Java and security bits

Thursday Apr 05, 2007

Superpackage strawman and the JSR 294 mailing list

After a lot of internal discussion, Alex and I recently started the expert group discussion for JSR 294 (Improved Modularity Support in the Java Programming Language). Not an earth shattering event, but what may make this interesting to you is that we decided to make the expert group discussion publicly readable via a web archive and an observer list that anyone can subscribe to. You will not be able to post to the expert group list, but you can read all the discussions from now on. It's all out in the open.

Secondly and related to that, we also posted our strawman proposal for superpackages. The concepts will not be news to you if you read my earlier postings. Alex and I think that it is a straightforward way to address limitations in information hiding in the Java language and so far the expert group agrees.

Finally, we are presenting a session at JavaOne this May. It is called Java Language Modularity with Superpackages (abstract). Stanley will also present a session JSR 277: Java Module System plus we will all do a joint Modularity BOF that covers both JSR 277 and 294. We hope to see you all there.

Comments:

Excellent move! I'm sure the community would appreciate the increased transparency in the working of the expert group. It'd be even better if the JCP as a whole adopts the policy of making the expert group discussions public from day one.

Posted by Bharath R on April 06, 2007 at 01:38 AM PDT #

Creat! Thanks for the openness.

Posted by Mark Wielaard on April 06, 2007 at 02:07 AM PDT #

Thank you!

Posted by Dalibor Topic on April 09, 2007 at 09:41 AM PDT #

Great start Andreas! Glad to see things happening out in the open. I posted some comments on the JSR 294 proposal at http://tech.puredanger.com/2007/04/09/superpackage/

Posted by Alex Miller on April 09, 2007 at 01:26 PM PDT #

Any chance of the JSR 277 list being opened up as well? Oh, and at the Modularity BoF, will anybody be allowed to mention OSGi? ;-)

Posted by Neil Bartlett on April 09, 2007 at 01:56 PM PDT #

We are also investigating to make the JSR-277 expert group discussion observable. Stay tuned.

Posted by Stanley Ho on April 09, 2007 at 05:41 PM PDT #

Question, why super-package and not package ? There is already a file named package-info.java that contains package related informations (like annotations on package) , why not extend it with your syntax. Instead of
package example.foo.myapp;
you can declare :
package example.foo.myapp {

    // sub-package members
    // example.foo.myapp is a member by default
    member package  example.foo.myapp.processing;

    // list of exported types
    export example.foo.myapp.Main, example.foo.myapp.Helper;
}
For runtime informations, you could add new methods to java.lang.Package Rémi

Posted by Rémi Forax on April 10, 2007 at 06:08 AM PDT #

@Neil: what I shortened to "Modularity BOF" is officially called "Modularity in the Next-Generation Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE): JSR 277 and JSR 294", see the abstract. That is what we want to focus on. If you want to discuss OSGi, Peter Kriens' and BJ Hargrave's OSGi talk is probably the better place.

@Remi: we are addressing information hiding for projects larger than a single package. Redefining packages to accommodate the desired semantics while remaining compatible with developers' and tools understanding of packages seems impractical.

Posted by Andreas Sterbenz on April 15, 2007 at 07:24 PM PDT #

Andreas, when i explain Java package to my students each year there is a student that ask a question about sub-package. I don't think we need superpackage but a way to say that a package is not only a list of classes but a list of classes and sub-packages.

do you have a practical example of an incompatibility ?

Rémi

Posted by Rémi Forax on April 16, 2007 at 01:31 AM PDT #

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