Why not use the Manifest?

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

2015/10/14 11:53 -0700, peter.kriens at aqute.biz:
> I think our differences come from the fact that you assume that
> module-info.java will be written by developers while I fail how to see
> that can work realistically.
> 
> The build system must already have metadata that contains module name
> and version (both for the current project and the dependencies), for
> example the pom.xml in maven. You think it is realistic to expect
> people will write the module name in two places?
> 
> For all practical cases, will the module info not be generated by the
> build system?

I think that depends upon the build system.

With the build systems that we have today it may well be best for the
system to generate module-info.java files.  That's perfectly fine.
(Gradle is, I understand, already doing this.)

Some future build system might do something entirely different and use
hand-written module-info.java files.  That's fine too.

The design as proposed allows for both approaches, and it does so by
fitting module declarations into the existing source-file to class-file
compilation pipeline which all build tools, present and future, must
support.

- Mark