Now - here is something quite interesting about Java directions: I was only remotely aware of JSR 277 - Java Modules - and took really no big interest in it. However, this effort might solve some of the self-inflicted problems that I had to deal with regarding OSGi bundles.

JSR 277 (which is currently in early draft) aims at provinding a simple class versioning mechanism that allows some of the features of OSGi bundles. Stanley Ho has written some explanatory material on this JSR - from what I could gather, it should be - at least principally - not too hard for OSGi to deal with Java Modules. Now if we only could get it working the other way round ...