[External] : Re: How to open a package from a module in the boot layer to a module in another layer?

[Ron Pressler]

> On 14 Jan 2025, at 17:12, Code Ranger <coderanger2025 at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Regarding the agent — who is ready to add such an agent to their application to manage module directives and present it to the community?

I would think that certainly anyone who’s writing a project that lets any code, including code loaded dynamically at runtime, redefine the semantics of Java globally for the application would have no problem at all using an agent. An agent *is* how Java programs change, at runtime, various things that are otherwise static, and that is exactly what you’re asking to do. There are many big and important Java programs running in production with agents, and most of them are programs that don’t even go as far as you aim to in terms of liberties granted to dynamically loaded code.

> 
> I have nothing else to add. Really, nothing. The ball is in your court. Either reopen the issue, or Java developers, to the delight of developers in C#, Python, JS, etc., will have to write such instructions for their plugins:
> 
> 1. Install the plugin.
> 2. Stop the application.
> 3. Add --add-exports ..., --add-opens ....
> 4. Restart the application.

These things are not required.

You can do what you want without any restarts or reconfiguration with just plain Java code *except* when dynamically loaded plugins want to manipulate the inner workings of the JDK itself, something that you’d really want to raise a red flag over. And if you’re fine with letting plugin code manipulate the runtime, you can simply add a single flag specifying an agent, which is not only how Java has always supported things of this sort but also requires the same configuration effort as in your suggestion — a single flag.

It’s not a matter of not recognising that what you want may sometimes be pragmatically needed. It’s just that everything you’re asking for is already delivered and you’re requesting a feature that already exists.

— Ron