Future of 'type-annotations/type-annotations' forest

[Alex Buckley]

Werner, all,

Due to bug fixing and other cleanup for JDK 8u20 and JDK 9 [1], Oracle 
engineers have been working on patches to the implementation of type 
annotations [2][3][4]. The patches will be sent for review on 
compiler-dev soon. Once they go into the jdk8u/jdk8u forest or jdk9/dev 
forest, the type-annotations/type-annotations forest will be 
significantly out of date and should no longer be used for new 
contributions. As I indicated in January:

--
 From now on, bug fixes to javac's handling of type annotations should 
be sent as patches to the compiler-dev list, just like fixes to any 
other area of javac. Depending on the nature of the bug in JBS, the 
patch would target either the repositories of the JDK 8 Updates Project 
or the repositories of the JDK 9 Project.
--

I looked at the type-annotation-dev archives and identified four threads 
that discuss changes in the type-annotations/type-annotations forest but 
which is intended for the jdk8u/jdk8u or jdk9/dev forests:

- type-annotations based on JDK 9? (Jan 2014)
- Webrev for making parts of TypeAnnotationPosition immutable (Feb 2014)
- Invalid reordering in ClassReader (Feb 2014)
- Changes in type-annotations repository (Mar 2014)

It will not be straightforward to port these changes into jdk8u/jdk8u or 
jdk9/dev after the patches I mentioned at the start of this mail have 
been applied.

Werner, I think it would be best if you mailed compiler-dev with a 
summary of your changes as soon as possible. Then, if they are still 
applicable, individual patches can be discussed and sponsored into the 
appropriate jdk* forest.

Alex

[1] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8027181
[2] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8040327
[3] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8027262
[4] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8027188