I moved this operation to be a static interface operation on
ItemBuilder, which will remove the requirements for the
XMLPersistenceProvider to call the ExtensionRegistry. To make this work
I had to modify a few manifests and preferences to correctly use a Java
1.8 library since static and default interface operations are only
available in Java 1.8.

Signed-off-by: Jay Jay Billings <billingsjj@ornl.gov>