no error when module exports non-existing package

[Jonathan Gibbons]

On 12/02/2015 02:20 PM, Victor Rudometov wrote:
> On 02.12.2015 21:09, Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
>> Adding Victor back into the recipients.
>>
>> -- Jon
>>
>> On 12/02/2015 10:08 AM, Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/02/2015 09:41 AM, Victor Rudometov wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> Javac does not complain if user exports a package that does not 
>>>> exist. If it was not done intentionally, it would be good to report 
>>>> an error, or at least a warning.
>>>> Today was the third time I saw the code with a typo or just 
>>>> incorrect package name in module-info's exports statement.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>>> Victor.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I agree we should improve javac in this area. We probably need some 
>>> spec clarification from Alex on the intent here. See JLS 8, 7.4.3 
>>> Observability of a package.  In particular, that says that a package 
>>> is observable if a subpackage is observable. javac tries to honor 
>>> that specification, but there are well known hard-to-fix bugs in 
>>> this area.
>>>
>>> As for module declarations,   if  p.q.Class exists in a module and 
>>> no other classes anywhere in p or its subpackages, is it OK to 
>>> export p from the module?  From the point of view of the module, the 
>>> package is observable, but it seems intuitively wrong to allow an 
>>> export of a package that contains no types. In other words, if we 
>>> are going to catch typos in exported package names, I think we ought 
>>> to consider "empty" packages as well as mistyped packages.
>>>
>>> -- Jon
>>
>
> I agree with you, it is worth to consider disallowing "empty" packages 
> together with mistyped ones.
> While I do not see the use for mistyped non-existing packages there 
> are cases when "empty" might be useful. F.e., is the case of p.q.Class 
> and p.r.OtherClass it would be easier to export just p, rather than 
> both p.q and p.r. However I'd prefer to write explicit p.q and p.r.
>
> Victor
>
>

exports should never include subpackages, so "exports p;" could only 
ever mean "exports public types in package p" which raises the 
additional question, what if package p is not empty, but has no public 
types to be exported.

-- Jon