Hi all, Organizations building on top of the Apache NetBeans Platform aren't ready to adopt the upcoming JDK 11 yet. The industry typically will want to stick with JDK8 for a while still. As such, it is essential for Apache NetBeans to support JDK 8 and to continue to allow the Apache NetBeans Platform and Apache NetBeans IDE to build and run on JDK 8.
On the other hand, there are early adopters that want to switch to the latest JDK for development and execution as soon as possible. As such, it is also important to be able to compile the Apache NetBeans Platform (and probably also Apache NetBeans IDE) on JDK 11. It is therefore great that with PR-790... https://github.com/apache/incubator-netbeans/pull/790 ...we have started to move in that direction. (Thanks, Jaroslav Tulach.) Thanks to the above PR, one of the (in parallel running) Travis jobs runs on top of JDK 11 and now builds the Apache NetBeans Platform. That ensures that the code in "platform" cluster is not using any obsolete APIs. Other jobs are still building on JDK 8, ensuring the code isn't (unconditionally) using any fancy new features not available on JDK 8 (since, as pointed out above, remember there are groups requesting support of JDK 8). PR-790 only made the NetBeans Platform cluster, i.e., the "platform" cluster, ready for compilation on JDK 11. The community is encouraged to join in and adjust build scripts and code to be ready for compilation on both - JDK 8 and JDK 11 - after taking a look at the PR above, in the other clusters too. Build master hackers wanted! Gj
