Naming unmodularized modules

[Nicolai Parlog]

 Hi again,

one underlying problem of automatic modules is that maintainers have
no way to express their desired module name without fully modularizing
their artifacts. This will make "proper names" appear rather late in
the migration.

Brian's and Robert's idea to read Maven meta information addressed
this. While giving developers the ability to pick a name this way is
commendable I agree with the criticism that this creates a dependency
"up the stack".

What if the module system offered a similar, low entry-barrier to
picking a module's name?
As an alternative to the full module declaration, the module system
could allow module-info.java to contain the following:

	not-yet-a module foo;

Such a declaration would determine a module's name but would otherwise
work as an automatic module (everything open and exported) while
clearly communicating that it is in transition. There might be a
better keyword than `not-yet-a`, though. ;)

Unlike Maven meta information this could not be inferred for existing
artifacts but it at least gives maintainers an easy way to start
naming their modules.

 so long ... Nicolai



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