Exploring the Use of Package Templates for Flexible Re-use of Collections of Related Classes

It has been recognized that there is a need for a language mechanism that support reuse of collections of related classes. Existing approaches either use an enclosing class for this purpose, or introduce a special purpose, new language construct. In this paper we explore the use of packages for the grouping of related classes. Ordinary packages are already grouping of classes, so we explore the combination of packages and templates, i.e. package templates. By instantiating package templates, the classes of the package templates are provided as if ordinary packages are produced and imported.