JEP: Extending generics to support primitive type arguments

[Brian Goetz]

We couldn't possibly remove it; that could break existing code.  (Just 
because its dumb to rely on the identity of an Integer, doesn't mean 
people haven't.)  All we can do is hope to obsolete it.

Compatibility is a harsh mistress.

On 7/6/2014 9:35 AM, Martijn Verburg wrote:
> Hi Brian,
>
> I'll echo Paul and add "Good Luck" :-). My only real comment is that I'm
> not sure the question of: "Is there any impact / change / removal
> required for the existing autoboxing/unboxing functionality"?
>
> Cheers,
> Martijn
>
>
> On 26 June 2014 19:20, Paul Benedict <pbenedict at apache.org
> <mailto:pbenedict at apache.org>> wrote:
>
>     Brian, what a puzzler! This might be the most complex proposed
>     feature yet.
>     It will be a treat to see how others solve the problem.
>
>     Here is my first comment...
>     Given T=int, I would like to see the JVM magically substitute in an
>     "object" that's backed by the primitive. I use "object" in quotes
>     because I
>     am not referring to something that's instantiated per primitive value --
>     but some sort of synthetic singleton where all int primitives point
>     to the
>     same one. Since there is no other state in this "object" but the value
>     itself, this seems okay. The primitive value is actually the "this"
>     pointer
>     in the virtual method call.
>
>
>
>
>     Cheers,
>     Paul
>
>
>     On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 8:41 PM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com
>     <mailto:brian.goetz at oracle.com>> wrote:
>
>      > I've submitted the following JEP for extending generics to support
>      > primitive type arguments:
>      >
>      > https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8046267
>      >
>      > Comments welcome!
>      >
>      >
>
>