[jsr294-modularity-eg] Strawman for the reflective API

[Andreas Sterbenz]

Michal Cierniak wrote:
> I haven't looked at this strawman yet but I looked a bit at Bryan's
> and I read Glyn's comments.  I have a very naive question: why do we
> need separate runtime representation of modules (277) and
> superpackages (294)?  Shouldn't we strive to have only one class to
> represent both concepts?  Maybe I'm oversimplifying but this sounds
> achievable to me.

If we were starting from scratch, I agree that this would be the way to go.

However, where we are is that JSR 277 has the requirement of 
interoperating with other existing module systems that are not integrated 
with the language (i.e. the JLS). JSR 294 has the requirement of 
interoperating with existing deployment mechanisms that are not modular by 
our definition (e.g. plain JAR files plus URLClassLoader).

I find it difficult to reconcile the two in a single API.

Andreas.