module-info.java just causes problems

[David M. Lloyd]

On 05/11/2016 07:39 AM, Alan Bateman wrote:
> On 11/05/2016 08:45, Gunnar Morling wrote:
>> :
>>
>> Assuming a developer needs to change the module requirements of one of
>> the
>> modules they use, this means - as far as I understand the current
>> design -
>> they need to get the source of the module's module-info.java, adapt it as
>> needed and re-compile it.
> Assuming there are actually good reasons for changing it then I would
> hope you would recompile the module completely, not just module
> declaration as otherwise it may not be in sync with the code in the module.

In practice this happens a lot.  A module's dependency graph depends 
just as much on the environment as it depends on the classes in the 
module (if not more so).  Modules are merged and split, replaced with 
compatibility stubs, renamed, etc.  If you have to recompile every 
module for every environment, a lot of the benefit of modularity and 
compatibility-by-ABI is lost; changes to a module in an environment 
would lead to a massive cascade of recompilation.
-- 
- DML