DRAFT: Project Jigsaw: The Big Picture (part 1)

[David M. Lloyd]

On 12/20/2011 05:28 PM, mark.reinhold at oracle.com wrote:
> I've started drafting an overview of the current state of Jigsaw.
> The first part is attached below, and also available on the web:
>
>    http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mr/jigsaw/notes/jigsaw-big-picture-01
>
> Comments, questions, and suggestions welcome.  Flames will be ignored.

The terms 'library' and 'module path' could use a definition in that 
section.

It should maybe be somewhat more clear that the installation of modules 
into a module repository (library?) requires special tooling, and that 
modules are not editable in-place; these are both things which will 
break most developers' assumptions going in.

The role of Jigsaw's versioning scheme at the different phases could be 
clarified somewhat.  It could be made more clear that Jigsaw imposes a 
single version scheme and thus a single module repository format (that's 
how it appears at least).

It is worth clarifying that in the Jigsaw model, nothing is exported by 
default.  There seems to be no provision for filtering the set of 
packages, classes, and/or resources which are imported from a dependency.

The disposition of META-INF and resource (non-package) directories is 
not clear, especially in terms of export and import behavior.

Negative dependencies would add a great deal of complexity; I would 
advise against it (think of Windows NT ACLs and their mixed allow/deny 
rule sets; experts knew the best practices but most people just screwed 
them up).

One key guiding principle seems to be missing: keep it simple...
-- 
- DML