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How is modularization progressing in practice? Stuff like Hibernate, Spring, the big libraries. How easy is it for the average greenfield enterprise to start

• pron 4y ago
  First, just to repeat, you don't need to modularise your app to use jlink. You modularise to enjoy additional security and evolution benefits. > How easy is it for the average greenfield enterprise to start as a modular app? As easy as a non-modularised one. > How easy is it for the average brownfield enterprise app started 10 years ago to convert to a modular app? This one is harder to answer because you can only modularise (i.e. encapsulate in modules) code that is actually modular (cleanly separates API and implementation into different packages, no circular dependencies among components that are to become modules etc.). So it depends on how modular your codebase already is. In many situations it could require a not-insignificant refactoring, and so worth it if you really want the best security and encapsulation (which was the case for the JDK itself, which is now fully modularised). In other situations it could make sense to leave things alone and only modularise new project components (modules and code outside modules can mix). Either way, modular or not, using link to produce a custom runtime is a good idea!
• whartung 4y ago
  It's getting better to be sure. It's definitely taken time for the libraries to catch up, but when 17 came out and put a kibosh on the work arounds folks relied upon when using libraries that were not properly modularized. From a JakartaEE perspective, that's a different world. The containers were modular runtimes of their own sort anyway, many are built upon OSGI, etc. I don't think mainstream EE projects are using modular projects. As a developer at the end of the line, building personal and in house projects, I don't personally get much value from the modular system. It's extra bookkeeping to manage, it's seems as much whack-a-mole of updating the module-info file as any deterministic plan. You mostly learn you have a problem when something won't load, making the whole thing rather reactive. I don't really care about the JDK/JRE size, I don't distribute projects that way. They're just jars, or they're WARs for the container. If you have to send up the entire runtime, all the time, then sure there can be value. But as mentioned, you don't need a modular project to use jlink. So, clearly, the JDK certainly benefits from this. But it's imposed from above on to everything, and I'm not that sure that everyone else gets real value from it.
  • clhodapp 4y ago
    It's a real shame that modularization focused almost entirely on solving the JDK vendor's problems rather than solving the application author's problems. Specifically, modularization can and should have been taken as a chance to allow multiple versions of the same dependency to exist within a single scope within an application. At present, this is sort of achievable by taking control of classloading and invoking defineModulesWithManyLoaders, but not many people will do this and key features are missing (it still does not allow a single module to directly reference two versions of the same dependency).
    • pron 4y ago
      > Specifically, modularization can and should have been taken as a chance to allow multiple versions of the same dependency to exist within a single scope within an application.... Modules do it to the best extent possible, but they don't make it prominent because, quite simply, it's impossible to do in a way that's good enough to be advisable. In order for a library to be properly isolatable, it has to be written in a specific way and be quite limited. Any kind of input or output, including the reliance on configuration outside of the source code can immediately make the library susceptible to horrible problems when multiple copies of it exist in the same process, even if isolated. So modules allow you to use class loader isolation if you really need it, but they don't try to pretend it can actually work in general. The main (though not only) thing that modules exist to provide is strong encapsulation, which is crucial for security and makes code evolution much easier.
      • clhodapp 4y ago
        It seems to work just fine without anything horrific happening in Rust. Direct dependencies can be renamed and indirect dependencies simply don't clash with each other. While libraries directly parsing some sort of conf file may be a little bit of a pattern on the JVM, it doesn't have to be... And the libraries could certainly define a new pattern to allow the user to define different versions of their configs for different library versions. I agree that, as it stands, modules enhance security by providing a stronger version of the visibility system. IMO that is important but it's just such a low bar to shoot for since it doesn't really improve the situation much more than everyone just following the rules
• tyingq 4y ago
  Even without being modular, switches like --strip-debug --no-man-pages --no-header-files net you a fair amount of space saving.