Proposal to revise forest graph and integration practices for JDK 9

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

On 2013-12-04 10:32, Alan Bateman wrote:
> On 03/12/2013 18:47, Joe Darcy wrote:
>> :
>>
>> The separate repositories for corba, jaxp, and jax-ws were put in 
>> place to reflect these differences in code origin and handling; 
>> however, I agree it is worthwhile to contemplate a repository 
>> consolidation, at least for all the libraries-related repos (jdk, 
>> corba, jaxp, jaxws).
> I agree that jaxp and corba should be looked at. That would also help 
> with a number of awkward circular dependencies and build issues (the 
> code in these two repositories really needs to be in the same big 
> compilation unit as the code in the jdk repository, at least until 
> we/if get to the point where the JDK is compiled as modules). 
> Furthermore, the timing is probably right for JAXP as it has proposed 
> to discontinue its standalone form and this opens the door to taking 
> advantage of new Java Language features and APIs.

 From a build perspective, jaxp and corba should, as you say, preferably 
be compiled as part of the JDK. We are doing unnecessary build steps, as 
well as missing out on build optimization possibilities, due to this 
split in different repos.

> I'm less sure about the jaxws repository as this is the transformation 
> of code from a number of upstream projects. Having it in its own 
> repository makes it a bit more obvious that we shouldn't be changing 
> anything in that code (as it will be trashed by updates from 
> upstream). Also it does not need to be compiled with the code in the 
> jdk repository and actually doesn't need to be packaged in rt.jar 
> either (but that is a separate topic). If nothing else, then I think 
> that the code in the jaxws repository should be compiled after the jdk 
> repository to avoid some of the boot cycle build issues that 
> periodically arises with big updates from upstream.
So if we really don't need it for jdk, nor the rt.jar -- then what use 
is it? :-) Even if I know how jaxws is *built*, I don't really have a 
clue what it's *for*. :-)

Currently, we have a dependency on jaxws from jdk in the build system. 
Right now, I can't see why, since as you say, it works just as well to 
compile after the JDK (if you hack away the artifical dependencies 
currently in place in the build system). Don't know why we're not doing 
it that way already.

Anyway. From your argument I think it follows that jaxws should be in a 
separate subdirectory from the rest of the libraries, but I don't think 
that it neccessarily follows that it needs to be a separate repository.

/Magnus