| Re: [jakartaee-platform-dev] Support for the Incremental approach to Jakarta EE package renaming |
I may be imagining this but while the early community reactions seemed more in favour of a BB approach, I'm hearing increasing acceptance (some of it reluctant) in Incremental being a less worse option than Big Bang. As one of the container-providers Ryan mentions (Liberty in my case), I'm confident we can make either approach technically work with backward compatibility for older apps in the future alongside new packages for new versions of the specs. But emotionally, for the health of a hugely well-deployed enterprise Java platform as well as newer technologies that already extend it outside the javax names (like MicpoProfile), breaking packages that don't need to be broken may look like vandalism to some.
I doubt anyone believes we will ever have a complete community consensus on the better way forward so we'll have to make do with a discernible preference when it emerges. At this point in time this might be BB but I suspect it is trending towards Incremental. While its true that Incremental could end up being seen as "death by 1000 cuts", projects like MicroProfile have made a pretty decent success (as mentioned in another thread by Emily) of building new value on top of existing specs (for example the MP REST Client) without changing the underlying spec. That approach only goes so far but it demonstrates perfectly well that app devs have no problem including both javax and (for example) micropropfile packages in what is essentially an extension to a single technology. Certainly, if there is a swing of preference from BB to Incremental, we can't come back from BB.
Jakarta EE 9 needs to prune stuff we don't expect to take forward and removal is not an issue. But when we consider what is left, if it could just work (because we didn't break javax) then I'd rather defend that to a Jakarta EE project member than explain to a customer who has a ton of critical apps why they needn't worry about the additional bytecode modification (or whatever BB-mitigating strategy is taken) being applied to all their apps.
Regards,
Ian
From: Ryan Cuprak <rcuprak@xxxxxxxxx>
To: jakartaee-platform developer discussions <jakartaee-platform-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 17/05/2019 20:40
Subject: Re: [jakartaee-platform-dev] Support for the Incremental approach to Jakarta EE package renaming
Sent by: jakartaee-platform-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
While tooling can rename packages, the bigger problem is the third part libraries which an application depends upon. For example, say I am using version 3 of a hypothetical JSF component framework. The application has been in mostly maintenance for years. The Big Bang approach is taken by the community. A business change comes in and the application needs to run on Jakarta EE 9. Now the application will be confronted with one of at least two scenarios:
1. JSF library may no longer be supported and there be no hope of getting it ported to Jakarta EE 9. (Maybe better ways of implementing the application but they may not be business justifiable).
2. JSF library may have switched to supporting Jakarta EE 9 with the rename, however, the library has evolved and isn’t backwards compatible. Parts of the application need to be rewritten and re-tested.
I picked on JSF because in years past I have discovered that not keeping up with third party JSF library releases can cause problems. For going from Java EE 6 to 7 on one project required an upgrade of a library due to an incompatibility with EE 7. This simple upgrade required changes to every page in the application. RARs for things like ActiveMQ might also cause a problem (I believe they still aren’t supporting stuff added in EE 7?).
Personally I like the big bang approach but I think there needs to be a transition longer transition period for all the implementations to catch-up. I am also concerned that right now everyone is trying to get past Java SE 8 (to 11, 12, etc.) so this is the wrong time for a big bang change. Some applications might be forced to upgrade to Jakarta EE 9 because Java licensing and support issues - say the application container needs to be upgraded to run on Java 11 because 8 is so far out of support. Third party library from EE 8 doesn’t run on Java SE 12 but the newest version that runs on Java 13 has all the package names renamed.
The thing I’d like to hear, what do the container implementors think? How long will it take for WildFly, Liberty, Websphere, Payara, WebLogic, TomEE, etc. to support Jakarta and have backward compatibility for legacy applications? How long will it take IceFaces, PrimeFaces, etc. to make the transition? How long will it take Arquillian and its suite to catch-up?
-Ryan
On May 17, 2019, at 2:45 PM, Rudy De Busscher <rdebusscher@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi BJ,
I do not agree with your conclusion. With the help of some tooling, the renaming can be done swiftly and existing programs will run on Jakarta EE 9.
What is true, is the fact that the Big Bang has no technical value. But with an incremental approach, developers will need to adapt their application with each release of Jakarta EE. Because a few specs will be changed in Jakarta EE 9, a few more in Jakarta EE 10, and so on.
And when specs are using still the old package name, is the community then prepared to change the package name for a small improvement? Or will the end result be; "nah leave it as it is, we will use a workaround." And thus not having any real investment in it anymore?
Also important to consider is the fact that this package name change is much larger than just Jakarta EE. Will a developer, after he already went over the application and changed some package names two times, do it for a third time? Or will he just choose another language? The chosen approach will affect the complete Java and JVM ecosystem!
Rudy
On Fri, 17 May 2019 at 20:12, Kevin Sutter <kwsutter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks, BJ, fir your excellent insights. Definitely some things to consider as we go forward.
-- Kevin
On Fri, May 17, 2019, 12:16 BJ Hargrave <hargrave@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have posted my thoughts at https://blog.hargrave.io/2019/05/jakarta-ee-and-package-renaming.html and include a copy of the post below.
======
Eclipse Jakarta EE has been placed in the position that it may not evolve the enterprise APIs under their existing package names. That is, the package names starting with `java` or `javax`. See Update on Jakarta EE Rights to Java Trademarks for the background on how we arrived at this state.
So this means that after Jakarta EE 8 (which is API identical to Java EE 8 from which it descends), whenever an API in Jakarta EE is to be updated for a new specification version, the package names used by the API must be renamed away from `java` or `javax`. (Note: some other things will also need to be renamed such as system property names, property file names, and XML schema namespaces if those things start with `java` or `javax`. For example, the property file `META-INF/services/javax.persistence.PersistenceProvider`.) But this also means that if an API does not need to be changed, then it is free to remain in its current package names. Only a change to the signature of a package, that is, adding or removing types in the package or adding or removing members in the existing types in the package, will require a name change to the package.
There has been much discussion on the Jakarta EE mail lists and in blogs about what to do given the above constraint and David Blevins has kindly summed up the two main choices being discussed by the Jakarta EE Specification Committee: https://www.eclipse.org/lists/jakartaee-platform-dev/msg00029.html.
In a nutshell, the two main choices are (1) “Big Bang” and (2) Incremental. Big Bang says: Let’s rename all the packages in all the Jakarta EE specifications all at once for the Jakarta EE release after Jakarta EE 8. Incremental says: Let’s rename packages only when necessary such as when, in the normal course of specification innovation, a Jakarta EE specification project wants to update its API.
I would like to argue that Jakarta EE should chose the Incremental option.
Big Bang has no technical value and large, up-front community costs.
The names of the packages are of little technical value in and of themselves. They just need to be unique and descriptive to programmers. In source code, developers almost never see the package names. They are generally in `import` statements at the top of the source file and most IDEs kindly collapse the view of the import statements so they are not “in the way” of the developer. So, a developer will generally not really know or care if the Jakarta EE API being used in the source code is a mix of package names starting with `java` or `javax`, unchanged since Jakarta EE 8, and updated API with package names starting with `jakarta`. That is, there is little mental cost to such a mixture. The Jakarta EE 8 API are already spread across many, many package names and developers can easily deal with this. That some will start with `java` or `javax` and some with `jakarta` is largely irrelevant to a developer. The developer mostly works with type and member names which are not subject to the package rename problem.
But once source code is compiled into class files, packaged into artifacts, and distributed to repositories, the package names are baked in to the artifacts and play an important role in interoperation between artifacts: binary compatibility. Modern Java applications generally include many 3rd party open source artifacts from public repositories such as Maven Central and there are many such artifacts in Maven Central which use the current package names. If Jakarta EE 9 were to rename all packages, then the corpus of existing artifacts is no longer usable in Jakarta EE 9 and later. At least not without some technical “magic” in builds, deployments, and/or runtimes to attempt to rename package references on-the-fly. Such magic may be incomplete and will break jar signatures and will complicate builds and tool chains. It will not be transparent.
Jakarta EE must minimize the inflection point/blast radius on the Java community caused by the undesired constraint to rename packages if they are changed. The larger the inflection point, the more reason you give to developers to consider alternatives to Jakarta EE and to Java in general. The Incremental approach minimizes the inflection point providing an evolutionary approach to the package naming changes rather than the revolutionary approach of the Big Bang.
Some Jakarta EE specification may never be updated. They have long been stable in the Java EE world and will likely remain so in Jakarta EE. So why rename their packages? The Big Bang proposal even recognizes this by indicating that some specification will be “frozen” in their current package names. But, of course, there is the possibility that one day, Jakarta EE will want to update a frozen specification. And then the package names will need to be changed. The Incremental approach takes this approach to all Jakarta EE specifications. Only rename packages when absolutely necessary to minimize the impact on the Java community.
Renaming packages incrementally, as needed, does not reduce the freedom of action for Jakarta EE to innovate. It is just a necessary part of the first innovation of a Jakarta EE specification.
A Big Bang approach does not remove the need to run existing applications on earlier platform versions. It increases the burden on customers since they must update all parts of their application for the complete package renaming when the need to access a new innovation in a single updated Jakarta EE specification when none of the other Jakarta EE specifications they use have any new innovations. Just package renames for no technical reason. It also puts a large burden on all application server vendors. Rather than having to update parts of their implementations to support the package name changes of a Jakarta EE specification when the specification is updated for some new innovation, they must spend a lot of resources to support both old and new packages name for the implementations of all Jakarta EE specifications.
There are some arguments in favor of a Big Bang approach. It “gets the job done” once and for all and for new specifications and implementations the old `java` or `javax` package names will fade from collective memories. In addition, the requirement to use a certified Java SE implementation licensed by Oracle to claim compliance with Eclipse Jakarta EE evaporates once there are no longer any `java` or `javax` package names in a Jakarta EE specification. However, these arguments do not seem sufficient motivation to disrupt the ability of all existing applications to run on a future Jakarta EE 9 platform.
In general, lazy evaluation is a good strategy in programming. Don’t do a thing until the thing needs to be done. We should apply that strategy in Jakarta EE to package renaming and take the Incremental approach. Finally, I am reminded of Æsop’s fable, The Tortoise & the Hare. “The race is not always to the swift.”
--
BJ Hargrave
Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM // office: +1 386 848 1781
OSGi Fellow and CTO of the OSGi Alliance // mobile: +1 386 848 3788
hargrave@xxxxxxxxxx
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