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Notes on Evolving APIs in Java 5
Revision as of 18:25, 17 October 2006 by John arthorne.ca.ibm.com (Talk | contribs)
This page captures notes and discussions about API evolution guidelines in Java 5. The eventual output of these notes will be an update to the Evolving Java-based APIs document. General rule: the left-most bound of a generic type within API can never be changed. Bounds other than the left-most bound can be weakened without sacrificing compatibility.
Generics
Generics do not exist in the binary form of a class. Thus, binary compatibility of a class containing generics is reduced to compatibility of the [erasure] of the generic types.
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