Draft Spec for Preview of Module Import Declarations (JEP 476)

[Alex Buckley]

A few small things:

- 7.5 says "A single-module-import declaration (7.5.5) imports all the 
accessible classes and interfaces, as needed, from every package 
exported by a given module."  The "every package" makes me a little 
nervous because there might be qualified exports which are not 
importable by the s-m-i declaration. That is, we don't want 7.5 to 
conflict with 7.5.5's "The packages exported by the module M ***to the 
current module.***"  Recommend: "A single-module-import declaration 
(7.5.5) imports all the accessible classes and interfaces of the 
packages exported by a given module, as needed."  Unlike the preceding 
four bullets, we don't mention the canonical name of the module, because 
at present modules don't have canonical names; that's probably still OK.

- Example 7.5.5-1 mentions "All simple compilation units implicitly 
import the module java.base (7.3)." which should be a normative 
statement, not an informative one. (I'm sure it will move/relate to a 
new section on Simple Compilation Units in future, but for now we 
shouldn't lose it in an example.)

- I recommend having Example 7.5.5-1 be "Single-Module-Import in 
Ordinary Compilation Units", forking off Example 7.5.5-2 
"Single-Module-Import in Modular Compilation Units" at "Import 
declarations can also appear in a modular compilation unit." Eventually 
there will be an Example of "S-M-I in Simple Compilation Units".

Alex

On 4/26/2024 3:07 AM, Gavin Bierman wrote:
> Dear experts:
> 
> The first draft of a spec covering JEP 476 (Module Import Declarations 
> (Preview))
> 
> https://cr.openjdk.org/~gbierman/jep476/latest/ 
> <https://cr.openjdk.org/~gbierman/jep476/latest/>
> 
> Feel free to contact me directly or on this list with any comments.
> 
> Thanks
> Gavin
> 
>> On 17 Apr 2024, at 19:58, Mark Reinhold <mark.reinhold at oracle.com> wrote:
>>
>> https://openjdk.org/jeps/476
>>
>>  Summary: Enhance the Java programming language with the ability to
>>  succinctly import all of the packages exported by a module. This
>>  simplifies the reuse of modular libraries, but does not require the
>>  importing code to be in a module itself. This is a preview language
>>  feature.
>>
>> - Mark