Clarification on migration to value types and boxed vs unboxed representations

Brian Goetz brian.goetz at oracle.com
Tue Jan 6 02:15:17 UTC 2015


> Obviously I may have missed some explanation in which case apologies but
> I'd just like to clarify the situation with respect to migrating existing
> value-like classes to value types. So let's suppose I've got a class (let's
> take java.time.LocalDate as an example) which morally should be a value
> type but isn't because the class predates the language feature. Its final,
> it isn't serializable or defines a serialization delegates, all its fields
> are final, the class is immutable. Looks like a great candidate to be
> converted into a value type and the preconditions seem to apply.

This what we call a /value-based/ class.

The question is, I believe, will it possible to (compatibly) migrate a 
class that was a value-based reference class into a value type.  We 
certainly hope so, but we don't yet have a story for this, as I 
mentioned the other day.

As John pointed out, we're pretty comfortable with the consequences for 
synchronization (both the 310 classes an Optional refer to the 
value-based disclaimer, which says "do this and you'll be sorry.")  The 
hard part about this migration compatibility is: nullability.  (This is 
where someone repeats the usual commercial for null-safe types and/or 
elvii operators.)  While null truly makes no sense for Optional, and I 
could imagine being willing to hose code that relies on Optionals being 
null, this is probably the exception among known value-based classes 
(e.g., LocalDate).  So while we may have a migration story for libraries 
that dispense and receive formerly-value-based value types, we don't 
have a story for migrating client code that might expect nullability for 
those types.

(As to the timing of boxing and unboxing, it would be exactly as 
primitives today.)



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