Primitive Queue<any T> considerations

[Dávid Karnok]

Hello,

We are using the SpscArrayQueue (extends Queue<T>) from JCTools quite often
in our library which exploits null as an indicator if the queue is full or
not. However, this won't work in case of a Queue<any T> because for
primitives, zero is a valid value.

I see two options:

  - use wider primitive and atomics-acessible types: byte -> int, char ->
int, short -> int, int -> long, float -> long, double -> 2 slots long and
long -> 2 slots of long
  - don't use fast-flow and go back to producer-consumer index comparison.

In either case, the internals and the usage have to be changed drastically,
i.e., switch to AtomicLongArray, how to indicate the queue is actually
empty when calling poll(), etc. Perhaps a new queue interface is necessary
where poll returns a boolean indicator and calls a Consumer if the data is
there.

The examples I saw regarding valhalla showed List<any T> where I'd guess
the internals of the ArrayList can be altered in a straightforward manner
but I don't see how this could happen if the algorithm itself has to change
based on what primitive T is.

What are the plans for supporting such kind of specializations?

-- 
Best regards,
David Karnok