Alex, 'source' simply acknowledges that java (the language) syntax and java (the runtime library) dependencies are utterly unrelated things. Why MUST they track each other? In practice that already doesn't happen: Code compiled on javac6 is routinely run on jvm5, and vice versa. javac has -source and -target parameters for a reason.
I should be able to write code with javac6 features (fine, there really weren't any, but let's imagine there were), and define in my module that I'm actually dependent on the java5 core runtime libraries. The compiler should compile against those libraries and warn if e.g. I use stuff that only showed in v1.6, but it should compile my usage of new features without complaint. Unless, of course a feature itself simply isn't expressable in the earlier version's bytecode. On Sep 18, 1:40 am, Alex Buckley <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sep 17, 5:38 am, Jess Holle <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Joe Darcy recently cited discussion threads in which the source > > statement was supposedly found to be problematic. > > > I perused them -- and didn't see any substantive problems uncovered in > > the course of those discussions. > > > Personally I think a source statement would be a good thing. Otherwise > > if you have a large set of sources in a module you have to go through > > all sorts of shenanigans to compile some stuff with -source x and others > > with -source y. This configuration is unnecessarily complex and is > > fragile -- since the information is separate from the source files. > > A 'source' keyword is a terrible idea because it does not sufficiently > model the kinds of compatibility needed in practice. That is properly > the job of versioning in a module system. > > The bigger issue regarding Java language changes is that Sun is > expected to listen to thousands of ideas per year *and give detailed > responses as to how those ideas could be made workable*. > > Alex --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
