On Tue, 2011-02-15 at 09:17 -0800, Xueming Shen wrote: > One of the benefits of using a 5-year old version is that it has been > thoroughly tested by > various software for 5 years, given we actually don't have lots of tests > for zlib ourself, this > is very important, at least for me, when considering upgrade, especially > at this late stage
I can appreciate why you want to be cautious right now - but it is important that the codebase is regularly upgraded. If IcedTea have shown that 1.2.5 is "ok" then I'd say the risk is quite low. For JDK 8 it would make sense to discuss the pros and cons of relying on the system version of zlib. I can make the case either way though. > of the release I would be very cautious to do it. While the changelog > lists a "long" list of > changes from 1.2.3. to 1.2.4, most of them are in code that are not > included in JDK, So the risk is even lower then? :-) > the > only thing that might bring in some enhancement is "Faster Z_HUFFMAN_ONLY > compression for images and other specialized compression", but given my > experience > of measuring the improvement in the past, I doubt you actually benefit > from it in most of > the use scenario. > I'm not sure this is about any particular improvement - its really just about keeping current with someone else's codebase. > -Sherman > > On 2/15/2011 5:57 AM, Alan Bateman wrote: > > Steve Poole wrote: > >> Hi all, > >> JDK7 is using zlib 1.2.3 (which was added to JDK7 back in 2009.) > >> Zlib's latest version is 1.2.5 - is there any expectation to move to > >> 1.2.5 in JDK7? It seems a real shame to ship JDK7 with a version of > >> zlib that is so out of date. > >> More than happy to help contribute towards making this happen. I would > >> like to know if its already on someone's radar though or to understand > >> why this is a mad idea :-) > >> > >> Cheers > >> > >> Steve > > I don't think it's on anyone's radar. Sherman did the last update, > > bringing us up from a patched 1.1.3 to 1.2.3. The main thing with zlib > > updates is testing and bake time. Have you done any testing with > > 1.2.5? While there are some good reasons listed in the ChangeLog, I'm > > curious if they translate into any measurable improvement with the zip > > APIs. On the testing it would be interesting to check if 1.2.5 is used > > by any of the distros as I think (but might be wrong) that > > OpenJDK/IcedTea6 project have changes to use /usr/lib/libzip.so rather > > than the snapshot in the jdk repository and so might already have > > experience using the latest version. > > > > -Alan >
