Hi,
I recently refactored the reflection code of my framework to support
using traits to share fields. The shared fields are initialized during
field declaration (i.e. not in a ctor) for user convenience (they
represent columns in a table). In this particular case, fields needed to
be passed as parameters to to other field's ctors. In this case the
problem is, that the fields passed to other fields ctors seem to alwys
be null. The same code constructs have been working for years when using
them directly inside a class.
Questions:
1. What is the expected behavior in this case ? Should this work in
traits ?
2. If this is not a bug in Groovy: What is the best workaround ? I only
had very little time to work on this last week, so I used a
@Memoized helper method whose return value is used in both the field
initializations - works, but a pretty terrible solution and user
experience.
I just did a quick spike at home using @Lazy on one field: This
seems to work, but not, if combined with final - so the field could
be reassigned (which I don't want) unless the framework user
introduces a shared @Lazy "hidden" private helper field (similar to
my @Memoized method).
3. In general: What is the exact order that fields get initialized in
Groovy - and is this behavior expected to change in the future ?
Cheers,
mg
