Great, it's that time of year again :-). I'm all for bumping the Java version, although I have no apparent need for it. But Java 8 opens so many doors, as Stephen listed... And who knows how long we'll live with 3.4.x.
In the end, usually users who are stuck with an old JDK for their code either freezed most of their tooling aswell, including their old version of Hudson or Jenkins, their Maven 3.0.5, and stuff like that... or they use Toolchains (as they should) My 2e-2 € 2015-11-30 22:18 GMT+01:00 Stephen Connolly <[email protected] >: > Picking up from > > http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/maven-dev/201511.mbox/%3CCA%2BnPnMyjogmqRweYbxLuULLB9ve2P6MPcQuH%2BPkxcNn-oN4GPg%40mail.gmail.com%3E > (and my follow up to that but archive.apache.org is being a tad slow) > > Here is our policy: > > The development line of Maven core should require a minimum JRE version > > that is no older than 18 months after the end of Oracle's public updates > > for that JRE version at the time that the first version of the > development > > line was released, but may require a higher minimum JRE version if other > > requirements dictate a higher JRE version > > > (Source: > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/Version+number+policy) > > OK, so it's a draft policy... but we've all been silent on the draft, so > lazy consensus! > > Now in http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/eol-135779.html they > state: > > after April 2015, Oracle will not post further updates of Java SE 7 to its > > public download sites > > > So per our (draft) version number policy, we can keep Java 7 as the > baseline :-( or we can choose to upgrade code to Java 8 (because we want to > use lambdas... there's a requirement) > > > So assuming we bump the master branch of Maven core to 3.4.0, what Java > version do we want to use as the baseline? > > There are thankfully only two options: > > Java 7 > + Not actually changing things > + May make it easier to drive adoption > - Still can't use newer language features in core > - Java 7 is EOL and it may get harder for developers to source JDKs to > test and develop against > > Java 8 > + We're not as old hat any more > + We can use lambdas > + We can use Nashorn (may make integrating with Node easier... certainly > could make integrating with JavaScript tooling easier) > + EOL for Java 8 is at least Sep 2017 (and may be later) > - May be harder to drive adoption in shops that have issues upgrading > Java (but toolchains and they likely wouldn't upgrade to 3.4.x anyway > unless there are features dragging their change controlled heels over the > line) > > So... > > Let's have a heated debate! > > -Stephen > > P.S. > > I'm waiting for Chris to chime in about how IBM is still supporting Java > 1.3 or something like that ;-) >
