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

Module versioning


There's one aspect of module dependency that you might have noticed is missing from what we've covered so far--versioning. When you declare a module definition, can you specify a version number for the module? Also, when you specify that a certain module requires another module, can you also specify which version of module it needs? The answer to both the questions is no. For various reasons, module versioning is not a feature that's available in the Java Module system. It is not a problem the Java platform attempts to solve.

The biggest advantage and utility with module versioning comes with dependency management. Think of tools like Maven or Gradle. These tools allow you to configure specific versions of external dependencies which they can then automatically download for you from some remote repository, and then make them available in the classpath. The Java platform does not attempt to do this, or to solve any dependency management problems. It assumes that all the dependencies...