Condensing bootstraps

[Brian Goetz]

> We already pass in one context object into the BSM - the Lookup 
> object.  It's able to look up classes, methods, etc.  I haven't worked 
> though the implications of this but I'll throw it out anyway - would 
> it make sense to have a special kind of Lookup object for the offline 
> mode that delegated class lookups to the condensation context?  Do we 
> need some kind of common supertype between j.l.Class and ClassDesc 
> that allows asking the kinds of class relationship queries  
> (isAssignableFrom, getSuperclass, getInterfaces, ...) in a way that 
> can be run correctly in both modes?
>
> What I'm trying to get at is what kind of code can we run in both 
> online and offline modes?  Offline mode can't produce j.l.Class, will 
> have challenges dealing with accessibility especially across 
> classloader boundaries, others?
>
> More experiments are needed here to see how easy it is to write code 
> that is applicable in both modes.  Maybe you've already done them?

I think this is an area that needs more analysis.  Reinventing the 
reflection APIs to work "offline" seems prohibitive.  A first step is 
figuring out which subset of reflection/hierarchy analysis are likely to 
be commonly needed by condensers, so we can narrow down the target.