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  1. JDK
  2. JDK-8189765

Improve error reporting for compiling against package not visible due to modules

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Details

    • Bug
    • Resolution: Fixed
    • P3
    • 11
    • 9
    • tools
    • b10
    • Verified

    Description

      Executive summary: Lying error messages are the worst
      time-wasters, especially if they are lying about complex,
      scaled-up configuration information.

      When working in modular code, if I attempt to import a package
      which is not visible to my package, sometimes the error message
      just bluntly states that the package does not exist, even if the
      package *does* exist but cannot be accessed due to details of
      the module system.

      This has wasted hours of my time today, because I was treating
      the "package does not exist" statement as correct, and therefore
      knocked my head against a wall trying to find the configuration
      error which was causing my package to "not exist". (It was made
      more difficult of course cause the configuration was set up by an
      IDE, under masses of properties, config. dialogs, ant files, class
      paths, etc., etc. Much of my time was cutting down to a minimal
      reproducible case.) Eventually I found that, yes, my package is
      correctly made available (on javac -classpath, as it happens, but
      it might also have been somewhere else more "modern"). So
      the error message was a lie, and due to a very simple root cause:
      The module I was working in does not read the (unnamed) module
      containing the package I was importing–which "does not exist"
      according to the lying error message–but which really exists and
      is not readable. Due to a simple programmer error.

      This is either an incomplete fix of JDK-8169197, or a closely
      related failure mode. Let's get these messages right, please.

      See below for an example.

      --------
              jar -tvf lib/testng.jar org/testng/annotations/Test.class
        1535 Tue Sep 26 08:53:24 PDT 2017 org/testng/annotations/Test.class
      --------
              javac -d out --patch-module java.base=src -cp lib/testng.jar src/test0.java
      + javac -d out --patch-module java.base=src -cp lib/testng.jar src/test0.java
      src/test0.java:5: error: package java.sql is not visible
      import java.sql.*;
                 ^
        (package java.sql is declared in module java.sql, but module java.base does not read it)
      src/test0.java:9: error: package org.testng.annotations does not exist
      import org.testng.annotations.*;
      ^
      2 errors
      --------
              cat src/test0.java
      // javac -d out --patch-module java.base=src -cp lib/testng.jar src/test0.java

      package java.lang.invoke;

      import java.sql.*;
      //error: package java.sql is not visible
      // (package java.sql is declared in module java.sql, but module java.base does not read it)

      import org.testng.annotations.*;
      //error: package org.testng.annotations does not exist

      // BUG: THE MESSAGE SHOULD SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS:
      //error: package org.testng.annotations is not visible
      // (package org.testng.annotations is declared in the unnamed module, but java.base does not read it)

      class test0 {
        // @Test public void test() {...}
      }
      --------

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              jlahoda Jan Lahoda
              jrose John Rose
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                Created:
                Updated:
                Resolved: