[jboss-as7-dev] META-INF directory in dependency modules

[David M. Lloyd]

On 04/19/2011 12:36 AM, Marius Bogoevici wrote:
> Hi,
> I have couple of questions regarding access to resources in imported
> modules. I noticed the following:
[...]
> Apart from META-INF/services which is treated in a special fashion, how
> is it possible to install and consume a set of libraries as modules
> (e.g. shared libraries), if they contain files underneath META-INF,
> since they are not accessible from within the referencing module?

See below.

> And why is there a default restriction on META-INF

Because basically if you do: 
someModule.getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF"), you 
don't want to get the manifest of every transitive dependency, just the 
module you query directly.  Other files in META-INF act similarly.

> (the way I read the
> modules.xsd schema, this behaviour can never be overridden through the
> module definition)?

It can actually.  Modules export all of their paths (including META-INF) 
by default.  The filtering happens on the import side because the filter 
sequence for a module import contains some default entries at the end 
which exclude META-INF.  Now if you want to *include* some subpath of 
META-INF, you may add an inclusive import filter which will override the 
default exclusion.  Like this:

    ...
    <dependencies>
       <module name="org.foo.bar">
          <imports>
             <include path="META-INF/mydirectory"/>
             ...
          </imports>
       </module>
       ...
    </dependencies>

Right now we do not have support for filtering individual resource files 
within a directory, but that is forthcoming [1].

[1] https://issues.jboss.org/browse/MODULES-69
-- 
- DML