeans is doing? Is this mocking, maybe 
forwarding/intercepting? If there is a compelling reasons then we could 
try to see about changing redefineModule and the other new methods to be 
default methods but it is late and there is more to this that changing 
them to be default methods.

-Alan