Re: Incremental Java Compile

From:

Lew <noone@lewscanon.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Sat, 01 May 2010 14:24:17 -0400

Message-ID:

<hrhrkg$6n8$1@news.albasani.net>

Lew wrote:

The class that depends on the
compile-time constant, such as 'DEBUG' in your example, compiles the
constant into its class, not the symbol. Without some external
indication of the dependency, there's not any way for a compiler or
build tool to detect that it exists.

Mike Schilling wrote:

Other than by noting it when the symbol is used during compilation, and
storing that bit of information somewhere. But the details of that get
messy.

I said that there is no way, not that there couldn't be a way.

Lew wrote:

With respect to dependencies where the symbol is stored in the class
rather than its value, even 'javac' handles the situation pretty well.

Mike Schilling wrote:

There are other difficult cases, like a method being added in class A that
results in a method in B (one of A's descendents) becoming overloaded, such
that a client of B should now choose the new overload. Java really makes
this stuff hard. (C# is no better.)

How would any language handle this?

Short of a class being aware of every possible past, present and future
extension of it.

You do present a good argument against overuse of inheritance.

--
Lew