Public discussion of JSR 277

I'm pleased to see some public feedback.

The net of the negative feedback, e.g. on JavaLobby, seems to be "why re-invent aspects of OSGi/Maven/Ivy?". Peter Kriens' review describes some technical issues previously encountered and solved by OSGi.

A relatively positive review asks why the Expert Groups of JSR 277 and JSR 291 didn't work more closely together. BEA, IBM, Intel, Oracle, Richard (Felix) Hall, and Sun are members of both Expert Groups, so lack of working closely together isn't the reason the results are turning out rather different.

JSR 277, with the help of JSR 294, is aiming to produce a static module system integrated into the Java SE 7 platform. JSR 291 on the other hand aims to support dynamic components on existing Java SE platforms in a way which is compatible with JSR 232 on Java ME.

Looking at it another way, JSR 277/294 are attempting to produce an evolution of java.lang.ClassLoader with a distribution format, repositories, language, and VM support. JSR 291 on the other hand can be implemented in pure Java on top of java.lang.ClassLoader.