Is there a way to make sure classes implementing an Interface implement static methods?

Question

First of all, I read erickson\'s useful reply to \"Why can’t I define a static method in a Java interface?\". This question is not about the \"why\" but about the \"how then

Answer 1

The idea behind this is putting several ParametricFunction's in a package and use Reflection to list them all, allowing the user to pick e.g. which one to plot.

That's going to fail for a more basic reason: reflection offers no way to list all classes in a package (because "all classes in a package" is not a well-defined set, due to the flexibility of the classloader mechanism).

The modern solution for this kind of thing is to make it part of the application configuration via a dependency injection framework.

Obviously one could provide a loader class containing an array of the available ParametricFunction's, but every time a new one is implemented one has to remember adding it there, too.

Well, with your concept, every time a new one is implemented, one is forced to put it into the same package. By putting it into a configuration file or a loader class (the same thing, really), you remove that restriction.