[Springframework-developer] Re: Is it worth keeping BCEL around at all?

[Chris N. <ch...@si...>]

Mark Pollack wrote:
> I vote to get rid of BCEL as well.  It always seemed large to me.  The ASM
> api indicates it supports attribute manipulation in the bytecode so I
> should be able to port the bcel package to asm.   This feature bytecode
> libraries might not be that important anyway since the default storage
> mechanism for attributes will likely switch to side files instead of
> putting it in the bytecode.

Yes, the new ASM 1.4 supports attribute reading and writing. CGLIB2 will use
ASM 1.4 (or higher) so you won't even need an extra jar. 

FWIW, now that the JSR-175 spec is public it would be technically possible
to read and write class attributes in a compatible format, which would
allow you to seamlessly transition from javadocs to actual attributes when
the time comes. Most of the necessary bits to do this will be in CGLIB,
since we have to know the internal structure of the attributes in order to
pass them along during transformation.

Chris