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kotlinlang

Hi - just read this article about the need to add `@JvmSynthetic` to `internal` members to properly hide them from Java:
<https://medium.com/scalereal/hide-internal-members-of-kotlin-module-from-jvm-c7730507fb17>

which informed me of `@JvmSynthetic` <https://kotlinlang.org/api/latest/jvm/stdlib/kotlin.jvm/-jvm-synthetic/>

which in turn led me to `ACC_SYNTHETIC`
<https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se15/html/jvms-4.html>

Is there a reason why the compiler with the JVM backend doesn’t just add the `ACC_SYNTHETIC` access_flag to `internal` methods without needing to add the noise of an extra annotation?

I suppose if you were writing a mixed Java/Kotlin module you might want to call an `internal` Kotlin member from Java… though I’ve always thought that a pretty odd thing to do.

The reason is simple: `synthetic` is for synthetic declarations and some tools, most notably IntelliJ debugger usually skip them.

There is another way to hide Kotlin internal functions from Java, which does not affect tools so much - `@JvmName` with a dash in new name.

I was really hoping to avoid extra annotations. But perhaps it’s simpler to just say that anyone calling a method with `$library` at the end of the name from Java is responsible for their own pain when I rename / delete it!