Automatic module names

[David M. Lloyd]

On 02/03/2017 11:42 AM, Alan Bateman wrote:
> On 03/02/2017 16:42, David M. Lloyd wrote:
>
>> :
>>
>> Sure, but the set of JARs you can't rewrite is really pretty spare.
>
> I've no doubt that many people would be uncomfortable taking
> responsibility to modularize a component that they don't maintain or
> have full knowledge of.

I don't think there is really a substantial increase in risk between 
manually modularizing a library and relying on automatic modules.  Any 
discomfort is purely illusory, as the present automatic module process 
is a pretty well-defined sequence of steps, and a manual or 
tool-assisted modularization process would be equally well-defined, even 
if not exactly equivalent.  Anything beyond the facts of the processes 
themselves would really be wandering into psychology, but I don't see a 
significant disadvantage with this approach (on the contrary the added 
flexibility seems like an advantage to me).

> In the early exploration phase of Project Jigsaw
> then we have some basic tooling to help with exactly that approach but
> it has long been left behind. One reason is that potential for anarchy
> with several people converting the same library to a module.

There's no technical solution for preventing this situation when a 
single module environment is being assembled by multiple parties.  They 
simply must coordinate, or the result may be inconsistent or incorrect. 
I don't see how automatic modules provide any sort of general remedy for 
this.

> You might
> not like automatic modules but at least the module descriptors that are
> derived are very predictable (including the name).

I'm not really arguing about what I like, it's purely about comparative 
quality: in my experience a thing that works for some cases while 
causing potentially subtle or confusing problems in others should 
generally be considered unacceptable.  In the vast majority of cases, 
it's better to do nothing than to do something half-baked.

-- 
- DML