Java 9 is on schedule to be published late 2016 - and feature complete by the end of this year. There are still around 10 million Java developers around, who will sooner or later be interested in what’s coming up next, so I decided to sit down and write about the upcoming module system, project Jigsaw.

From classpath to puzzles

So what’s coming up next year when Java 9 is released? Well, a major thing is going to be Jigsaw - yes the modularity system that was supposed to be released already with Java 7. It’s taken 8 years of work for a few reasons. One is certain corporate buyout and changes in the way things are done. Second is because Jigsaw has ambitious goal of modularizing core of JRE - and the dependency map between different parts is crazy!

Current JDK has more than 20 000 classes, which are not needed for every project. One core goal of Jigsaw is to bring a modular JDK that would scale up to big environments where size is not an issue - but also to scale down to what is actually needed. In effect, the Java kernel is becoming lighter and more defined, more flexible, better prepared for IoT devices. But it will take a lot of work to get there.

It’s not all about JDK - module concept is useful for developers as well. Even if you would feel you don’t need it, there’s no way to avoid it. One way to explain the structure is this: class <- package <- module. Module is a collection of code that can refer to other modules or be referred to. Module is described by a module descriptor, and with this descriptor file, you are able to export a module, or require any number of modules. Yes, this is reminiscent of OSGI - and not by accident. But there are some differences, too. For example the require-model works purely on module layer, not on package level.

There’s a new class java.lang.reflect.Module that you can access run-time to get information on that new dimension. Typically modules are named, but there’s also concept of unnamed modules for backwards compatibility with code that does not export any module definitions. There’s also a new package java.lang.module, that contains more definitions for the module system. The API gives pretty good idea of what you can do in Java 9.

Examples of module-info.java

Simplest declaration of module could be to create a file named module-info.java at your source path root with this kind of content:

module fi . solita . blogster { }

This declares a module with a name, and after compilation, it becomes module-info.class. Like package names, module names must not conflict, so same best practices for naming modules apply. You can simply package this compilation result as you would normally do, and it becomes a modular jar file. For JDK itself, there’s a plan for new format called JMOD, but that’s entirely different thing.

To use more of the keywords we could do:

module fi . solita . blogster { requires fi . solita . iotdriver ; requires java . sql ; exports fi . solita . blogster . alpha ; exports fi . solita . blogster . beta ; }

Dependency to other modules with requires-keyword implies both compile and run-time dependencies. It will magically build the right classpath. Dependencies are transitive, meaning that by declaring dependency to java.sql module, you get also whatever modules it depends on and so forth. And when we export a package, it means we make all public types available for use by other modules. If you declare a module with no exports, it’s not going to be very re-usable.

Versions can be declared and required - although current early access build does not support them yet.

module fi . solita . crawlingturtle @ 0.1 { requires fi . solita . noisebox @ 1.2 ; }

[edit: It seems information on version features is now marked obsolete, and Mark Reinhold also recently posted on Jigsaw not supporting versioning - although in same document there were references to version numbering. I suppose we have to wait until end of this year to see the final decision.]

So, as you can see, new keywords being added: module, requires, exports. I hope you haven’t used them as variable names ;) Unfortunately, it seems current build of JDK 9 does not yet process the module keyword, so we have to wait a bit further to really play with it.

There’s also a host of new j* tools coming up, for example jlink linker, that links modules together, and jmod tool for packaging modules in a bit of jar-like format. These are mostly for IDE vendors to worry about, but expect to see/create ANT and Maven plug-ins at some point for build automation.

Folder structure inside jdk will change, and the endorsed/extension mechanism has been removed - so any earlier hacks that rely on tool jar locations or lib/ext folder will stop working. So this will be fun time for IDEs and application servers, but there’s still plenty of time to prepare of course ;)

How about a taste of Jigsaw?

There’s now early access build available for testing. Note that normal EA build does not contain Jigsaw or REPL, so you have to get separate download(s) - or build yourself in case of REPL. In my case, I got Jigsaw-able build from https://jdk9.java.net/jigsaw/ - installed it and started testing it. Nice trick at least for OSX installations is jenv tool, that enables you to very dynamically swap between different JDK setups, including JAVA_HOME, PATH and jdeps locations.

Jigwsaw build doesn’t come with a cool installer, but if you are really interested, it’s not that difficult to extract the package to proper folder structure. Of course, as always with pre-releases, virtual machine is highly recommended.

What else is there?

Obviously Java 9 is not just about Jigsaw - there are dozens of other updates and changes coming up. Some that interest me are:

G1 garbage collector becomes the new default for server virtual machines - finally. This mainly means improved support for larger amounts of heap memory, and more toggles for tuning gc pauses etc. This has of course been available for long time, but going to default setting implies certain level of maturity.

becomes the new default for server virtual machines - finally. This mainly means improved support for larger amounts of heap memory, and more toggles for tuning gc pauses etc. This has of course been available for long time, but going to default setting implies certain level of maturity. HTTP 2.0 client offers improved/simplified API with asynchronous calls and websocket support. Byebye HttpURLConnection! ;)

offers improved/simplified API with asynchronous calls and websocket support. Byebye HttpURLConnection! ;) Some project coin refinements, one of them means underscore is not just frowned upon in idenfitifer names, it’s now an error

JShell and REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop) enable you to play with and test code earlier and easier

and (Read-Eval-Print-Loop) enable you to play with and test code earlier and easier Better access to OS level details such as process level

Currently it seems that JEP 198: Light-Weight JSON API does not make the cut, so it will not be part of Java 9. Which is sad, since JSON handling could truly use some improvements. However, this is possible to resolve using libraries where we have a lot of choices!

Some of the changes are pretty big, and will break some existing code. So if you intend to keep up to date and not use trusty old Java 1.6 (or later ones) forever, it’s time to start planning and testing for the future. See you there!

OpenJDK 9

JEnv

java.lang.reflect.Module API

java.lang.module package

The State of the Module System

JEP 222 JShell

OpenJDK Quickstart

Module declaration grammar

Changes proposed to javac for module compilation support