[Nestmates] Draft core reflection API

[Brian Goetz]

That's a good description of what a nest mate is.  What could be added is a reference the the jvms section that defines it, and a comment that says it is up to the source language compiler to decide what classes are nest mates , and that java puts inner classes in the nest of their enclosing class (w jlink ref).  This could be moved to a section in the package javadoc and referenced from the Class doc.  

Sent from my MacBook Wheel

> On Nov 7, 2017, at 11:31 AM, David Holmes <david.holmes at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Brian,
> 
> Thanks for the prompt review!
> 
>> On 7/11/2017 6:41 PM, Brian Goetz wrote:
>> The specs are fine. But a reader who doesn't know what a nest is will never figure it out from the docs.  Would be good if nest host had an API note that explained how classes become nestmantes.
> 
> True - though I would prefer it if there were some definitive source we could refer to that explains this rather than putting an ad-hoc definition into the API docs. Perhaps we need something in the JLS (as API docs tend not to reference the JVMS). ??
> 
> Otherwise ...
> 
> "A nest is a set of classes (nest mates) that form an access control context in which each class has access to the private members of the other classes in the nest. The set of classes consisting of a top-level class plus all of its nested classes, is an example of a nest. The nest host is the class designated to hold the list of classes that make up the nest, and to which each of the other nest mates refer - a top-level class is always a nest host."
> 
> But it gets messy if you then have to explain that unless compiled for nest mates, every class is considered its own nest and nest host.
> 
> Thanks,
> David
> 
> 
> 
>> Sent from my MacBook Wheel
>>> On Nov 7, 2017, at 7:26 AM, David Holmes <david.holmes at oracle.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> For comment:
>>> 
>>> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~dholmes/8188075/webrev/raw_files/new/java/lang/Class.html#getNestHost()
>>> 
>>> Three functions added:
>>> - getNestHost
>>> - isNestmateOf
>>> - getNestMembers
>>> 
>>> The first two never throw exceptions related to nest hosts or nest membership. The third does.
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> David