Idea how to implement VT/VO compatibility in JVM

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 22 January 2015 at 14:14, Maurizio Cimadamore
<maurizio.cimadamore at oracle.com> wrote:
> I think both Stephane (and you) and Vitaly have a point; such dynamic
> frameworks have two alternatives:
>
> * keep working the way they do now - which implies List<val T> is related to
> List<?>/List
> * let them be generified, and then use reflection (on steroids) to let the
> right thing happen at runtime

Most frameworks are OSS and will be coded to work today on JDK 8 (or
9, assuming value types are in 10). Saying that those frameworks
should use reflection on steroids is a non-option. You cannot write a
library today (or in 9) that will work in 10. This would force each
OSS library to release a dedicated version for 10, effectively asking
each project to have a pre-10 version and a post-10 version. This is a
terrible incompatibility in the eco-system, with huge knock-on effects
for years (such as jar-hell).

So, yes I *really* think if those are the only two options, then it
must be option 1, relating List<value> to List<?>.

Stephen