<https://www.jetbrains.com/help/inspectopedia/Inne...

# random

[Adam S]

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/inspectopedia/InnerClassMayBeStatic.html

> A static inner class does not keep an implicit reference to its enclosing instance. When using Java 17 or before, this prevents a common cause of memory leaks and uses less memory per instance of the class.
Did something change in Java 18+ to make static non-static inner classes less vulnerable?

[romainguy]

You mean "to make non-static inner classes less vulnerable"?

[hho]

AFAIK in Java 18 javac got smarter and only creates the reference to the enclosing instance when the outer instance is actually used from the inner class: https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/18-relnote-issues.html#JDK-8271623

[vladimirsitnikov]

Subclasses of java.io.Serializable are not affected by this change.

Looks like serializable inner classes might better be static