Jigsaw + Web Start

[Robert Gibson]

> On 29 Mar 2016, at 11:39, Alan Bateman <Alan.Bateman at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 29/03/2016 10:10, Robert Gibson wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> We have a number of applications launched over Web Start. Unfortunately none of them work with the latest JDK build, it looks like the closed-source Web Start implementation is not a testing priority for Oracle, so I put my shoulder to the wheel and filed a few bugs.
>> 
>> Anyway, I haven't seen any mention of Web Start in the various Jigsaw documents, can I assume that there is a plan to add the "emergency hatch" VM options to the java-vm-args whitelist? Without it we are dead in the water, and I assume we are not alone!
> There was a huge effort behind the scenes to get Web Start working as modules. I'm only aware of one issue so far. That issue is that transitive closure of the jdk.javaws module is limit the modules that can be read by applications launched in the same VM as the javaws launcher. A fix for this is in progress.
> 
> So what issues are you running into that requires changing the java-vm-args whitelist? Are these applications using JDK-internal APIs?
> 
> -Alan

Hi Alan,
Thanks for your quick reply. 
Yes, we have code (and depend on libraries) that use, approximately:
com.sun.java.swing.plaf
com.sun.org.apache.xerces
com.sun.jmx.remote.util
com.sun.management
com.sun.jndi.ldap
com.sun.crypto.provider

We will at some point get around to re-writing the code that we have control over but would like to have flexibility over when we do this, and not have it as a precondition for upgrading our clients to Java 9. Currently it seems that -XaddExports doesn't have any effect in a JNLP file and I assumed that was a whitelisting issue with VM arguments and Web Start - but maybe it is supposed to work at this point?

Regards,
Robert