JShell tool: remove or keep default Edit Pad editor?

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

2016/10/10 17:31:35 -0700, paul.sandoz at oracle.com:
> IMO i think you should drop it, for many of the reasons you have
> stated. I suspect we may come to regret this dependency later on.

I agree.

    $ ls -l java.desktop.jmod jdk.jshell.jmod
    -rw-r--r-- 1 mr green  12M 2016-10-09 03:55 java.desktop.jmod
    -rw-r--r-- 1 mr green 387K 2016-10-09 03:55 jdk.jshell.jmod
    $ 

It sure would be nice to be able to link a custom image that contains
jdk.jshell without dragging in all of java.desktop, as it does now.

> One approach for an out of the box solution is to split out the editor
> functionality into a separate module and for jshell to define a
> service provider interface. Thereby on a full JDK distribution you can
> the same functionality but on a more minimal distribution it is not
> present.

That would be the "modular" way to do it.

Have you considered, at least on Unix systems, supporting the EDITOR
environment variable?  Yes, it might be platform-specific, but it's an
incredibly handy and reasonably standard way to tell random programs how
to use the editor of your choice.

- Mark