Activation subsystem - Non-public Interfaces

[Greg Trasuk]

Hi all:

I’m attempting to apply Shawn Ellis’s patch from RIVER-444 to allow the 2.2 
branch to build under JDK8.  On running the QA package, I’m getting errors on 
the tests that use the activation subsystem. They are similar to:

proxy implements non-public interface 
'com.sun.jini.test.impl.joinmanager.LeaseRenewDurRFE$RemoteTestServiceInterface’

The exception is thrown from the getSuperInterfaces(…) method inside 
ActivationExporter.  (note that this is after I modified ActivationExporter to 
tell me the name of the non-public interface).

            /*
             * Complain if the underlying proxy has a non-public class and
             * implements non-public interfaces.
             */
            if (checkPublic && !Modifier.isPublic(intf.getModifiers())) {
                throw new ExportException(
                    "proxy implements non-public interface" + " '" + 
intf.getName() + "'");
            }

So, I have a few questions…

First, does anyone actually use the Activation subsystem?  I don’t and never 
have, so personally I’d be fine with dropping Phoenix and net.jini.activation, 
or at least just skipping the QA tests on it.  Opinions?

ActivationExporter throws the exception above if the underlying proxy 
implements any non-public interfaces.  This seems reasonable, because 
ActivationExporter needs to wrap the underlying activation proxy in another 
proxy.  Should we just make the required interfaces (like 
'com.sun.jini.test.impl.joinmanager.LeaseRenewDurRFE$RemoteTestServiceInterface’)
 public?  As it’s part of the QA package, that seems pretty harmless, but I’m 
sure there are others.

It’s funny that this is only showing up now.  The code is in the 2.2 branch, 
and I don’t see how it could be related to JDK8 (the problem also shows under 
JDK7, btw).  I believe the activation tests have been bypassed on the Jenkins 
QA run.

I guess the question is, should we track down what’s going on in the activation 
subsystem, or just bypass the tests and forget about it?  And if that’s the 
case, should we deprecate the JERI activation system? (FWIW, I’m OK with 
deprecating it, but as I say, someone may be using it).

Cheers,

Greg Trasuk