New Mint Release: r15716

As mentioned before, Eddy and I discovered a problem with type variables in code generated by the Mint compiler. We have now fixed this problem in the new release of Mint and DrJava with Mint: August 30, 2010 (r15716). The latest release is, as always, available from the Mint implementation page:

• JavaMint-r15716.tar.gz
• JavaMint-r15716-binaries.zip
• drjava-r5380-mint-r15716.jar

The problem occurred when the programmer used a type variable inside a bracket. An example of this would be a generic method like this:

public separable <X> Code<X> fun(Code<X> c1, Code<X> c2) {
return <| ( `(lfTest.eval(e,f).booleanCodeValue()) ?
              `c2 : `c1 )  |>;
}

This caused Mint to generate 2nd stage code that contained the type variable X unbound. Unfortunately, the types are erased, and there is no way to find out what type X actually refers to at runtime, e.g. by writing something like X.class (this generates the Java compiler error "cannot select from a type variable").

To get around this problem, we now require a final instance of type Class<X> to be in scope for every type variable X. For example, in the generic method above, there is a type variable X that is being used in the bracket. Therefore, we now have to have a final instance of Class<X>somewhere in scope, for example as a method parameter.

public separable <X> Code<X> fun(Code<X> c1, Code<X> c2,
                                 final Class<X> xc) {
return <| ( `(lfTest.eval(e,f).booleanCodeValue()) ?
              `c2 : `c1 )  |>;
}

That's all that is necessary. The variable xc is not actually used in the code, it just needs to be in scope.