On Wed, 17 Apr 2024 06:34:25 GMT, Jan Lahoda <jlah...@openjdk.org> wrote:
>> Consider code like:
>>
>> public class MainClass {
>> public MainClass() {
>> System.out.println("Constructor called!");
>> }
>> public static void main() {
>> System.out.println("main called!");
>> }
>> }
>>
>> and compile and run it, with preview enabled, like:
>>
>> $ javac /tmp/MainClass.java
>> $ java --enable-preview -classpath /tmp MainClass
>> Constructor called!
>> main called!
>>
>>
>> That is wrong, as the `main` method is static, and there is no need to
>> create a new instance of the class.
>>
>> The reason is that as launcher attempts to invoke the main method, it goes
>> in the following order: 1) static-main-with-args; 2)
>> instance-main-with-args; 3) static-main-without-args; 4)
>> instance-main-without-args. But, for the instance variants, the code first
>> creates a new instance of the given class, and only then attempts to lookup
>> the `main` method, and will pass to the next option when the `main` method
>> lookup fails. So, when invoking static-main-without-args, the current class
>> instance may be created for instance-main-with-args, which will then fail
>> due to the missing `main(String[])` method.
>>
>> The proposed solution to this problem is to simply first do a lookup for the
>> `main` method (skipping to the next variant when the given main method does
>> not exist, without instantiating the current class).
>>
>> There is also a relatively closely related problem: what happens when the
>> constructor throws an exception?
>>
>> public class MainClass {
>> public MainClass() {
>> if (true) throw new RuntimeException();
>> }
>> public void main() {
>> System.out.println("main called!");
>> }
>> }
>>
>>
>> when compiled an run, this produces no output whatsoever:
>>
>> $ javac /tmp/MainClass.java
>> $ java --enable-preview -classpath /tmp MainClass
>> $
>>
>>
>> This is because any exceptions thrown from the constructor are effectively
>> ignored, and the launcher will continue with the next variant. This seems
>> wrong - the exception should be printed for the user, like:
>>
>> $ java --enable-preview -classpath /tmp/ MainClass
>> Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException
>> at MainClass.<init>(MainClass.java:3)
>>
>>
>> This patch proposes to do that by not consuming the exceptions thrown from
>> the constructor, and stop the propagation to the next variant.
>
> Jan Lahoda has updated the pull request incrementally with three additional
> commits since the last revision:
>
> - Reflecting code formatting suggestion.
> - First lookup the main method, and only then the constructor.
> - Attempting to solve JDK-8329581 by only ignoring j.l.NoSuchMethodError
src/java.base/share/native/libjli/java.c line 477:
> 475: // and don't continue with the next variant;
> 476: // leave any exception pending, so that it is visible to the
> caller:
> 477: return 1;
Hello Jan, the comment says "don't continue", yet this returns `1` which
represents "continue". Should this return `0` instead?
-------------
PR Review Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/18753#discussion_r1568470228
