What's the difference between requires and requires transitive statements in Java 9?

Readability recap

If module bar requires module drink, then the module system...

• enforces the presence of drink (called reliable configuration)
• allows bar to read drink (called readability)
• allows code in bar to access public classes in exported packages in drink (called accessibility)

Exactly the same happens if bar requires transitive drink - drink must be present, can be read and accessed. In fact, for bar and drink the transitive keyword doesn't change anything.

Implied readability

The modules depending on bar are the ones that are impacted by transitive: Any module that reads bar can also read drink. In other words readability of drink is implied (which is why this is called implied readability). A consequence is that customer can access drink's types.

So if bar requires transitive drink and customer requires bar, then customer can read drink even though it doesn't explicitly depend on it.

Use cases

But why? Imagine you have a module whose public API accepts or returns another module's type. Let's say the bar module publicly returns instances of Drink, an interface from the drink module:

// in module _bar_public class Bar {    // `Drink` comes from the module _drink_,    // which _bar_ requires    public Drink buyDrink() { /* ... */ }}

In this example, bar uses a regular requires for drink. Now say, customer depends on bar, so all its code can call Bar::buyDrink. But what happens when it does?

The module system complains that customer does not read drink and can hence not access Drink. To fix that, customer would also have to depend on drink. What a chore! How useless is a bar that you can't use straight away?

For this reason, implied readability was introduced: to make a module that uses another module's types in its own public API instantly usable without requiring the caller to hunt down and require all involved modules.

So if bar requires transitive drink, customer can start buying drinks without having to require drink - require bar suffices. As it should.

Primary difference between the two is the access of a dependent module from one to another.

If one module exports a package containing a type whose signature refers to a package in a second module then the declaration of the first module should include a requires transitive dependence upon the second. This will ensure that other modules that depend upon the first module will automatically be able to read the second module and, hence, access all the types in that module’s exported packages.

So let's say for your use case :-

module foo {    requires java.base;    requires transitive java.compiler;}

~> Any module that depends upon the foo module will automatically read the java.compiler module

~> On the other hand to access the module java.base, they must specify a requires clause again.

module bar {    requires foo; // java.compiler is available to read    requires java.base; // still required}

requires describes the process of resolution on how modules are dependent on each other.

Quoting line

A 'requires' directive (irrespective of 'transitive') expresses that one module depends on some other module. The effect of the 'transitive' modifier is to cause additional modules to also depend on the other module. If module M 'requires transitive N', then not only does M depend on N, but any module that depends on M also depends on N. This allows M to be refactored so that some or all of its content can be moved to a new module N without breaking modules that have a 'requires M' directive.

In short :

requires - M module depends on some other module N.

requires transitive - additional modules implicitly depends on the other module. Eg:, If M module depends on N, and other module P depends on M. Then, it is implicitly dependent on N as well.