Illegal Package-Private Accesses in 3.4

Bryce McKinlay bryce@mckinlay.net.nz
Tue Aug 12 00:01:00 GMT 2003


On Tuesday, Aug 12, 2003, at 05:35 Pacific/Auckland, Mark Wielaard 
wrote:
>> Me too.  I know that Java encourages the usage of package private, but
>> the idea of putting all this stuff on java.lang is rather horrible.
>> I'd rather use native methods and friend where it's necessary to do
>> some cross-cutting.  That would ensure that only java.lang.VMThrowable
>> would be able to call StackTrace methods, not all of java.lang.  Much
>> cleaner, better modularity.
>
> I don't agree with you here though. I like the fact that in principle
> package local classes can be used to shield the user from the
> implementation details. Public classes define the API, the package 
> local
> classes work together to provide the implementation.

Having a separate package for implementation classes works equally well 
to achieve this - if not better, and its a cleaner design for us.  I 
really doubt any application developer is going to make the mistake of 
thinking gnu.gcj.runtime etc contain classes they should be concerned 
with!

I agree with you that we should be careful about exposing classes that 
could be a security risk, however.

Regards

Bryce.



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