On 16.03.2017 14:39, David M. Lloyd wrote: [...]
It's clear that modules are not to be treated like classes, because (for example) circularity among modules is considered "bad" whereas circularity among classes has been shown to be indispensable, and classes within a class loader or module are loaded and resolved lazily whereas modules are loaded and resolved aggressively, etc. But I see your point that only "special" citizens ought to mutate a module. I agree, but I do not think this should be limited to agents: containers also have a similar need for similar reasons.
and I would not simply limit this to containers as well. If you have a programming language runtime for example you have an element, that will have to do similar tasks to what Java internals will want to do.. for example proxies. But the big difference is, that we are not containing the classes we do the work for. The modules containing those might even be loaded already and instances of those classes may already exist.
I was told an agent can mutate the module information. And I don't understand if an agent can do it, why a normal method cannot... or what makes a citizen "special" enough to be able to do it. On the contrary this discussion now gives me the impression an agent cannot mutate the module after it came into existence without duplicating classes. Clearly I had yet no time to actually try this :(
bye Jochen
