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

[Remi Forax]

On 11/26/2014 10:46 PM, mark.reinhold at oracle.com wrote:
> 2014/11/23 4:01 -0800, loskutov at gmx.de:
>> ...
>>
>> Just wondering if the package->modules map (in the default properties format)
>> couldn't be just saved as a plain text file in the root of the jdk (or any
>> other suitable place)? The benefit related to the symlink approach is that the
>> access to such map would be much faster (single I/O read vs directories
>> traversal).
> We're trying to move away, as much as possible, from encouraging
> developers to rely upon the existence and content of specific files
> inside a run-time image.
>
> Exposing the package-to-module map via the NIO filesystem API is clean
> and relatively simple.  It might be a little less efficient than using
> a separate properties file, but I don't think utmost efficiency is the
> ultimate goal here.
>
> - Mark

I understand that a plain old file is not something very flexible
so ok to not having it.

and I think it's not a good idea to pollute the image API with something 
from the past.
I prefer that each tools that need the whole mapping between a package 
and a module
to create their own index (not necessarily on disk) instead of choosing 
now to use symlinks
to represent such index, something I'm sure we will regret in the future.

cheers,
Rémi