Make MethodReference more Record like

[Thihup]

As this is a new class, I guess it would be good if we could model it like a java.lang.Record:

• The class being final
• The accessors without "get"

This way, we can change it to record in the future, when it probably will be usable in Pattern Matching (like destructuring) and not have two accessors (base() and getBase()).

[markt-asf]

Hmm. I'm not sure. On one hand I like being ready for Record but on the other I dislike that this would make the API use inconsistent styles - especially because of the close relationship between MethodReference and MethodInfo.

It also assumes we'll want to make greater use of Record. Is that the case?

[tandraschko]

IMO a API style should be consistent, so therefore currently -1 to make it a record

[Thihup]

A compromise would be to declare the records in the following way:

record MethodReference(
    Object getBase,
    MethodInfo getMethodInfo,
    Annotation[] getAnnotations,
    Object[] getEvaluatedParameters){}

This way the API would be consistent. This would be possible to apply to the other classes. However, most of them are not final (like ELClass), so changing to use records would be a breaking change. Marking the MethodReference as final now would enable us to change it in the future without having breaking changes

[tandraschko]

TBH i really think that final classes (or records) should be avoided in almost all cases in a API like JakartaEE

there may be cases when someone would like to wrap or extend it, like MF did for core PropertyDescriptor (https://github.com/apache/myfaces/blob/master/api/src/main/java/org/apache/myfaces/core/api/shared/lang/LambdaPropertyDescriptor.java)

[markt-asf]

I think the extensibility argument is a good one so I am going to close this issue as "won't fix".