On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 7:19 AM 'Russell Shaw' via grpc.io <
grpc-io@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Our company uses Java8 on Z/OS


The TL;DR for all this stuff is probably: For Google Cloud users, overall
I'd expect service-specific issues to crop up more than gRPC compatibility
issues. For example, if you want to use a new service, the library may only
support Java 11+. But you really want a plan to upgrade to Java 11 and
beyond.

Thank you so much for the email. We really do want to hear trouble caused,
as otherwise there's no feedback loop. Sorry for the delay, your email was
just brought to my attention.

In your specific case, it looks like IBM's Java 11 was only recently made
available
<https://community.ibm.com/community/user/ibmz-and-linuxone/blogs/james-tang1/2021/11/19/ibm-semeru-runtime-certified-edition-for-zos-versi>?
That's a bit worrisome, as it only buys you 1.5 more years, as end of
Premier Support of Java 11 is rapidly approaching. I'm going to need to
keep an eye on that. But you aren't *blocked*, right? It is just "gotta
move quickly"?

I'll note that practically speaking I doubt we'll actually drop Java 8 in
March. I mainly wanted people to realize *that we could*, because we really
need to have these conversations now and then when we delay it is perceived
as niceness :-). I expect gRPC will wait until ~June before dropping Java
8, because dropping Java 8 hasn't been on user's radar until recently.

But that may not hold for the rest of the Google client libraries. You as a
Google Cloud library consumer are intended to be insulated from gRPC, so
you should really only need to track the Google Cloud libraries.

I am guessing that the final gRPCJava version built via Java 8, will still
> be able to talk to Pubsub for a while, until the PubSub/gRPC protocols
> changes enough that it eventually breaks.
>

In that case Pubsub support policies still apply. See Google's Java
supported version documentation
<https://cloud.google.com/java/docs/supported-java-versions>.

gRPC v1.44.0 is still compatible with v1.0.0. A backward incompatible
change would be a big deal and probably need a multi-year migration
process. I know of no features currently discussed that would need to break
the protocol. (Sure, a new feature may need both sides to be upgraded *to
be used*, but then you just wouldn't benefit from the feature.) I wouldn't
be concerned about protocol breakages in the low-single-digit years time
frame.

There could, however, be behavior changes which don't impact correctness
but could impact performance or similar. This is less likely about gRPC
specific implementation but instead the HTTP/2 ecosystem or auth or
$SOME_OTHER_NON_GRPC_BUT_RELATED topic. These are managed by the Google
service support policies. Google will almost certainly try to avoid these,
but if something crops up you'd go through the Google support processes.
Not speaking authoritatively, but if there's a case of 1-5% performance
decrease, then that just may be the price paid. But something like a 75%
decrease is more like a service deprecation with notifications, etc. Google
can track usage of the old versions via the User-Agent.

Is there any Google Cloud Platform information on "no longer supported"
> versions of Pubsub / grpcjava  jars / cloud-boms? I can't find it mentioned.
>

I thought I had seen something about library versions being supported for a
year, but it might be in support contracts or similar non-public
documentation, or I just may be wrong. The Java version support policy does
clearly define that the Java 7 releases are best effort. I'd expect Java 8
to be included in that when it reaches its EOL.

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