Support for jrt-fs.jar in JDK 7 would be very helpful in allowing FindBugs to run under Java 9

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

2014/11/26 11:31 -0800, forax at univ-mlv.fr:
> The problem is that when you expose such API you encode assumptions with it.

The proposed symbolic links will expose no information that's not
already available in the current jrt filesystem; they'll just expose
that information in an alternative form that's more convenient for
legacy tools.

> Things like the fact that a package can be found in one module (or 
> multiple modules)

In general, yes, a package can always be found in one or more modules
(unless it's on the legacy class path).  Do you have a future scenario
in mind in which this is not true?

> or the fact that a .so file has to be associated with a package, etc

There are no .so files in the jrt filesystem, so I don't see how this is
relevant.

> All these rules are not needed in a modules world so each time we will want
> to upgrade the module world we will have to check if these assumptions are
> still valid. Basically, we handicap the future of modules with 
> assumptions from
> the past.

Sorry, but I must be missing something.  I don't understand how
providing what is essentially a cache of information that's already
being exposed is going to handicap the future evolution of the platform.

- Mark