will java outer class compilation effects inner class

Question

I need to give a patch to websphere. where I have a main java class which has three inner classes. I have few code changes to main class but no changes to any inner classes. Now my question is should I need to give all innerclasses along with main class file as a part of patch or main class alone sufficient?

Answer 1

This is not an authoritative answer, but every time I did such patching, I copied all the classes (outer and inner classes), i.e.

Outer.class
Outer$1.class     // These indexes might change ...
Outer$2.class     // ... between compilation runs
Outer$Inner.class // This name should never change

When I didn't do this, there were usually some late classloading side-effects. In my opinion, this most often happened because of anonymous inner classes, which do not always re-generate the same "anonymous class index" (as in $1, $2, etc), depending on their order in the .java file.

So, to be sure, as this sort of patching is quite a hooligan technique anyway, I always copied all of the classes.

Answer 2

Inner class is just like normal class with implicit reference to outer class so I would say it is safe to give only outer class if you really didn't change the inner ones.