Java Name Hiding: The Hard Way

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You can cast a null to the type and then invoke the method on that (which will work, since the target object isn’t involved in invocation of static methods).

((net.foo.X) null).doSomething();

This has the benefits of

  • being side-effect free (a problem with instantiating net.foo.X),
  • not requiring renaming of anything (so you can give the method in B the name you want it to have; that’s why a import static won’t work in your exact case),
  • not requiring the introduction of delegate class (though that might be a good idea…), and
  • not requiring the overhead or complexity of working with the reflection API.

The downside is that this code is really horrible! For me, it generates a warning, and that’s a good thing in general. But since it’s working around a problem that is otherwise thoroughly impractical, adding a 

@SuppressWarnings("static-access")

at an appropriate (minimal!) enclosing point will shut the compiler up.

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