Making jlink Plug-in API public

[Gunnar Morling]

Hi all,

Are there any plans for making the jlink Plug-in API public any time soon,
perhaps for JDK 17?

I think the ability to implement custom plug-ins that are run at linking
time would open up quite a few interesting opportunities, e.g.

- removing unused members and obfuscation
- adding resources like annotation indexes for the whole image
- verifying that exported and required API methods match (avoiding
NoSuchMethodErrors due to adding incompatible module versions to an image)

The latter would be interesting in particular for monolithic applications
built jointly by multiple teams, avoiding the need to recompile the entire
application if only a single module changed, while still having fidelity
that APIs would match.

Thanks,

--Gunnar