Method references in annotations?

[Jim Mayer]

Hi Ben,

I believe that the reference was to use of method references* *in
annotations.  Method references in regular code were supported the last time
I looked.

-- Jim

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 5:06 PM, Ben Evans <benjamin.john.evans at gmail.com>wrote:

> I don't see why method references are "only tangentially related" to the
> scope of Project Lambda.
>
> Methods which expect a lambda must be able to accept either an anonymous
> function or a named method.
>
> Surely, no-one is suggesting otherwise?
>
> Given that, the mechanism for named methods we have is presumably to pass a
> MethodHandle which contains a reference to the named method. This is
> incredibly cumbersome and exactly the kind of overly verbose, boilerplate-y
> code that we should be able to do better than.
>
> I'm really failing to see why method references are not a consideration
> here.
>
> Also - can we please have a link to public archives for the EG?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ben
>
> On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Neal Gafter <neal at gafter.com> wrote:
>
> > It's is a bit of a stretch to call it an "omission" that project lambda
> > hasn't specified language constructs only tangentially related to it's
> > scope.
> >
> >
> > On Saturday, August 13, 2011, Ben Evans <benjamin.john.evans at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 12:14 AM, Stephen Colebourne
> > > <scolebourne at joda.org>wrote:
> > >
> > >> On 10 August 2011 20:24, Dan Smith <daniel.smith at oracle.com> wrote:
> > >> > Discussions along the lines of "yeah, those are things we should get
> > to
> > >> sometime" have happened here, internally at Oracle, and in the JSR 335
> > >> expert group.
> > >>
> > >> I will just note that I've raised this before. Frameworks in
> > >> particular constantly have to wrestle with how to handle the lack of
> > >> method references, generally using strings. Adding method references
> > >> to the main body of code helps those framework writers a bit, but not
> > >> being usable in annotations is a major limitation and a huge missed
> > >> opportunity.
> > >>
> > >
> > > Nor is this situation static.
> > >
> > > E.g. both JSR 349 (Bean Validation) and JSR 350 (effectively, Container
> > > Managed State) have glaringly obvious places where a method reference
> in
> > an
> > > annotation would be very useful.
> > >
> > > Have the reasons for this omission been discussed in detail on the JSR
> > 335
> > > EG? Is there a public Observers alias for that EG?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Ben
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>