Proposal: #NonHierarchicalLayers

[David M. Lloyd]

On 12/05/2016 05:08 PM, mark.reinhold at oracle.com wrote:
> 2016/11/29 18:51:22 -0800, david.lloyd at redhat.com:
>> On 11/29/2016 06:10 PM, mark.reinhold at oracle.com wrote:
>>> 2016/11/22 13:23:34 -0800, david.lloyd at redhat.com:
>>>> ...
>>>>
>>>> To degenerate the problem to the simplest case: I may have to layers, A
>>>> and B, which are unrelated and both contain a module X.  I may need the
>>>> module X in one layer to have a dependency on the module X in another
>>>> layer.  Unless there's new code I haven't seen, each dependency is
>>>> expressed by name only, therefore this is impossible.  Whereas in our
>>>> system, a dependency is a tuple of (module loader, module name),
>>>> allowing arbitrary weaving of modules from different name spaces with no
>>>> problem.
>>>>
>>>> I don't think we need it to work the exact same way, but we need some
>>>> equivalent.
>>>
>>> If this is how you need resolution to work for your modules then can't
>>> you write your own resolver to make it so, using whatever additional
>>> (weak) data structures you need to associate names with layers, class
>>> loaders, etc., in whatever manner you require?
>>
>> No, because the input to the resolver is just a name; there's no other
>> context to say which layer the module comes from, without some kind of
>> name mangling scheme which raises more problems (we ran into exactly
>> this issue more than six years ago).  In other words I can require a
>> module named "X", but I can't say that I require the module "X" from
>> this other layer/namespace; rather I have to flatten out all my
>> namespaces in a way that can be mutually resolvable, which means that I
>> must ultimately constrain user module names in some weird way.  This is
>> not so good when modules refer to one another by name programmatically,
>> nor in diagnostic output.
>
> So, what do you suggest we do?

Is it possible to add overloads in ModuleDescriptor.Builder like this:

   // Export to the named module in the given layer
   ModuleDescriptor.Builder exports(String pn, String target, Layer 
targetLayer);

   // Add dependence on module with the given name in the given layer
   ModuleDescriptor.Builder requires(String mn, Layer layer);
   ModuleDescriptor.Builder requires(Set<Modifier> mods, String mn, 
Layer layer);

I think that's all that's necessary.
-- 
- DML