[jsr294-modularity-eg] Nested superpackages

[Glyn Normington]

Andreas Sterbenz <Andreas.Sterbenz at sun.com> wrote on 31/05/2007 00:57:57:

> At JavaOne Glyn and I talked a bit about a few topics, including nested 
> superpackages. I will try to summarize the conclusions. Glyn, please 
> correct me if something does not match your recollection.

Thanks for accurately summarising our discussion for the list.

> 
> Summary: nested superpackages have value, but there is no agreement yet 
> whether they have enough value to justify their inclusion. We need to 
> better understand them (and explain them) before making a final decision 

> about nested superpackages in JSR 294. One way to understand them better 

> is to try them out in practice. As the extra complexity of implementing 
> nested superpackages is low, the javac team has agreed to implement them 

> as part of their JSR 294 work. The initial version of that 
implementation 
> is expected to be available sometime this summer.
> 
> I suggest we go ahead with the plan of leaving them in for now and 
> reexamining the solution in a few months. Please let me know if anyone 
> disagrees.

I agree. Let's look to the broader community to provide feedback on 
whether nested superpackages deliver sufficient value to warrant their 
inclusion. I'd like to see one or more real life applications (rather than 
JRE internals) that would benefit from nested superpackages and, ideally, 
would be willing to do some prototyping and provide early feedback.

> 
> 
> And for completeness, a few words about the solution you proposed below. 
I 
> agree that it is one possibility. However, I must point out that you are 

> solving part of the problem at the language/VM level using superpackage 
> and another part at the library level using very different mechanisms. 
It 
> is not clear to me that this is simpler for developers to understand and 

> maintain than having all access control take place at language/VM level 
> using (nested) superpackages. Also, there may be developers that care 
> about access control but do not want to use deployment modules.

True.

[snip]

Glyn





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