Experimentation with build time and runtime class initialization in qbicc

[Brian Goetz]

Hi David;

Would like to understand more about this, but first, from an IP-hygiene 
perspective, documents linked from this list should be under the OpenJDK 
terms and conditions.  Can you post the contents of that document here, 
so there are no issues there?

Thanks,
-Brian

On 5/26/2022 12:35 PM, David P Grove wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the qbicc project, we’ve been exploring options for adapting Java’s class initialization semantics for native images.  In particular, we are trying to arrive at a non-surprising semantics that in a native-image scenarios allows most initialization to happen at build-time while still enabling runtime initialization of selected static fields.
>
> Our current design and experience is captured here:https://github.com/qbicc/qbicc/wiki/Class-Initialization-in-qbicc.  In a nutshell, the idea is to initialize classes via build-time execution of existing <clinit> methods as per normal Java semantics while adding per-static-field <rtinit> methods to provide a capability for runtime-reinitialization of a field before its first access.
>
> --dave
>