Modular Programming in Java 9

Understanding the exec plugin's module path

While there are several advantages to using Maven this way, one significant advantage is how easy it becomes to manage the directories during the compile and build step. When we ran javac manually, we always had to manually specify the output directory where all the compiled classes would go. When we ran java, we had to make sure the module path contained the output location of classes, as well as any dependent modules and libraries. Maven takes that work away from us. Thanks to the <modulepath/> line that we added as the module path argument to exec-maven-plugin, Maven automatically constructs the module path for us. Here's what Maven adds to the module path:

• It automatically includes the build ...