Hi Ayush, I strongly support moving to the latest JDK version. From time to time, Hive is perceived as a legacy product because of its older technology stack, and we often end up catching up years later. Being on the latest JDK would be a very clear signal to the community: “Hello world! Hive is modern and actively evolving.”
I’m not overly concerned about Hadoop compatibility in this context. If we were able to manage older Hadoop versions on JDK 21, I believe we should also be able to handle the newest (or closest supported) Hadoop versions. This would further reinforce that Hive is keeping pace with the broader ecosystem rather than lagging behind it. -Attila On Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 10:19 AM Ayush Saxena <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi folks, > > As we know, JDK 25 has been released and is now the latest LTS. I > wanted to start a discussion on whether and when it makes sense for > Hive to start chasing it. > > From what I’ve read so far, the release looks solid and there are > generally positive signals around it, which makes it an interesting > option to consider. I also had a few offline discussions last week, > and a common sentiment was that it might be a bit early to move > aggressively. Our last major shift was to JDK 21, and much of the > Hadoop ecosystem isn’t moving at the same pace. Given that, an > immediate jump may be ambitious. > > One possible middle ground could be to acknowledge JDK 25 as a target, > but not aim for it in the very next release—perhaps instead in the one > after that, once the ecosystem has had more time to catch up. > > I haven’t done any hands-on validation yet, so I can’t comment > concretely on what might break or the level of effort involved. That > said, from some initial looking around, a potential prerequisite could > be moving to Hadoop 3.5.0+ (or beyond), which in itself could be a > blocker. On top of that, there’s the usual question of how third-party > dependencies—and our own code—would behave. > > Would be good to hear what others think: whether this is something we > should start planning for now, or keep on the radar and revisit after > some more ecosystem movement. > > -Ayush >
