David,
As you know, recently we have seen jdk changes coming in from the
hotspot integration forests, thus potentially avoiding a flag day. I'm
not saying that this is necessarily a good idea, but just wondering if
it is now something that we should reconsider, over the hefty process
you described below? That said, it would require the said engineer
observe the general engineering processes that are required to
integrated into both TL and the hotspot forests.
-Chris.
On 01/26/2013 07:52 AM, David Holmes wrote:
Eric,
These situations are historically known as Flag Days and they require
careful management.
I don't know exactly what has to be done but the way to approach this is
to modify the VM to be prepared to handle both the old format and the
new. Then after it has reached TL/jdk&langtools update jdk/langtools to
start using the new format. Then if needs be once everything is in sync
you can remove the hotspot code that handles the old format. (I assume
that both old and new format are new with regard class version 52?) That
way nothing breaks.
There must already be tests for this new feature else you would be
pushing untested code, so you would break these tests while your changes
sync up.
David
On 26/01/2013 3:53 AM, Eric McCorkle wrote:
I don't think anyone is using MethodParameters at this point, but I want
to post this just to be sure.
The latest version of the spec alters the class file format of
MethodParameters attributes.
The latest version can be found here:
http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~abuckley/8misc.pdf
I will be committing patches to tl and hsx which update hotspot and the
langtools tools to reflect this change. However, this will take some
time to propagate, and may affect anyone using this feature (most
likely, to write tests).
Apologies for any inconvenience,
Eric
