Legacy mode

[Alan Bateman]

David Holmes wrote:
>
> I was just thinking the same thing. It is extremely convenient to be 
> able to "override" individual class implementations using the 
> bootclasspath. It would have been far less convenient if 
> -Xbootclasspath had required you to use a jar rather than just a 
> class. The same will go for modulepath if we can only "override" 
> modules not individual classes within them.
-Xbootclasspath/p will continue to work in legacy mode. When you don't 
have a JDK build environment then I agree it's convenient for testing.

We don't have an exact equivalent in module mode. In module mode then 
arguably the module version should be rev'ed. Also which module is being 
patched (there may be multiple versions installed)? With modulepath then 
we will at least have a way to override a module without needing to 
install it. It could be hacked to augment the classes that are in the 
module library but I think the module-info would be required as 
otherwise you wouldn't know which module they belong to.

-Alan.