Followup: we would like to keep this poll open for 2 weeks, however some people have expressed concern that this is too short. Let us keep this poll open for 1 month starting today. So far the agreed-upon decision has been to move forward with the plan if fewer than 5% of all respondents choose option 3.
On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 3:48 PM Eugene Kirpichov <[email protected]> wrote: > This is a follow-up on a previous similar thread > https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/2e1890c62d9f022f09b20e9f12f130fe9f1042e391979087f725d2e0@%3Cuser.beam.apache.org%3E > in > which the community consistently expressed support for transitioning Beam > Java to Java8-only. > > Now that the release of Beam 2.2.0 has completed, we are considering > performing this change specifically in the immediate next release: Beam > 2.3.0, i.e. dropping support for Java 7 without a bump in the major version > of Beam. > > The reasons for switching to Java 8 in general are considered in the > thread above. > The reasons in favor of making the switch in Beam 2.3.0 are as follows: > - It is believed that usage of Java 7 in production is already vanishingly > small. > - Since Java 7 has not been receiving even security updates for years, > helping perpetuate its usage would be a bad idea > - A major version bump is a major step and would likely happen only after > a large number of other major changes in Beam accumulate - i.e. many > months. Maintaining Java 7 compatibility for that long would have costs, > including the awkward possibility of switching Beam to Java 8 after Java > 8's end of life (September 2018 AFAIK) > - Updating to Java 8 would lead to Beam more quickly gaining more > Java8-friendly APIs, because Beam SDK authors and contributors would have > more liberty, more responsibility and more experience with working in the > context of Java8. Delaying until Beam 3.0 would delay this as well. > > With that in mind, we'd like to poll the Beam community to gather > information about usage of Java 7 and Java 8 in production. Please vote: > > Option 1. I am already using only Java 8+ for building my production Beam > code. > > Option 2. I am using Java 7 for building my production Beam code, but I > would have no trouble with the switch to Java 8 [e.g. my transition to Java > 8 would be easy and/or I don't expect that I'll have strong reasons to > upgrade to Beam 2.3 anyway]. > > Option 3. I am using Java 7 for building my production Beam code, and > dropping Java 7 would be a blocker or hindrance to adopting the new release > for me [e.g. I expect that I'll have strong reasons to update to Beam 2.3, > but I expect that it will be difficult because of lack of Java 7 support] > >
