State of javac support for lworld-values.

[Karen Kinnear]

Thank you. That is what we are doing now in our tests.

thanks,
Karen

> On Mar 26, 2018, at 3:39 AM, Srikanth <srikanth.adayapalam at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday 15 March 2018 11:53 PM, Karen Kinnear wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>>> Thanks for writing that down, Karen.
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> I believe there are two major open issues:
>>>> 1. you identified one - which is the discussion around <init>, which I think also includes
>>>> handling of __MakeDefault
>>> 
>>> Yes, we haven't touched <init> yet.  I think the language folks need to
>>> decide what value constructors look like before we can start to talk
>>> translation strategy.  My crystal ball tells me that <init> will be irrelevant
>>> to value types, even though at the source level constructors will be
>>> important.  ("Codes like a class…")  The JVM rules around <init> are
>>> just relentlessly pointer-oriented, so we'll probably break new ground
>>> for value factories.  (If we win big, then that ground will serve for
>>> factories on object classes and interfaces too, but that's just my
>>> hunch for now.)
>> Is there an rfe here? 
>> So how does instance initialization happen for testing right now before this gets resolved?
> 
> Here is the present state at the language level:
> 
> ATM, javac does continue to generate <init> methods - these are useless of course and are not called at all. However, source constructors do play a role in satisfying the "code will not compile unless the all final fields have been initialized before the constructor finishes" rule.
> 
> Attempting to do:
> 
>     new ValueType([args]) 
> 
> will result in a compile error and one will have to change the code to
> 
>      __MakeDefault ValueType();
> 
> (attempting to invoke __MakeDefault while passing arguments will result in a compile error)
> 
> So, the only way to instantiate value instances is by producing default values and then applying withfield on them successively as needed.
> 
> This is obviously an interim point. I believe it does allow us to test without solving the full question of the role of source constructors and factories.
> 
> Srikanth