JEP 238: Multi-Version JAR Files

[David M. Lloyd]

On 02/27/2015 07:27 AM, Florian Weimer wrote:
> On 02/12/2015 09:52 PM, Paul Sandoz wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> In connection with the JEP there is also a design document to help the discussion:
>>
>>    http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~psandoz/jdk9/MultiVersionJar-8u60-9-design.md
>>
>> We are especially interesting in hearing feedback from library developers, tool/IDE developers, and anyone doing funky stuff with class loading and JAR files.
>
> I'm wondering how you propose to build such JAR files.  Do you think
> library developers will maintain two separate branches, compile one with
> JDK 8, the other one with JDK 9, and then use some (not yet existing?)
> tool to merge the output into a single JAR?  Is such automated merging
> even possible if the bytecode was compiled with different javac versions?

This is basically what I was getting at in my post.  It's interesting 
that JDK-8058150 (Compile for Specific Platform Version) is surfacing at 
the same time, because it seems to me that this would make it possible 
for javac to compile for multiple targets in one pass.  Maybe not easy, 
but possible. :-)

> What about presenting Javadoc in a useful fashion?

Good question...

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- DML