On 8/10/2022 12:04 PM, Andrejus Chaliapinas wrote:
Also, what did their maintainer say when you pointed out the
existence of split packages, and how they make it difficult to use
the JARs as automatic modules?
Well, I'm not sure everyone is buying importance of Java modules
usage with extra headache involved. So I expect some of those to
continue be just old Java8 jars unless some Java 18+ will deprecate
classpath usage completely, which I doubt.
An impressive majority of old Java 8 JARs work as automatic modules on
Java 9+ with no effort from the maintainer. However, it was never the
aim to make 100% of them work. JARs that make use of poor practices --
whether split packages, access to JDK internals, tight dependence on
version strings, etc -- will find it hard to run on new versions of
Java. We're not going to keep adding mechanisms, such as command-line
options or additional manifest entries, to catch the final 5%, 1%, etc
-- especially when tools that set up the modulepath can already mitigate
some of the JARs' problems.
Alex
