Article

The java module system: core design and semantic definition

Authors:

OOPSLA '07: Proceedings of the 22nd annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications

Pages 499 - 514

https://doi.org/10.1145/1297027.1297064

Published: 21 October 2007 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

Java has no module system. Its packages only subdivide the class name space, allowing only a very limited form of component-level information hiding and reuse. Two Java Community Processes have started addressing this problem: one describes the runtime system and has reached an early draft stage, while the other considers the developer's view and only has a straw-man proposal. Both are natural language documents, which inevitably contain ambiguities.

In this work we design and formalize a core module system for Java. Where the JCP documents are complete, we follow them closely; elsewhere we make reasonable choices. We define the syntax, the type system, and the operational semantics of an LJAM language, defining these rigorously in the Isabelle/HOL automated proof assistant. Using this formalization, we identify various issues with the module system. We highlight the underlying design decisions, and discuss several alternatives and their benefits. Our Isabelle/HOL definitions should provide a basis for further consideration of the design alternatives, for reference implementations, and for proofs of soundness.

References

[1]

Apache Felix. http://cwiki.apache.org/felix/.

Google Scholar

[2]

Eclipse Callisto. http://www.eclipse.org/callisto/.

Google Scholar

[3]

Equinox. http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/.

Google Scholar

[4]

Fusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_assembly#Fusion.

Google Scholar

[5]

Ancona, D., Damiani, F., Drossopoulou, S., and Zucca, E. Polymorphic Bytecode: Compositional Compilation for Java-like Languages. In Proc32nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, POPL'05 (Long Beach, CA, USA, Jan12-14, 2005), J. Palsberg and M. Abadi, Eds., ACM, pp. 26--37.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[6]

Ancona, D., Lagorio, G., and Zucca, E. Jam -a smooth extension of java with mixins. In ProcEuropean Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP'00 (Sophia Antipolis and Cannes, France, June 12--16, 2000), E. Bertino, Ed., vol. 1850 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, pp. 154--178.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

Ancona, D., Lagorio, G., and Zucca, E. Smart Modules for Java-like Languages. In Proc7th Workshop on Formal Techniques for Java-like Programs, FTfJP'05 (Glasgow, Scotland, July 26, 2005).

Google Scholar

[8]

Ancona, D., and Zucca, E. True Modules for Java-like Languages. In ProcEuropean Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP'01 (Budapest, Hungary, June18-22, 2001), JL. Knudsen, Ed., vol. 2072 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, pp. 354--380.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[9]

Bierman, G., Parkinson, M., and Pitts, A. MJ: An imperative core calculus for Java and Java with Effects. Tech. Rep. 563, Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, Apr. 2003.

Google Scholar

[10]

Bracha, G. Developing Modules for Development. http://blogs.sun.com/gbracha/, Mar. 2006.

Google Scholar

[11]

Bracha, G. Superpackages: Development Modules in Dolphin. In ProcJavaOneSM Conference (2006), Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Google Scholar

[12]

Corwin, J., Bacon, D. F., Grove, D., and Murthy, C. MJ: a rational module system for Java and its applications. In ProcACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications, OOPSLA'03(Anaheim, CA, USA, Oct. 26--30, 2003), RCrocker and GLS. Jr., Eds., ACM, pp. 241--254.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[13]

DevelopMentor. Assemblies Module -.NET: Building Applications and Components with C#, Jan. 2004.

Google Scholar

[14]

Flatt, M., Krishnamurthi, S., and Felleisen, M. A Programmer's reduction semantics for classes and mixins. Tech. Rep. TR-97-293, Rice University, 1997. Corrected June, 1999.

Google Scholar

[15]

Gosling, J., Joy, B., Stelle, G., and Bracha, G. The Java™ Language Specification, Third. ed. Sun Microsystems, Inc., May 2005.

Google Scholar

[16]

Igarashi, A., Pierce, B. C., and Wadler, P. Featherweight Java: a minimal core calculus for Java and GJ. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 23, 3 (2001), 396--450.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[17]

Klein, G., and Nipkow, T. A Machine-Checked Model for a Java-Like Language, Virtual Machine and Compiler. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, TOPLAS'06 28, 4 (July 2006), 619--695.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[18]

Liang, S., and Bracha, G. Dynamic Class Loading in the Java Virtual Machine. In ProcACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications, OOPSLA'98 (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Oct. 18--22, 1998), pp. 36--44.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[19]

McDirmid, S., Flatt, M., and Hsieh, W. Jiazzi: New Age Components for Old Fashioned Java. In ProcACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications, OOPSLA'01 (Tampa, Florida, USA, Nov. 2001), vol. 36, pp. 211--222.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[20]

Microsoft. C# Specification, 2.0 ed., Sept. 2005.

Google Scholar

[21]

Nipkow, T., Paulson, L. C., and Wenzel, M. Isabelle/HOL -A Proof Assistant for Higher-Order Logic, vol. 2283 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, 2002.

Google Scholar

[22]

OSGi™ Alliance. About the OSGi Service Platform, 4.1 ed., Nov. 2005.

Google Scholar

[23]

Robinson, R. Developing and Deploying Modular J2EE Applications with WebSphere Studio Application Developer and WebSphere Application Server. http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/02%06_robinson/robinson.html, June 2002.

Google Scholar

[24]

Seco, J. C., and Caires, L. A Basic Model of Typed Components. In ProcEuropean Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP'00 (Sophia Antipolis and Cannes, France, June 12--16, 2000), E. Bertino, Ed., vol. 1850 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, pp. 108--128.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[25]

Sewell, P., Zappa Nardelli, F., Owens, S., Peskine, G., Ridge, T., Sarkar, S., and Strniša, R. Ott: Effective Tool Support for the Working Semanticist. In ProcICFP (Freiburg, Germany, Oct. 2007). To appear in ICFP'07.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[26]

Strniša, R. Lightweight Java Module System. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rs456/ljam, Feb. 2007.

Google Scholar

[27]

Strniša, R., and Parkinson, M. Lightweight Java. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rs456/lj, Sept. 2006.

Google Scholar

[28]

Sun Microsystems, Inc. Java™ SE 7. https://jdk7.dev.java.net/. In development.

Google Scholar

[29]

Sun Microsystems, Inc. JSR-294: Improved Modularity Support in the Java™ Programming Language. http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=294.

Google Scholar

[30]

Sun Microsystems, Inc. OpenJDK: Modules project. http://openjdk.java.net/projects/modules/.

Google Scholar

[31]

Sun Microsystems, Inc. JSR-277: Java™ Module System. http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=277, Oct. 2006. Early Draft.

Google Scholar

[32]

Zenger, M. Programming Language Abstractions for Extensible Software Components. PhD thesis, University of Lausanne, EPFL, 2003.

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Damiani FHähnle RKamburjan ELienhardt MPaolini L(2023)Variability modulesJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2022.111510195:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2022.111510
Castro TTeixeira LAlves VApel SCordy MGheyi R(2021)A Formal Framework of Software Product Line AnalysesACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/344238930:3(1-37)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442389
Prajapati AChhabra J(2018)Optimizing Software Modularity with Minimum Possible VariationsJournal of Intelligent Systems10.1515/jisys-2018-023129:1(1135-1150)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2018
https://doi.org/10.1515/jisys-2018-0231
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The java module system: core design and semantic definition
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Formal language definitions
      1. Semantics
      2. Syntax
    2. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Modules / packages
2. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program semantics

Recommendations

The java module system: core design and semantic definition
Proceedings of the 2007 OOPSLA conference

Java has no module system. Its packages only subdivide the class name space, allowing only a very limited form of component-level information hiding and reuse. Two Java Community Processes have started addressing this problem: one describes the runtime ...
Evaluating the Java Native Interface JNI: Leveraging Existing Native Code, Libraries and Threads to a Running Java Virtual Machine

This article aims to explore JNI features and to discover fundamental operations of the Java programming language, such as arrays, objects, classes, threads and exception handling, and to illustrate these by using various algorithms and code samples. ...
Evaluating the Java Native Interface JNI: Data Types and Strings

This article describes how the java native interface JNI is a powerful feature of the java platform that started to draw attention in the latter years as an efficient programming framework for building and delivering innovative technological ...

Reviews

Reviewer: Alexandre Bergel

The use of packages and class loaders in Java does not help in managing several different versions of the same software unit in a satisfactory way. As expressed by the authors, this situation is traditionally referenced as dynamic-link library (DLL) or Java Archive (JAR) hell. Java Module System (JAM) is the latest of several attempts by the Java community to define a practical module system. The main feature of JAM is to add visibility restriction to packages using hierarchical information hiding, while being backward compatible with Java. JAM supports "super package," a new kind of compilation unit, to embody packages. Packages may be imported and exported to other super packages. A repository acts as a scoping mechanism by containing one module instance at most. A module definition (no matter what version) can be found from within the same repository, or any repository related to that repository through the "child" relation. The authors present a rigorous formalization and an extended discussion on various aspects of JAM. Other module systems, such as MZScheme's units [1] and Expanders [2], enable different class versions to be in use in the same executing application. JAM restricts one single module instance per repository, which implies that no more than one class version may be present at execution within the same control flow. One point that may leave a reader unsure has to do with interaction with legacy code. Recent major changes in Java, such as generics, show the importance of linking legacy code to new libraries that use the new features, and vice versa. The paper does not provide any convincing hints that go in that direction. With that said, this paper makes a strong and clear contribution, and provides an answer for a pressing need. Online Computing Reviews Service

Access critical reviews of Computing literature here

Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

OOPSLA '07: Proceedings of the 22nd annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications

October 2007

728 pages

ISBN:9781595937865

DOI:10.1145/1297027

General Chair:
Richard P. Gabriel
IBM Research, USA
,
Program Chairs:
David F. Bacon
IBM Research, USA
,
Cristina Videira Lopes
University of California, Irvine, USA
,
Guy L. Steele
Sun Labs, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 42, Issue 10
Proceedings of the 2007 OOPSLA conference
October 2007
686 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1297105
Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 October 2007

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

OOPSLA07

Sponsor:

OOPSLA07: ACM SIGPLAN Object Oriented Programming Systems and Applications Conference

October 21 - 25, 2007

Quebec, Montreal, Canada

Acceptance Rates

OOPSLA '07 Paper Acceptance Rate 33 of 156 submissions, 21%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 268 of 1,244 submissions, 22%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

43
Total Citations
View Citations
866
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)21
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 06 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Damiani FHähnle RKamburjan ELienhardt MPaolini L(2023)Variability modulesJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2022.111510195:COnline publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2022.111510
Castro TTeixeira LAlves VApel SCordy MGheyi R(2021)A Formal Framework of Software Product Line AnalysesACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/344238930:3(1-37)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442389
Prajapati AChhabra J(2018)Optimizing Software Modularity with Minimum Possible VariationsJournal of Intelligent Systems10.1515/jisys-2018-023129:1(1135-1150)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2018
https://doi.org/10.1515/jisys-2018-0231
Ochoa LDegueule TVinju JZaidman AKamei YHill E(2018)An empirical evaluation of OSGi dependencies best practices in the eclipse IDEProceedings of the 15th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/3196398.3196416(170-180)Online publication date: 28-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3196398.3196416
Damiani FLienhardt MMuschevici RSchaefer I(2017)An Extension of the ABS Toolchain with a Mechanism for Type Checking SPLsIntegrated Formal Methods10.1007/978-3-319-66845-1_8(111-126)Online publication date: 27-Aug-2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66845-1_8
Krüger JPinnecke MKenner AKruczek CBenduhn FLeich TSaake G(2017)Composing annotations without regret? Practical experiences using FeatureCSoftware: Practice and Experience10.1002/spe.252548:3(402-427)Online publication date: 13-Sep-2017
https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.2525
Ahmad WKästner CSunshine JAldrich JKim MRobbes RBird C(2016)Inter-app communication in AndroidProceedings of the 13th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/2901739.2901762(177-188)Online publication date: 14-May-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2901739.2901762
Damiani FLienhardt M(2016)On Type Checking Delta-Oriented Product LinesProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Integrated Formal Methods - Volume 968110.1007/978-3-319-33693-0_4(47-62)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-319-33693-0_4
Koscielny JHolthusen SSchaefer ISchulze SBettini LDamiani FKolodziej JChilders B(2014)DeltaJ 1.5Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Principles and Practices of Programming on the Java platform: Virtual machines, Languages, and Tools10.1145/2647508.2647512(63-74)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2647508.2647512
Miller HHaller PBurmako EOdersky M(2013)Instant picklesACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2544173.250954748:10(183-202)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2544173.2509547
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations