Summary

Remove error-prone AccessFlags factories that do not require sufficient information (class-file major version).

Problem

AccessFlags interpretation is class-file version specific: some flags are invalid in some versions, and we need the version to translate physical flags to logical flags. We cannot create version-specific class files as long as users can create AccessFlags with bad version assumptions, similar to the trouble of String::toUpperCase in Turkish locale with i.

Solution

Remove the 6 factories for AccessFlags from public API. AccessFlags is reserved for parsing bit flags given the location + classfile version from the classfile builder context. Users currently can create them implicitly with individual withFlags methods on classfile builders, which can capture the correct classfile version from builder context.

This API change also allows us to add more APIs to perform version-specific flag parsing (such as inferring valhalla ACC_IDENTITY flag from older class flags without ACC_SUPER set) in the future.

Specification

diff --git a/src/java.base/share/classes/java/lang/classfile/AccessFlags.java b/src/java.base/share/classes/java/lang/classfile/AccessFlags.java
index 283094b81d6..6c6ac75e648 100644
--- a/src/java.base/share/classes/java/lang/classfile/AccessFlags.java
+++ b/src/java.base/share/classes/java/lang/classfile/AccessFlags.java
@@ -64,52 +64,4 @@ public sealed interface AccessFlags
      * method, or field}
      */
     AccessFlag.Location location();
-
-    /**
-     * {@return an {@linkplain AccessFlags} for a class}
-     * @param mask the flags to be set, as a bit mask
-     */
-    static AccessFlags ofClass(int mask) {
-        return new AccessFlagsImpl(AccessFlag.Location.CLASS, mask);
-    }
-
-    /**
-     * {@return an {@linkplain AccessFlags} for a class}
-     * @param flags the flags to be set
-     */
-    static AccessFlags ofClass(AccessFlag... flags) {
-        return new AccessFlagsImpl(AccessFlag.Location.CLASS, flags);
-    }
-
-    /**
-     * {@return an {@linkplain AccessFlags} for a field}
-     * @param mask the flags to be set, as a bit mask
-     */
-    static AccessFlags ofField(int mask) {
-        return new AccessFlagsImpl(AccessFlag.Location.FIELD, mask);
-    }
-
-    /**
-     * {@return an {@linkplain AccessFlags} for a field}
-     * @param flags the flags to be set
-     */
-    static AccessFlags ofField(AccessFlag... flags) {
-        return new AccessFlagsImpl(AccessFlag.Location.FIELD, flags);
-    }
-
-    /**
-     * {@return an {@linkplain AccessFlags} for a method}
-     * @param mask the flags to be set, as a bit mask
-     */
-    static AccessFlags ofMethod(int mask) {
-        return new AccessFlagsImpl(AccessFlag.Location.METHOD, mask);
-    }
-
-    /**
-     * {@return an {@linkplain AccessFlags} for a method}
-     * @param flags the flags to be set
-     */
-    static AccessFlags ofMethod(AccessFlag... flags) {
-        return new AccessFlagsImpl(AccessFlag.Location.METHOD, flags);
-    }
 }