Java 9 modules
When writing an application in Java 9, you are ideally creating a modular application. It's important to note that a modular Java application isn't just a regular Java application (like those we've been building all these years) with just an extra module feature thrown in. It actually calls for a completely new way of thinking about writing and structuring your code base. Before we get into creating Java 9 modules, let's do a quick recap of the traditional Java code structure pre-Java 9.
Traditional Java code structure
Traditionally, writing a Java application starts with creating one or more source directories. These are special directories that serve two purposes--firstly, they act as root locations of your Java source code and secondly, the contents of these directories are added to the class path. So, the steps to organize source code have typically been:
- Create one or more source folders.
- In a source folder, create package folders to mirror the package name.
- Place the
.java...
