A Tool for Jakarta EE Package Renaming in Binaries

In a previous post, I laid out my thinking on how to approach the package renaming problem which the Jakarta EE community now faces. Regardless of whether the community chooses big bang or incremental, there are still existing artifacts in the world using the Java EE package names that the community will need to use together with the new Jakarta EE package names.

Tools are always important to take the drudgery away from developers. So I have put together a tool prototype which can be used to transform binaries such as individual class files and complete JARs and WARs to rename uses of the Java EE package names to their new Jakarta EE package names.

The tools is rule driven which is nice since the Jakarta EE community still needs to define the actual package renames for Jakarta EE 9. The rules also allow the users to control which class files in a JAR/WAR are transformed. Different users may want different rules depending upon their specific needs. And the tool can be used for any package renaming challenge, not just the specific Jakarta EE package renames.

The tools provides an API allowing it to be embedded in a runtime to dynamically transform class files during the class loader definition process. The API also supports transforming JAR files. A CLI is also provided to allow use from the command line. Ultimately, the tool can be packaged as Gradle and Maven plugins to incorporate in a broader tool chain.

Given that the tool is prototype, and there is much work to be done in the Jakarta EE community regarding the package renames, I have started a list of TODOs in the project' issues for known work items.

Please try out the tool and let me know what you think. I am hoping that tooling such as this will ease the community cost of dealing with the package renames in Jakarta EE.

PS. Package renaming in source code is also something the community will need to deal with. But most IDEs are pretty good at this sort of thing, so I think there is probably sufficient tooling in existence for handling the package renames in source code.

I am an Incrementalist: Jakarta EE and package renaming

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 3^rd 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.”