Question

It was my understanding that and static final constants are inlined at compile time when using Java.

Looking at Using the Version-Aware Component – Add the Switching Logic and the use of Build.VERSION.SDK_INT and Build.VERSION_CODES confuses me, as if both these constants values are inlined at compile time this approach would be useless. What am I missing here?

Thanks 🙂

EDIT: does the fact they are in a static method in an abstract class change this compile-time inlining?

Answer 1

What is inlined is constants that can be determined at compile time, such as:

private final int CONST = 1;

If you check the source code (it’s an old version but I suppose it has not changed much), the constants look like this:

public static final String SDK = getString("ro.build.version.sdk");

And this is the getString method:

private static String getString(String property) {
    return SystemProperties.get(property, UNKNOWN);
}

So the constant can’t be determined at compile time.