Class names in a nominal descriptor, like class names in the constant pool of a classfile, must be interpreted with respect to a particular class loader, which is not part of the nominal descriptor.

Static constants that are expressible natively in the constant pool (String, Integer, Long, Float, and Double) implement ConstantDesc, and serve as nominal descriptors for themselves. Native linkable constants (Class, MethodType, and MethodHandle) have counterpart ConstantDesc types: ClassDesc, MethodTypeDesc, and MethodHandleDesc. Other constants are represented by subtypes of DynamicConstantDesc.

APIs that perform generation or parsing of bytecode are encouraged to use ConstantDesc to describe the operand of an ldc instruction (including dynamic constants), the static bootstrap arguments of dynamic constants and invokedynamic instructions, and other bytecodes or classfile structures that make use of the constant pool.

Constants describing various common constants (such as ClassDesc instances for platform types) can be found in ConstantDescs.

Implementations of ConstantDesc must be value-based classes.

Non-platform classes should not implement ConstantDesc directly. Instead, they should extend DynamicConstantDesc (as Enum.EnumDesc and VarHandle.VarHandleDesc do.)

Nominal descriptors should be compared using the Object.equals(Object) method. There is no guarantee that any particular entity will always be represented by the same descriptor instance.