RFR JDK-8209553: ExceptionInInitializerError can have a default detail message if the cause is given (original) (raw)

Peter Levart peter.levart at gmail.com
Wed Aug 15 22:20:01 UTC 2018

Hi Mandy,

Just a question. Why does "private Throwable exception" field in ExceptionInInitializerError exist? Was it there before there was a "cause" in Throwable and later still remained there because of serialization format? Would it be possible to "simulate" its effect for serialization using "serialPersistentFields" and ObjectOutputStream.PutField?

The main challegne, I think, would be the deserialization of an old ExceptionInInitializerError.exception into new Throwable.cause in case the stream did not have Throwable.cause (which is the case for old ExceptionInInitializerError(s))

Ragards, Peter

On 08/15/2018 11:46 PM, mandy chung wrote:

ExceptionInInitializerError(Throwable cause) sets the detail message to null.  It'd be helpful to include a detail message rather than null as in Throwable(Throwable cause) that constructs a new throwable with a default message cause==null ? null : cause.toString().

This would help troubleshooting of writing new bootstrap methods where VM currently asserts non-null linkage error message [1] where there are other solutions such as constructing the message in the VM or removing the assert. This patch proposes to change ExceptionInInitializerError(Throwable cause) to default the detail message to cause.toString() if cause is not null. It's an incompatibility change; for example existing code that expects a null message will now see a detail message.  But the compatibility risk should be low as EIIE should be fatal. This also proposes to add new LinkageError(Throwable cause) constructor to retrofit the exception chaining mechanism and that allows to clean up the current ExceptionInInitializerError implementation. Webrev: http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mchung/jdk12/webrevs/8209553/webrev.00 I will create a CSR. Mandy [1] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8208172

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