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

Revisiting the two problems


We started this chapter looking at two issues with the Java platform:

  • The monolithic runtime
  • The lack of API encapsulation features

Interestingly, the modularization of the Java platform provides solutions to both these problems.

Solving the monolithic runtime

There is a distinct advantage of knowing which platform modules your application belongs to. It is a clear indication of which platform modules it doesn't need--which is anything the modules in the application doesn't use! So, for example, if your application contains modules that only require the platform modules java.base and java.logging, you can essentially create a small subset of the Java platform consisting of just those two modules. That slice of the platform is all that your application needs to function. If you are bundling the runtime with your application, you now know the exact portion of the runtime you need to bundle, no more no less!

Java 9 comes with a brand-new static linking step that lets you...