[External] : Re: Could we have --exclude-modules option?

[Alex Buckley]

On 8/10/2022 12:04 PM, Andrejus Chaliapinas wrote:
>> Also, what did their maintainer say when you pointed out the
>> existence of split packages, and how they make it difficult to use
>> the JARs as automatic modules?
> 
> Well, I'm not sure everyone is buying importance of Java modules
> usage with extra headache involved. So I expect some of those to
> continue be just old Java8 jars unless some Java 18+ will deprecate
> classpath usage completely, which I doubt.

An impressive majority of old Java 8 JARs work as automatic modules on 
Java 9+ with no effort from the maintainer. However, it was never the 
aim to make 100% of them work. JARs that make use of poor practices -- 
whether split packages, access to JDK internals, tight dependence on 
version strings, etc -- will find it hard to run on new versions of 
Java. We're not going to keep adding mechanisms, such as command-line 
options or additional manifest entries, to catch the final 5%, 1%, etc 
-- especially when tools that set up the modulepath can already mitigate 
some of the JARs' problems.

Alex