EG meeting, 2022-02-09

[Dan Smith]

EG Zoom meeting tomorrow at 5pm UTC (9am PDT, 12pm EDT).

Some mail discussions we can follow up on:

"VM model and aconst_init": we had a side conversation about potentially requiring explicit conversions from Q to L

"Interface pollution and JVM invariants": Dan pointed out that the interfaces IdentityObject and ValueObject are not strongly enforced at runtime, because the verifier doesn't check interface types

"SoV-3: constructor questions": Dan asked about validation for <init> and <new> methods. Answer: JVM doesn't care about <init> methods in abstract classes, the rules about <new> methods still uncertain.

"SoV-2: weak references": Dan raised concerns about the weak reference strategy described in SoV.

"The interfaces IdentityObject and ValueObject must die !": Self-explanatory :-). We retraced how we got here and talked about alternatives.

"JEP update: Classes for the Basic Primitives": I revised JEP 402 to catch up to changes to the model elsewhere

"Terminology bikeshedding summary": I listed areas where we've had some concern about the terminology currently being used

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To provide some structure, I think we can put the topics in three categories:

Known unfinished issues:
- Factory method interpretation/restrictions
- WeakReference handling

Revisiting/questioning the current design:
- Explicit Q->L conversions
- IdentityObject and ValueObject interfaces
- Terminology

Probably resolved, but reviewing:
- Abstract supers and construction signals/mechanisms
- Declarations for basic primitives