On Jun 1, 2021, at 7:02 AM, Brian Goetz <brian.go...@oracle.com<mailto:brian.go...@oracle.com>> wrote:
As Alan's archaeology discovered, this flag appears to be a leftover from the original implementation, and I could find no signs of its usage. Note to self and other reviewers of future versions of the JVMS: When you see proposed language like the “unless…” of JVMS 4.7.17, remember today's conversation and try to avoid putting dark corners like that into the JVMS. The RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations attribute is similar to the RuntimeVisibleAnnotations attribute (§4.7.16), except that the annotations represented by a RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations attribute must not be made available for return by reflective APIs, [[WE SHOULD HAVE STOPPED HERE]] unless the Java Virtual Machine has been instructed to retain these annotations via some implementation-specific mechanism such as a command line flag. In the absence of such instructions, the Java Virtual Machine ignores this attribute. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se16/html/jvms-4.html#jvms-4.7.17
