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+3 votes
in Java Interop by

The Clojure compiler cannot resolve a public generic method inherited from a package-private base class.

Instructions to reproduce:

  • In package P1
    • Define a package-private class A with generic type parameters
    • Define a public method M in A using generic types in either its arguments or return value
      **** Define a public class B which extends A
  • In package P2
    • Construct an instance of B
      **** Invoke B.M()

This is valid in Java. In Clojure, invoking B.M produces a reflection warning, followed by the error "java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Can't call public method of non-public class." No amount of type-hinting prevents the warning or the error.

Attachment clj-1243-demo1.tar.gz contains sample code and script to demonstrate the problem.

Examples of Java projects which use public methods in package-private classes:

14 Answers

0 votes
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Comment made by: stuart.sierra

It is also not possible to call the method reflectively from Java.

This may be a bug in Java reflection: (link: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4283544 text: JDK-4283544)

But why does it only happen on generic methods?

by
Wrong. It's a legal method call and thus it's perfectly fine to call it with Java reflection. You don't even need setAccessible. See my answer for an example: https://ask.clojure.org/index.php/4255/cannot-resolve-public-generic-method-package-private-class?show=12483#a12483
0 votes
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Comment made by: stuart.sierra

According to Rich Hickey, the presence of bridge methods is unspecified and inconsistent across JDK versions.

A possible solution is to use ASM to examine the bytecode of third-party Java classes, instead of the reflection API. That way the Clojure compiler would have access to the same information as the Java compiler.

0 votes
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Comment made by: jafingerhut

CLJ-1183 was closed as a duplicate of this one. Mentioning it here in case anyone working on this ticket wants to follow the link to it and read discussion or test cases described there.

0 votes
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Comment made by: noamb

The current work around I use is to define a new Java class, add a static method that does what I need, and call that from Clojure.

0 votes
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Comment made by: noamb

Also, I'm seeing this issue in 1.6 and 1.7(alpha5) but the issue mentions only up to 1.5 .

0 votes
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Comment made by: adamtait

Just ran into this issue trying to use Google's Cloud APIs.
To use Google's Cloud Datastore, you need to access the (link: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gcloud-java/blob/v0.1.6/gcloud-java-datastore/src/main/java/com/google/gcloud/datastore/BaseKey.java#L96 text: .kind) method on a protected generic subclass (BaseKey), to which (link: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/gcloud-java/blob/v0.1.6/gcloud-java-datastore/src/main/java/com/google/gcloud/datastore/KeyFactory.java#L25 text: KeyFactory) extends.

Tested on both Clojure 1.7 & 1.8 at runtime, the following exception persists;
{quote}
IllegalArgumentException Can't call public method of non-public class: public com.google.gcloud.datastore.BaseKey$Builder com.google.gcloud.datastore.BaseKey$Builder.kind(java.lang.String) clojure.lang.Reflector.invokeMatchingMethod (Reflector.java:88)
{quote}

0 votes
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Comment made by: kstrempel

I ran into the exact same issue with Google's Cloud API's.

Tested it with 1.8 and with 1.9.0-alpha7. Same Problem.

0 votes
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Comment made by: kstrempel

I ran into the exact same issue with Google's Cloud API's.

Tested it with 1.8 and with 1.9.0-alpha7. Same Problem.

0 votes
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Comment made by: mruza

I ran into the same issue. The (link: ^invocation_target_selection.patch text: attached patch) fixes the problem for me.
All tests in the project still pass, but this desperately needs a review of someone knowledgeable.

0 votes
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Comment made by: alexmiller

Hey Michal,

Thanks for looking at it.

  1. Please follow the instructions on how to create a patch in the proper format here: http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Developing Patches
  2. If you can provide some explanation of the changes to aid in review that would be most helpful. Otherwise screeners have to re-engineer your thought processes from scratch.
  3. Before getting screened, this change will also need some tests (admittedly not particularly fun to write, but I think it's necessary here)
0 votes
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Comment made by: mruza

I've added tests and updated the patch according to the instructions.

Here is some reasoning behind it. Below is an excerpt from the src/jvm/clojure/lang/Compiler.java file:

1462: if(target.hasJavaClass() && target.getJavaClass() != null) 1463: { 1464: List methods = Reflector.getMethods(target.getJavaClass(), args.count(), methodName, false); 1465: if(methods.isEmpty()) 1466: { 1467: method = null; 1468: if(RT.booleanCast(RT.WARN_ON_REFLECTION.deref())) 1469: { 1470: RT.errPrintWriter() 1471: .format("Reflection warning, %s:%d:%d - call to method %s on %s can't be resolved (no such method).\n", 1472: SOURCE_PATH.deref(), line, column, methodName, target.getJavaClass().getName()); 1473: } 1474: } 1475: else 1476: { 1477: int methodidx = 0; 1478: if(methods.size() > 1) 1479: { 1480: ArrayList<Class[]> params = new ArrayList(); 1481: ArrayList<Class> rets = new ArrayList(); 1482: for(int i = 0; i < methods.size(); i++) 1483: { 1484: java.lang.reflect.Method m = (java.lang.reflect.Method) methods.get(i); 1485: params.add(m.getParameterTypes()); 1486: rets.add(m.getReturnType()); 1487: } 1488: methodidx = getMatchingParams(methodName, params, args, rets); 1489: } 1490: java.lang.reflect.Method m = 1491: (java.lang.reflect.Method) (methodidx >= 0 ? methods.get(methodidx) : null); 1492: if(m != null && !Modifier.isPublic(m.getDeclaringClass().getModifiers())) 1493: { 1494: //public method of non-public class, try to find a public descendant 1495: if((type=Reflector.getDeepestPublicDescendant(m.getDeclaringClass(), target.getJavaClass())) == null) 1496: //if descendant not found, try to find an ancestor 1497: m = Reflector.getAsMethodOfPublicBase(m.getDeclaringClass(), m); 1498: } 1499: method = m; 1500: if(method == null && RT.booleanCast(RT.WARN_ON_REFLECTION.deref())) 1501: { 1502: RT.errPrintWriter() 1503: .format("Reflection warning, %s:%d:%d - call to method %s on %s can't be resolved (argument types: %s).\n", 1504: SOURCE_PATH.deref(), line, column, methodName, target.getJavaClass().getName(), getTypeStringForArgs(args)); 1505: } 1506: } 1507: }

  • the condition on line 1462 ensures that the type/class of the target is known
  • the {{clojure.lang.Reflector.getMethods()}} method called on line 1464 returns a list of all public methods of the given name defined for the target type
  • then the best method to call is selected on lines 1477-1491
  • if the declaring class of the selected method is not public then an attempt is made to find a public class which is both superclass of the target type and a subclass of the class declaring the selected method - this is implemented in the {{clojure.lang.Reflector.getDeepestPublicDescendant()}} method
  • if such a class is found than it is used instead of the method's declaring class when emitting the byte code for the method call
  • if no such class is found then an attempt is made to find a compatible method in the public ancestors of the class declaring the selected method

Note that the change may result in a different method being called than prior to the change as demonstrated by the {{selecting-method-on-nonpublic-interface}} test. This is IMO an acceptable change as it:
results in better matching (with respect to the argument types) method to be called
makes the method selection in clojure behave in a more similar way to that in java

0 votes
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Comment made by: stuart.sierra

CLJ-126 describes a similar issue on Java 5.

0 votes
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Reference: https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/CLJ-1243 (reported by stuart.sierra)
0 votes
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Here is another example of code that works for Java but fails on Clojure. The example class comes from the [org.opensearch.client/opensearch-java "2.1.0"] library.

This Java code works without problems:

package example;

import org.opensearch.client.opensearch.core.bulk.IndexOperation;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Map;

public class Example {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        new IndexOperation.Builder<Map<?, ?>>()
                .index("test-index")
                .id("test-id")
                .document(Map.of("test-document", 123))
                .build();
    }
}

But the Clojure version cannot be written using Java interop. The workaround is to manually use reflection to call those methods:

(ns example
  (:import (org.opensearch.client.opensearch.core.bulk IndexOperation$Builder)))

(defn bug []
  (-> (IndexOperation$Builder.)
      (.index "test-index")
      (.id "test-id")
      (.document {"test-document" 123})
      (.build)))

(defn workaround []
  (let [bulk-builder-index (-> (Class/forName "org.opensearch.client.opensearch.core.bulk.BulkOperationBase$AbstractBuilder")
                               (.getDeclaredMethod "index" (into-array Class [String])))
        bulk-builder-id (-> (Class/forName "org.opensearch.client.opensearch.core.bulk.BulkOperationBase$AbstractBuilder")
                            (.getDeclaredMethod "id" (into-array Class [String])))]
    (-> (IndexOperation$Builder.)
        ^IndexOperation$Builder ((fn [builder index]
                                   (.invoke bulk-builder-index builder (into-array Object [index])))
                                 "test-index")
        ^IndexOperation$Builder ((fn [builder id]
                                   (.invoke bulk-builder-id builder (into-array Object [id])))
                                 "test-id")
        (.document {"test-document" 123})
        (.build))))

(comment
  (bug)
  (workaround))

When this namespace is loaded with Clojure 1.11.1, it gives the following reflection warnings:

Reflection warning, .../example.clj:6:7 - call to method index on org.opensearch.client.opensearch.core.bulk.IndexOperation$Builder can't be resolved (argument types: java.lang.String).
Reflection warning, .../example.clj:7:7 - call to method id can't be resolved (target class is unknown).
Reflection warning, .../example.clj:8:7 - call to method document can't be resolved (target class is unknown).
Reflection warning, .../example.clj:9:7 - reference to field build can't be resolved.

And when the bug function is executed, it fails with the exception:

Execution error (IllegalArgumentException) at example/bug (example.clj:6).
Can't call public method of non-public class: public final org.opensearch.client.opensearch.core.bulk.BulkOperationBase$AbstractBuilder org.opensearch.client.opensearch.core.bulk.BulkOperationBase$AbstractBuilder.index(java.lang.String)

IndexOperation$Builder is a public class, which extends the protected abstract class WriteOperation$AbstractBuilder, which extends the protected abstract class BulkOperationBase$AbstractBuilder. The index and id methods' return type is a class-level type parameter, but the method arguments are non-generic.

Here are the relevant places in the library code:

...