Draft JVMS changes for Nestmates

[David Holmes]

One follow up to a new comment John made ...

On 20/04/2017 10:09 AM, John Rose wrote:
> On Apr 19, 2017, at 12:56 AM, David Holmes <david.holmes at oracle.com
> <mailto:david.holmes at oracle.com>> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't see how that is a significant concern.  The symbol bodies are
>>> hot in cache
>>> at the point we would check prefixes, since they are already being
>>> scanned for other
>>> purposes, such as initial interning, and also syntax checking.  Existing
>>> processing
>>> is exactly as deep (or shallow) as the checks I want.
>>
>> I don't follow that. If I'm loading a nest-top class and validating
>> its NM entries none of those entries need have been loaded yet and so
>> none will be in the cache.
>
> I see what the problem is:  The only checking I am proposing
> is syntax checking on the names.  If by "deep checking" you
> mean loading classes from the names, I agree, we don't want
> to do that.  The MemberOfNest attribute is passive.  It does
> not need to initiate loads; it just needs to validate claims
> of nest membership by other classes.
>
> (I even doubt Dan's assertion that in some corner cases,
> when the nest-host is trying out a private access, there
> must be some loading done to validate the access.  Probably
> we can get away with no loading at all, just name checks
> against already-loaded classes.)

If the access is legitimate then no loading is needed as the common 
nest-host is already loaded. Currently the implementation will load the 
purported nest-host if needed, so in the case where they are not 
actually nest-mates this would load the "foreign" nest-host class. But 
when the initiator is the nest-host the check can be inverted by 
searching NestMembers for the target class instead. I see one quirky 
aspect of this in that in the unlikely case that the target class is in 
NestMembers but does not itself list the nest-host in its MemberOfNest, 
the access check will succeed, but before the invocation can actually 
happen the target class must be linked and at that point validation 
would fail (assuming we adopt the fail-fast model).

David

> — John