Alex, the primary benefit of annotations (vs. XML) is delivering code and configuration in one bundle. It's unnecessary to deliver configuration separately (i.e., XML) if you have a component that primarily has one way of being configured. That's exactly why annotations are very valuable in EE development and can displace configuration files. Because of the bundling, no, I have no any expectation of going into a text editor for modification.
On the contrary, the discussion on these boards make me believe the module information is going to be more fluid. Right now it's expressing dependencies, but it seems frameworks and other tools may want to add their own bits of information along the way. This, like the Manifest, I do have expectations for editing at will. Perhaps I want to add data only I care about, and I may want to see what others have added. That's all a possibility. The current design even encourages people to make customization (via custom attributes in the class file) to the module. But, with that said, I am unsure the point you're trying to make. The Module Descriptor is neither annotation nor XML and doesn't configure code. Rather, it configures the build-time and/or run-time environment. It's practically a weak "make" file or IDE project configuration in its current form. It's very odd to take this information and shoe-horn it into a class file. Cheers, Paul On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 2:16 PM, Alex Buckley <alex.buck...@oracle.com> wrote: > On 12/2/2015 8:31 AM, Paul Benedict wrote: > >> All that information is locked in binary format but it >> should be human readable. I should be able to go in myself and do this >> with >> a text editor. I shouldn't have to compile a file anymore than I have to >> compile my MANIFEST.MF or web.xml or application.xml. This is all about >> configuration; not executable code. >> > > Annotations are human readable in source code but end up "locked in binary > format". Entity mappings and REST endpoints (since we're speaking of EE > constructs like application.xml) are configuration ... do you expect to be > able to use a text editor to modify them? > > Is there any more to say on the issue of "source-flowing-to-binary versus > structured-text" than is already rehearsed at > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/182393/xml-configuration-versus-annotation-based-configuration > ? > > Alex >
