Overload resolution regression

[Jonathan Ross]

Hi,

I recently started porting a 150k-line project to jdk 8 to try my hand at
the recent changes in the collection libraries. (Hadn't done this since
last year, my apologies!)

I have run in to a large number of compilation errors: regressions in type
inference and overload resolution. A lot of these are in unit tests using
mockito and fest and other similar monadic apis that rely heavily on
overload resolution.

The code snippet below is a distilled version of my typical compilation
error: our test code relying on the compiler choosing the Object overload
by default.


import java.math.BigInteger;

public class OverloadingRegression {

    static <T> T unsafeCast(Object anObject) {
        return (T) anObject;
    }

    public void showOverloadResolutionIssue() {
        pickMe(unsafeCast(new String()));
    }

    private void pickMe(BigInteger o) { /* ClassCastException in
1.8.0-ea-b115 */ }

    private void pickMe(Object o) { /* fine, picked in 1.6 & 1.7 */ }
}


Obviously the unsafeCast is not going to win any beauty prizes, but
sometimes you just have to do this sort of thing.  My main point is: it
used to work in java 7, it doesn't any more.

Is this a known issue (or is it even expected behaviour)?

I'm using 1.8.0-ea-b115, but I verified that it fails with all 1.8 jdks I
have my box.  When I pass in -source 1.7 it does work. And when I do an
explicit cast to Object (of course).

-- Jonathan Ross