<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><html>On Apr 15, 2008, at 8:17 AM, Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:</html><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">I'm also interested in what we can do to help languages on pre-JDK7<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">JVMs, since the vast majority of real users of JRuby (for example) could<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">use some real help now. But I will look at your patches and try to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">formulate some strategy myself as well...</font></p> </blockquote></div><br><div>This stuff would be merely academic if there were no story for how old JVMs play with the new features. So for me a big part of the puzzle of method handles has been to build in a backward-compatibility story that lets them be emulated on old platforms, with efficiency no less than (say) your JRuby invokers.</div><div><br></div><div>Then it becomes feasible to have the dynlang backend perform a JVM version check at boot-up, and choose better vs. best implementations.</div><div><br></div><div>And I hope a similar compatibility story can be found for the anonoymous class loader.</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>-- John</div></body></html>