No one forces users of POI to update to the latest version. Going to 11 in POI 6 doesn't mean we have to stop providing bug fixes to POI 5 from one day to the next. But whoever is still using Java 8 is now certainly used to not being able to use the newest version of every dependency.
Most major frameworks and many libraries now have a baseline of at least Java 11. And many of those that are still on 8 will also have to do the switch because features from older Java versions will be removed and the replacements are not yet available on 8: - finalizers (replaced by Cleaner introduced in 9) - sun.misc.Unsafe (replacement depends on use case, some introduced from 9 on) Current minimum Java version for some of the most used framework and libraries: Spring Framework and Spring Boot: java 17 WildFly: Java 11 Quarkus: Java 11 Hibernate: Java 11 KeyCloak: Java 17 RabbitMQ: Java 11 Even the IDEs require more recent versions to run (but can compile using older versions): Eclipse: Java 11 (17 recommeded) Netbeans: Java 11 IntelliJ: Java 17 Even some dependencies of POI already require Java 11 in their current version: Jakarta XML bind: Java 11 is required for version 4.x xmlsec: Java 11 is required for 4.x And some will bump the Java version for their next major release: Log4j 3.x will require Java 17 PDFbox 4.x will require Java 11 Saxon is (hopefully?) still Java 8 compatible but not tested anymore under Java 8 So staying on 8 would mean that POI will not be able to upgrade dependencies to the latest versions of some of the dependencies and possibly rely on versions that will be unsupported in the foreseeable future. Moving to Java 11 will make the code easier to maintain. There are a lot of improvements in IO, String handling, and collections that make the code more concise, easier to understand, and maintain. > Am 03.02.2024 um 22:18 schrieb PJ Fanning <fannin...@yahoo.com.INVALID>: > > Current POI version is 5.2.5. So I presume the idea is to release a POI 6 > with Java 11 only support. I'm -1 on this. I don't see any great advantage in > only supporting Java 11. Java 8 is still widely supported by vendors. > > https://endoflife.date/oracle-jdk says 6 more years of Java 8. > > > > > > > On Saturday 3 February 2024 at 22:04:26 GMT+1, Axel Howind <a...@dua3.com> > wrote: > > > > > > Hi, > > for whatever reason I cannot reach both the Nabble and MarkMail archives to > check if this has been discussed before, but I think it would be a good idea > to bump the minimum Java version for POI 5 to 11. I’d also be ok (or rather > like) 17. What do you think? > > Cheers, > Axel > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@poi.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@poi.apache.org > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@poi.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@poi.apache.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@poi.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@poi.apache.org
