Project Jigsaw Booted from Java 8?

In his post Project Jigsaw: Late for the train, Mark Reinhold’s proposes ‘to defer Project Jigsaw to the next release, Java 9.’ He explains the reasoning for this: ‘some significant technical challenges remain’ and there is ‘not enough time left for the broad evaluation, review, and feedback which such a profound change to the Platform demands.’ Reinhold also proposes ‘to aim explicitly for a regular two-year release cycle going forward.’

Based on the comments on that post, it seems that this news is not being particularly well received by the Java developer community. Markus Karg writes, ‘In fact it is a bit ridiculous that Jigsaw is stripped from JDK 8 as it was already stripped from JDK 7. … Just give up the idea and use Maven.’ Jon Fisher writes, ‘I don’t think this is a good idea for the java platform. … Delaying this will only turn java in to a leagacy technology.’ The comment from ninja is, ‘Whatever route you guys decide to go, I think it’s time to prioritize Java the platform ahead of Java the language.’

Although this news is generally receiving unfavorable reviews from the Java developer community, the explanations do differ to some degree. Some of those commenting think the modularization of Project Jigsaw is needed now (already may be too late), others think OSGi (or Maven or Ivy) should be used instead and Project Jigsaw abandoned, others would rather get other new features and aren’t worried about the modularization being pushed to Java 9, and others simply want to use Groovy or Scala instead. The question was posed whether other features of Java 8 should be dropped in favor of Jigsaw.

As one of the two ‘flagship’ features of Java 8 (lambda expressions being the other one), I too am disappointed to see that it is likely that modularity will be delayed until Java 9. However, Reinhold points out that if the proposal to jettison Jigsaw from Java 8 is accepted, ‘Java 8 will ship on time, around September 2013’ and is planned to ‘include the widely-anticipated Project Lambda (JSR 335), the new Date/Time API (JSR 310), Type Annotations (JSR 308), and a selection of the smaller features already in progress.’

I really want a new Date/Time API and I think the lambda expressions will dramatically improve what we can do in Java. Because of this, I’ll be excited to get my hands on Java 8 even without modularity.

Reference: Project Jigsaw Booted from Java 8? from our JCG partner Dustin Marx at the Inspired by Actual Events blog.