Hi all,
I propose we switch to Java 8 for Apache Brooklyn (i.e. require Java 8;
remove support for using Java 7 when running Brooklyn).
This will make our testing simpler, improving coverage (e.g. we don't
currently test everything with Brooklyn running both on Java 7 and Java
8). It will make our lives easier as developers (e.g. don't need to
worry about Java 7 versus Java 8 when compiling, running tests and
manually testing Brooklyn; and we can use Java 8 features).
Java 7 reached end of life in April 2015 [1]; Java 8 was released March
2014.
We can do this in three stages:
* Switch to Java 8 as "official target"
o Update our jenkins etc to always build/run with Java 8.
o All developers/testers switch to Java 8 locally.
o Add to the next release notes that Java 7 is no longer supported.
* Update our poms so they don't compile/check for Java 7 compatibility
[3,4,5].
* Developers free to start using Java 8 language features!
Stage 1 would be the bare minimum for the next release; I think we
should do all three stages before the 0.11.0 release.
Aled
[1] https://java.com/en/download/faq/java_7.xml
[2] https://www.infoq.com/news/2015/05/Oracle-Ends-Java-7Public-Updates
[3] https://github.com/apache/brooklyn-server/blob/master/pom.xml#L91
[4]
https://github.com/apache/brooklyn-server/blob/master/parent/pom.xml#L557-L558
[5]
https://github.com/apache/brooklyn-server/blob/master/parent/pom.xml#L950
