[MNG-6164] Collections inconsistently immutable

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 3.5.0
• Fix Version/s: 3.6.0
• Assignee: Michael Osipov
• Reporter: Christian Schulte
• Created: 31/Jan/17 23:29
• Updated: 28/Mar/20 15:02
• Resolved: 09/Oct/18 21:14

Description

There are plenty of places where empty collections are returned from public API in methods written like:

     public List<Exception> getExceptions()
     {
        return exceptions == null ? Collections.<Exception>emptyList() : exceptions;
     }

The issue with this is that the empty list is immutable but the collection returned for the nun-null case is not immutable.

All those methods should return a collection with consistent "mutability": either mutable, either immutable.

Given empty immutable collections do not cause harm until now, switching consistently to immutable collections is more conservative and should not be risky

Issue Links

• links to: GitHub Pull Request #141
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #141