JEP: Extending generics to support primitive type arguments

[Alex Buckley]

Notwithstanding the flyweight rule at 
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se8/html/jls-5.html#jls-5.1.7-300 ...

Alex

On 7/7/2014 9:47 AM, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> Sometimes compatibility can go too far. This might be one of those
> times. Anyone relying on the identity of Integer is being very very
> dumb (not just a little dumb), and breaking their code seems like it
> could be a reasonable trade off compared with the potential benefits.
> Stephen
>
>
> On 7 July 2014 17:25, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:
>> 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!
>>>       >
>>>       >
>>>
>>>
>>