Optional dependencies

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 5 December 2015 at 09:49, Alan Bateman <Alan.Bateman at oracle.com> wrote:
> Yes, that's right, there is enough to support all the scenarios. The
> use-guava-if-it-happens-to-be-there scenario is somewhat awkward though as
> it would means using -addmods. On the other hand, the
> use-guava-if-someone-hands-me-a-guava-type scenario is straight-forward, it
> just means reading the module at run-time (easy).

However taking a step back, in order to support this type of release,
command line flags are not an option. Since Joda-Beans is an OSS
library, developers need to be able to "just use it". Telling
developers that if they use this library they have to add a complex
command line flag at runtime is simply not on.

To me, the answers have identified a clear need for optional module
dependencies in the jigsaw design, such that key information is not
lost.

Stephen