JEP 238: Multi-Version JAR Files

[Paul Sandoz]

On Feb 25, 2015, at 6:45 PM, Stephen Colebourne <scolebourne at joda.org> wrote:

> On 25 February 2015 at 13:30, Paul Sandoz <paul.sandoz at oracle.com> wrote:
>> Even in the modular world i will expect class scanning will be used. While we can now iterate reliably over classes in the image i don't believe that functionality is made available for classes in modules on the module path.
> 
> To be honest, being able to reliably iterate over classes in a module
> is the most interesting potential feature about modules in general.

Really? I would have thought that the most interesting aspects would be formalizing names and dependencies so they can be computed on.


> Its such an unreliable pain at the moment that it really needs
> tackling, and it is a very effective tool in application design in
> languages that have it (like Fantom).
> 

How did they solve it? bundled their own class scanning tool?

I recall the biggest pain with class scanning was supporting Web/App servers that had their own class loader URL scheme that needed to be reverse engineered.

It seems to be a fundamental issue with class loaders. It might be possible if one know the module path in a certain context to start accessing the contents of those modules (the module system API is in flux and i would need to remind myself of it).

Paul.