Re: Generating Avalon meta information using apt

On Friday 17 September 2004 18:48, Raffael Herzog wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 02:33:02 +0800, Niclas Hedhman <[email protected]>

> No, it allows you to manipulate the class file (as byte array) before it
> is defined by the class loader.
>
> The interface (ClassFileTransformer) is rather simple:
>
> byte[] transform(ClassLoader loader,
>                   String className,
>                   Class<?> classBeingRedefined,
>                   ProtectionDomain protectionDomain,
>                   byte[] classfileBuffer)

And how big security hole is this, I wonder?? 


> Well, I don't think it's a very good idea to actually use annotations at
> runtime. It would be just another way of specifying the same while not
> eliminating the need for some additional meta information in a file. You
> certainly don't want to load every single class in the classpath just to
> be able to look at its annotations and collect its metadata. Scanning the
> JAR files for .xinfo entries is just fine.

Hmmm....

> >> From a 'build' perspective, i.e. Avalon build, it becomes much more
> >> complex. I

> Building isn't really a problem if you keep annotations out of the runtime
> system -- everyone uses the compiler that fits. Of course, it might be
> necessary to provide more/different metadata, but that's what the version
> numbers of the DTDs are for, isn't it? ;)

Maybe not a problem for our users, but for Avalon itself.
If we put the @Dependency and other annotations in the Avalon source, we need 
to deal with it, since the distro has a requirement of being built with the 
JDK1.3. So it IS an issue.

I think this whole thing need some time to 'cook'. The immediate problem is to 
get the Avalon source to build using JDK1.5, without using 1.5 features.


Cheers
Niclas
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