[JSR308] Raw Types and AnnotatedTypeFactory

[Niko Matsakis]

> Addressing this has not been a priority for us.  We think that  
> proper use
> of generics is important to type safety, so we wish to encourage  
> it.  We
> expect that people who are willing to run a pluggable type-checker  
> will be
> willing to first ensure type-safety with respect to Java's built-in  
> type
> system (including generics).  And, our implementation (of both the  
> Checker
> Framework and of the checkers themselves) is made simpler by  
> assuming that
> there are no raw types.

In general, I agree with you that most people using a pluggable type
system will also be working with fully generified-code.  However, even
the most gung-ho type system adopter may occasionally have to interface
with legacy code that makes use of raw types.  Therefore, it'd be good  
if
the framework handled them gracefully.  They are after all a part of the
Java language, for better or worse.

In any case, after changing the framework not to insert dummy types for
missing type arguments, I have (so far!) not had any problems... but I  
haven't
done a lot of work with raw typed programs, just a little.


Niko