On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 4:27 PM, Emmanuel Bernard <emmanuel@hibernate.org> wrote:

But
@Target(FIELD, TYPE_USE)
@interface Size

@Size(2) String[] arrayOfTwoStrings;

is ambiguous in Java 8

So the JLS is “backward compatible” in the language designer’s view I suppose.

When you don't change, it's backward compatible indeed. When you do, the language design is flawed. So there is a hole in one combination that needs to be addressed. Joshua Bloch would write about that all the time, of how new features interact in unexpected ways and that's why you have to resist changes in the language.

They did not anticipate people wanting to add TYPE_USE to an existing annotation and have a side effect on its usage on arrays.

Exactly, so this is effectively broken and needs to be fixed in the language, not in BV. But I'm still afraid we might have got something wrong here, so I would rather ask them.

Regards,

Michael