+1 from me on a new poll for discussion. On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Jeremias Maerki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > +1 to being cautious about dropping support for Java 1.4 without > consulting the user base first, i.e. +1 for another user poll, though I > wouldn't do it before October. > +1 to putting the users' desires above the developers' desires. > +1 to moving to Java 1.5 when the time is right. > -0.5 (no veto) to moving to Java 1.5 before Oct 2008. > +1 to making experiments with Retroweaver (but please not in Trunk). > > On 05.06.2008 17:46:07 Vincent Hennebert wrote: >> Hi Guys, >> >> I would like to raise this topic again: what about switching to Java 1.5 >> as a minimum requirement? >> >> The End of Life transition period for Java 1.4 will end on the 30th of >> October 2008 [1]. The next version of FOP (after 0.95) will probably not >> have been released by this time, so we could start using 1.5 features in >> the Trunk. >> >> [1] http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html >> >> I don't particularly expect any disagreement from a developer point of >> vue (who doesn't want to use 1.5 features?), so in the end this will >> probably depend on the users' reactions, but I thought I'd ask for >> opinions here first. >> >> According to the poll Jeremias made in October 2007 [2], only 14.3% of >> the users would think it's a bad idea to switch to 1.5. A year later the >> percentage will probably have further decreased. >> >> [2] http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics/UserPollOct2007 >> >> I guess a new poll will still be necessary. Or we could base it on lazy >> consensus: "If you still want Java 1.4 compatibility, speak up now!". >> >> Anyway, even if 1.4 compatibility is still considered to be required, >> there are tools to convert 1.5 code into 1.4 compatible one. I'm mainly >> thinking of Retroweaver: >> http://retroweaver.sourceforge.net/ >> It's BSD licensed, so IIC there wouldn't be any problem to distribute it >> with FOP. Obviously it would be an (optional) compile-time dependency >> only. I haven't personally tested it, but I'm told it's working pretty >> well and it seems to be well maintained. Of course I'd volunteer to >> introduce it into the build system and see how it works. FWIW, it's >> based on the ASM library, that I've had the opportunity to play with >> a few years ago, and what I can say is that it's a really nice, strong, >> lightweight, easy to use library for manipulating class files. >> http://asm.objectweb.org/ >> >> Obviously we wouldn't switch everything to 1.5 immediately. We would do >> it progressively, when fixing bugs or implementing new features. So it >> should be easy to check that the conversion is working properly by >> running the testsuite on a 1.4 jvm, before every commit. Also, we could >> restrain ourselves to features that are directly translatable to 1.4: >> generics, enhanced for loop, autoboxing/unboxing. Most of all we could >> stick to using methods from the Java standard library that are also >> available in the 1.4 version (and, for instance, not use the new >> concurrency package for now). >> >> Just having the possibility to use generics would give us tremendous >> benefits: simpler, cleaner, safer code, more easily understandable, more >> easily maintainable, etc. I can't wait anymore to use those features. >> >> So, WDYT? >> Thanks, >> Vincent >> >> >> -- >> Vincent Hennebert Anyware Technologies >> http://people.apache.org/~vhennebert http://www.anyware-tech.com >> Apache FOP Committer FOP Development/Consulting > > > > > Jeremias Maerki > >
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