(Using this list since I couldn't find a place to ask JBoss Modules question anywhere else, feel free to direct me there if there's one)

Hello everyone :)

I have been using JBoss Modules for one of the projects I'm involved in. The usage there is pretty much similar to how we use it for setting up classloaders in WildFly server for deployments. A new module M1 gets dynamically created and assigned to a component and this module is added with dependencies to some pre-defined static modules A, B, C and such.  M1 also gets N number of resource roots (backed by ResourceLoaderSpec), each pointing to a jar file within some well known directory. So to put in some sort of a code, it looks like:

// add each jar as a resource root for the module
for (final File jar : jars) {
    final ResourceLoader jarResourceLoader;
    try {
        jarResourceLoader = ResourceLoaders.createJarResourceLoader(jar.getName(), new JarFile(jar));
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // log and continue
        logger.warn("....", e);
        continue;
    }
    moduleSpecBuilder.addResourceRoot(ResourceLoaderSpec.createResourceLoaderSpec(jarResourceLoader));
}



All works fine without any issues and the module M1 has access to the resources in these jars. Now there are times where the components for which I've created this module M1 and attach these jars, "accidentally" ship/package jars which have resources (classes to be precise) which are also exposed/present in one of the dependency modules (remember A, B, C...). So this then leads to the same old thing where I have go back and tell my users not to package such jars.

I want to try and make this a bit more robust and get away with having to tell users not to package xyz jars. I had a look at the ResourceLoaderSpec interface and it takes a PathFilter https://github.com/jboss-modules/jboss-modules/blob/1.x/src/main/java/org/jboss/modules/ResourceLoaderSpec.java#L48 which gets me one step closer to what I want to achieve. So if I know that static module A, B, C etc... expose classes belonging to package foo.bar.blah, I can setup a PathFilter on these jar resource loader to skip/decline the path in the accept() method. I think that should work out fine (I need to test it out tonight) and I wouldn't have to worry that some jar packaged within that component will introduce these classes belonging to the foo.bar.blah package.

However, although it might work, I then have to keep a very close vigil or rather keep inspecting what packages (or resources in general) the modules A, B and C provide. Instead what I'm thinking of is a "smart" PathFilter or anything along those lines whose semantics would be to "skip/don't accept/filter out all those resources, from a resource root, if the resource is provided by any of the specified modules". So something like:

ResourceLoaderSpec.createResourceLoaderSpec(jarResourceLoader, PathFilters.excludeResourcesExposedByModules("A:slot", "B:slot", "C:slot" ...));


Having looked at the JBoss Modules code, I don't think this is possible currently. But that's OK. What I really want to check is, is this something that would be feasible to implement (doesn't have to be in JBoss Modules itself) and is there any obvious issues with the approach? Also, is this something that would be useful to have in JBoss Modules itself?


-Jaikiran