Book Image

Modular Programming in Java 9

By : Koushik Srinivas Kothagal
Book Image

Modular Programming in Java 9

By: Koushik Srinivas Kothagal

Overview of this book

The Java 9 module system is an important addition to the language that affects the way we design, write, and organize code and libraries in Java. It provides a new way to achieve maintainable code by the encapsulation of Java types, as well as a way to write better libraries that have clear interfaces. Effectively using the module system requires an understanding of how modules work and what the best practices of creating modules are. This book will give you step-by-step instructions to create new modules as well as migrate code from earlier versions of Java to the Java 9 module system. You'll be working on a fully modular sample application and add features to it as you learn about Java modules. You'll learn how to create module definitions, setup inter-module dependencies, and use the built-in modules from the modular JDK. You will also learn about module resolution and how to use jlink to generate custom runtime images. We will end our journey by taking a look at the road ahead. You will learn some powerful best practices that will help you as you start building modular applications. You will also learn how to upgrade an existing Java 8 codebase to Java 9, handle issues with libraries, and how to test Java 9 applications.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Chapter 4. Introducing the Modular JDK

In the previous two chapters, you've learnt about the modular API in Java 9 and how to create your own custom modules. There's much more to Java 9 modules than that! The introduction of modularity in Java is not just a new feature for developers to use; it has resulted in major changes to the Java platform itself. In fact, Java 9 also has had perhaps the biggest overhaul of the internal Java codebase ever. Java 9 not only comes with the ability for developers to create their own modules, the whole Java platform itself has been modularized. In this chapter, let's examine these important changes, both to learn what the changes are, and to understand why they came about. Now that you have warmed up to Java modules by writing modules yourself, it's time to put our thinking caps on and really understand the problems and the requirements that resulted in this major change in the Java language. Not only will it help us appreciate the changes better, learning...