Debian took us out of dependency hell. Sun liberated Java and the community packaged OpenJDK for Debian. The Jigsaw project of OpenJDK aims to take us out of the JAR hell that is imposed by the JVM and associated baggage. And this lecture is an update on efforts to use Jigsaw to match the Java module dependency graph to the Debian package dependency graph for a more intimate, and appropriate, matching of Java to GNU/Linux.

Why is solving this puzzle important? Because many Java applications don't need things like CORBA, SNMP and XML which currently are part of every Java Runtime Environment. Those applications should not have to pay the price in terms of slower startup time, greater memory footprint and larger (dependent) package space. The Free Software world needs Java to tease apart component modules so that applications can be appropriately refactored and maintained individually. The immediate performance gains will be complemented by a mature evolution of Java applications (based on dependent components -- as other programming languages are packaged in Debian) and by improvements in the ability to address security (finally we will be able to fix a Java bugs in the one responsible package).

Come learn about Jigsaw in Debian and possible futures for this modular JDK: such as opportunistic module loading in alternate languages on top of the JVM such as Groovy and Clojure.