Proposal: Allow illegal reflective access by default in JDK 9

[Peter Levart]

Hi Volker,

On 05/19/2017 11:48 AM, Volker Simonis wrote:
>  From my understanding, at run-time, "open" implicates "exports" (i.e.
> if a module M1 opens a package P for some other module M2 it also,
> implicitly exports P to M2). The  "big kill switch" in both, its old
> and in the newly proposed form, usually only refers to "enabling
> reflective access" but doesn't explicitly mentions that it will also,
> implicitly export the respective packages. Also, the usage of the
> "kill switch" only produces warnings for reflective accesses which are
> enabled by the option itself (and not at the same time, explicitly
> allowed by --add-opens directives). But it doesn't warn about the
> simple, non-reflective accesses to packages which are implicitly
> exported by the kill switch as well.

No, you got it wrong. "opens" is just a backdoor for reflection (and 
MethodHandles.Lookup). It does not implicitly also mean "exports". 
Neither in compile-time nor in run-time. Otherwise everything that is 
declared "public" would be accessible to reflection without the need for 
.setAccessible(true) - therefore even to code running with 
SecurityManager enabled!

Regards, Peter