Method Pointers

[Brian Goetz]

I would call this the "do nothing" option (which is certainly an 
option), because we already support this as part of the basic SAM 
conversion.  You can use a cast to select a specific target type, and if 
the target type is serializable then the lambda will be.  But, it still 
is in the sucky category as a use-site serialization opt-in because it 
requires the user to create a class just so they make a lambda 
serializable (and if this were the only option, which it currently is, 
the result would be an application has many otherwise useless "garbage" 
classes like this one.)




On 2/26/2012 6:43 PM, Sam Pullara wrote:
> Since we are going to support it when the interface is Serializable, why not just require that you do something like:
>
> interface SerializableRunnable extends Runnable, Serializable {}
>
> and then cast it to that at the call site. Is this an option that sucks?
>
> Sam
>
> On Feb 26, 2012, at 3:29 PM, Brian Goetz wrote:
>> Another use-site opt-in would be explicit serialization support.  While
>> we plan to do at least as well as inner classes -- a lambda is
>> serializable if its target type is -- we'd like to do better, and
>> provide a way of opting in.  This largely turns out to be a syntactic
>> problem -- what is the syntactic form of the opt-in.  (Lots of
>> suggestions have been made, and so far they all suck.  I will open this
>> to suggestions at a future time, but until then, please hold your fire.)