JEP 201: Modular Source Code

[Alan Bateman]

On 06/08/2014 15:08, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> Just wanted to express my surprise that java files are still to be
> located in "src/.../classes". For me, most open source projects and
> most users of Maven and other build systems, "classes" is the name of
> the *output* directory containing ".class" files. Having the ".java"
> files in there is very confusing.
>
> As such, could I request that consideration is given to using
> "src/.../java" as per the Maven inspired standard directory layout.
>
> If that is not deemed acceptable (because of the root package name of
> java for example) I'd be happy with other sensible options
> ("src/.../javasrc"?), but please, not "classes"!
>
A historical note, going way back then the java sources were in a "java" 
directory (as in java/java/lang/Object.java). It changed to using 
"classes" in JDK 1.2. I don't know the full history/rational but perhaps 
"java/java" was confusing then. Using "classes" might seem strange to 
someone approaching the code base for the first time but I haven't 
observed anyone being confused by it (at least in the 7 years to date of 
OpenJDK). So the name might not matter too much but no harm considering 
whether it's worth trying to find a better name.

Just to mention that anyone expecting to see "classes" in the 
intermediate build output directory is going to be disappointed as that 
is proposed to go away. I doubt that many will notice this.

-Alan.